I am a high school senior from India looking for various fields of study and identifying my right fit. I am very much fascinated by the idea of cognitive science. For someone who is pursuing a degree in Cognitive science or have pursued one, please give some insights into what is the major like, and what are the future opportunities that open up with it.
Thanks
Aditya
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I majored in Cognitive Science with specialization in computing in early 90’s at UCLA. It was a great program that allowed me to dabble in psychology, neuroscience, , and computer science. Back in my day if you wanted to pursue a career in cognitive science main option was academics which would have required Ph.D. Now days with with AI being such a large field I would imagine there are more private sector jobs available in tech.
One thing that was really great was that cognitive science was a relatively small major even at a large university that gave me great access to professors. I ended up working as a research assistant and programmer for one of the professors and I was given opportunities to do my own research and have some papers published as well as presenting at a professional conference.
Eventually I decided I didn’t want to pursue a career in academics and ended up going to law school. Even then I got a lot out of all the opportunities that graduate student level research.
I highly recommend the major for intellectual development and overall coverage across many different disciplines. Just make sure you develop good relationships with professors early on and see if your an get involved in research.
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