Cognitive Science

<p>I looked up the major the other day and thought it was pretty interesting
(I love how anthro, linguistics, psych, and philosophy are included in this major).
I'm just wondering what are some of the career options for a cogsci major.</p>

<p>I'm also looking for a school that emphasizes on neuroscience
because I'm not that into computer science.
I was going to major in neuroscience but there were too many science courses...</p>

<p>I currently attend a community college and
I'm considering UCLA and UCD but I'm open to other schools.</p>

<p>Cognitive science… Without a PhD or a heavy computer science emphasis your degree will just be another degree… Most people in cognitive science wind up going to medical school or to graduate school to do research.</p>

<p>AFAIK, the only jobs that don’t require a PhD are software engineering type positions…</p>

<p>I can say that cogsci majors can do a lot. Since it’s very interdisciplinary, you gain many different skills that can be applied to any number of different careers. Many go into software; others into psychology-related fields. If you’re into AI, there are tons of companies that are looking for AI people. Or neuroscience, which segues well into graduate programs and some industry positions as well. Or natural language processing, a *very * lucrative field right now. The combinations are endless, really. </p>

<p>Here’s a bit on careers in the area from Stanford (not called cogsci here, but it’s their equivalent of it):</p>

<p>[Symbolic</a> Systems ssp-description/expl3.html](<a href=“http://symsys.stanford.edu/viewing/htmldocument/13689]Symbolic”>Symbolic Systems Program)</p>

<p>And from Berkeley:</p>

<p>[Cognitive</a> Science : UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://ugis.ls.berkeley.edu/cogsci/major.php?page=career_options]Cognitive”>http://ugis.ls.berkeley.edu/cogsci/major.php?page=career_options)</p>

<p>(By the way, I’m finishing in the field at Stanford)</p>

<p>I see a lot of job postings for computational linguistics, which I have to think is similar to “natural language processing”.</p>

<p>^ job postings on the linguistlist? (I ask because most job postings I see say NLP–some places seem afraid to say “computational linguistics”)</p>

<p>Computational linguistics is a more general term and tends to be associated with the “fuzzy” side of the field–i.e. more of a focus on linguistics and often using symbolic and logical methods for analysis. NLP tends to focus more on computer science, usually using probabilistic/statistical methods. Some use the terms interchangeably, but they do have different connotations. Both are cognitive sciences.</p>