Hi,
So, I was accepted into all 4 universities—Yale, MIT, JHU, and Brown— and I am wondering which one could be the best in the cognitive science field. Any ideas?
Congrats, four stellar schools which you’ll do great things at regardless of choice. Based on research spending in the sciences, which one can translate to early and meaningful research opportunities - the basis of a strong undergrad science education - MIT or JHU.
Beyond that, MIT has the best surrounding environment (though that hardly means you can’t find stuff to do at other schools) and JHU has the most mild climate. Other factors including Greek life, extracurriculars, sports, social life, prestige, and program-specific benefits may be of interest to you.
Here are US News program rankings (which are solely based on surveys with a 1-5 ranking scale and a 16% return rate). US News ranks the overall program and then the specialities of that program, which I listed below (specialties rankings only go to top 12 and numerical score is not provided). I only provided those programs and specialties that seemed relevant to a cognitive science major.
Biological Sciences: MIT #1, JHU #5, Yale #7, Brown #34 (average ranking of 4.9, 4.7, 4.6 and 3.7 respectively)
-Neuroscience/Neurobiology: JHU #3, MIT #5,
Psychology: Yale #4, MIT #9, Brown/JHU #26 (average ranking of 4.6, 4.4, 4.0 respectively)
-Cognitive Psychology: Yale #5, MIT #10
-Behavioral Psychology: MIT #2, JHU #7
-Developmental Psychology: Yale #11
-Social Psychology: Yale #3 (6-way tie)
Honestly, these ranking seem like a wash between Yale, JHU and MIT. Yale appears better ranked with a Psychology approach (more of a humanities/social science emphasis) while MIT and JHU are better ranked from a neuroscience approach (emphasis on structure and things on a cellular and molecular level). Really though, this ranking approach hardly have the interest of the undergrad student’s (or grad student’s) at heart. Asking someone to assign a 1-5 value to a program is so vague it really doesn’t address the factors that should matter to you beyond people’s perception of that program, which has value, but hardly matters the most.
I can tell you that many students at JHU opt for the Neuroscience major and do a cognitive concentration since they take many of the same classes as a cognitive science major while still getting the Neuroscience degree. There is always the fear in the cognitive science major’s mind (at least from what I saw) that they will be grouped by grad schools/employers with Psych, which is often jokingly referred to as a “soft” science since there is more emphasis on the humanities and less of a focus on imaging, structure and molecular mechanisms (basically, all the breakthroughs of the last 30 years).
Disclaimer: I’m a JHU Neuro grad and loved it. Read my profile posts for more info on the school and why I loved it!
My daughter is interested in Neuroscience and we looked at these schools and their undergrad offerings and for Neuroscience we ranked Brown and JHU higher but for Cognitive Science we would rank MIT highest. Did you look through the program of studies intently for each school? Did one appeal more to you?
^ ^ Those are US News graduate program rankings.
JHU’s overall numbers are driven up by big spending on medical research and on the JHU Applied Physics Lab. In 2014, JHU’s research spending was $2.24B. Of that, $1.254B went to the APL.
Yale’s R&D expenditures in the field of psychology alone were approximately:
$10.8M Yale
$9.1M Brown
$3.6M JHU
$1M MIT
I don’t see break-outs specifically for CogSci, though.
http://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/herd/2014/html/HERD2014_DST_19.html
http://hub.jhu.edu/2015/12/09/research-funding-leader-nsf-survey
The rankings are for graduate programs, but US News doesn’t rank undergraduate programs (only schools) so we opt for the next best thing (again, these rankings have little value in my mind). CogSci is necessarily more of a neuroscience approach than just psychology, so I think it is misleading just to look at psychology R&D, though I agree Hopkins is significantly buttressed by R&D spending by the APL and medical research spending. I do believe Life Sciences R&D is highly relevant though, unfortunately these broad numbers and general categories don’t paint the detailed picture we’re looking for. This is largely because categorizing research becomes trivial since nearly all research today is interdisciplinary, hence I think you might as well consider Institutional research spending as a whole, or at least a few general categories of research spending.
Great clarification though, which puts the numbers in perspective.
@jdmg9321 What are your plans post-undergrad?
@Dolemite I am actually more inclined to education and research in areas, such as working memory, concentration, and development.
If you are interested in eventually getting your PhD then MIT is the biggest feeder of the 4.