Deciding between majors with similarities

College Majors Science Majors
1

<p>I'm currently a high school student and plan to attend a California public school for college because my father is retired military so I receive free tuition. I'm interested in a field of science that revolves around the function/knowledge of the brain. I plan to take pre-med prerequisites and apply for med school at the end of my undergraduate years. Although I'm open to other career paths that encompass my primary interests. </p>

<p>I've been researching the following majors:
neuroscience, neurobiology- behavior-physiology, cognitive science</p>

<p>I'm interested in all of these areas of study, but I'm curios if a cognitive science major would be a poor choice if I plan to go pre med (and not be phycologist!). I'd appreciate opinions, any facts, or personal experience from students going pre med, or that study something similar to one of these majors. </p>

2

<p>They would all be fine options for pre-med.</p>

<p>None of the majors would give you particularly good career prospects right out of undergrad. I would personally recommend neuroscience because it’s so broad and all-encompassing.</p>

3

<p>Indeed. The aforementioned majors requires atleast a masters to be taken serious, although a PhD. will be best if you want to run your own research and whatnot. </p>

4

<p>Any major is fine as long as you complete the med school prerequisites. Take a look at the classes required for each major and see which interests you more. A neuroscience major may include more biology courses (perhaps having more of a cellular or molecular focus than the other neuroscience major), a neuroscience-behavior-physiology may include more psychology and/or physio courses, and a cognitive science course may have more computational, psychology, ethnography, etc courses. Cognitive science is more of an interdisciplinary major that includes bits and pieces of a lot of different fields. Neuroscience majors will likely be housed in the biology department and will have more of a biology focus. But check out the courses required at your school, as it will likely depend on your school</p>

5

<p>I had the same struggle a year ago when I was trying to choose between Neuroscience, Psychology, Behavioral Biology (Which I guess is like Neurobiology - Behavior - Physiology with a little bit of Zoology thrown in), and Cognitive Science. Before I even started college, I was leaning heavily to CogSci, then Neuro, then Psych, and I didn’t even know Behavioral Biology existed, lol.</p>

<p>I agree with baktrax that you should definitely look at what kinds of classes are required for the major. You can also focus your interests by taking courses that are required for multiple majors and see what subjects interest you the most.</p>

<p>How I ended up choosing was I took a course in Computer Science, thinking I would fall in love with it. I was good at it, but I did not have the patience to code and debug for hours. I also took a 1-credit course on Music Cognition. I was bored to tears. So Cognitive Science was out.</p>

<p>IDK, Cognitive Science is “interdisciplinary,” which I initially was excited about, but it’s actually a very narrow field, IMO, because it only focuses on things like attention, memory, and learning. Pre-med is definitely possible with Cognitive Science, but it’s a lot harder to do in the sense that pre-med requirements and CogSci requirements don’t really overlap like they would with the other majors.</p>

<p>In the spring, I took a general course that was a requirement for Neuro, Behavioral Bio, and Psych majors, so I got an intro to all areas. The Neuro stuff was interesting, but my favorite part by far was the unit on Abnormal Psychology. But Psych classes in general seem to have too much reading and writing, and more speculation than problem-solving. Behavioral Bio ultimately came out on top with a winning combo of a few Psych and Neuro electives to get a mix of cell-level action and real-world application, and a lot of science and math requirements that will double as pre-med requirements. It’s flexible enough that I get to choose my electives and still have room to double minor in Math and Applied Math.</p>

6

<p>I wasn’t aware of the Behavior Biology major. It’s like a rough mix of neuroscience and cognitive science, I’ll definitely look further into it. Thank you! </p>