<p>How prestigious is the psychology department ? How is the cognitive science major? Do freshmen get involved in research? .......It seems that HSS is really overshadowed by the the other colleges, is it really that bad?</p>
<p>People I've talked to at CMU say that the psychology department, particularly the cognitive part, is well respected, but I've never talked to people outside of CMU about it. I'm a Cognitive Science second major (first is Computer Science) and it's a good choice as long as you don't have reservations about programming and computer science- you have to take at least 4 semesters of programming out of the CS department and several of the classes in cognitive science are coding heavy. The majority of cognitive science majors have it as a second major; there are very few primary majors- I don't know if that's good or bad, from your perspective. The plus side is that the psychology department is ALWAYS looking for research assistants, and often doesn't require much in the way of experience or coursework, so I would see it as a definite possibility to be involved in research at least second semester. I think there is even a research training course in psychology for freshmen. If you have any specific questions about cognitive science, I can try to answer them.</p>
<p>Why are there very few primary cognitive science majors? I'm planning on taking pre-med courses too. Also I've never taken programming classes in HS, as my HS doesn't offer any. So that is a bit worrying. And I'm more into the neurobiology part of cognitive science. Is there any way I can focus on cognitive neurobiology?</p>
<p>I'm not sure why there are so few primary cognitive science majors- there are a bunch of psychology majors, though. I suppose that few people come in knowing that they want to do cognitive science as opposed to psychology, and it could be difficult to get through the programming requirements if you don't know by sophomore year that that's what you want to do.</p>
<p>It's possible to take all your premed classes and do a major in cognitive science, but it will leave you without a lot of room for random electives, and you might end up taking some summer school just so you don't have so many labs during the school year.</p>
<p>You can look at thre requirements for the major here: <a href="http://www.cmu.edu/esg-cat/%5B/url%5D">http://www.cmu.edu/esg-cat/</a>
You might also be interested in the psychology/biology integrated dual major or whatever they call it. CMU has quite a few joint programs with Pitt for neuroscience, so that might be of interest to you.</p>
<p>If you're bored this summer, you might consider getting an introductory programming book (either Java or Python) and working through it. People often teach themselves programming, so it's definitely doable, and it might give you a bit more insight into CMU's brand of cognitive science.</p>
<p>I was thinking about doing the psychology-biology joint degree program, but it seems impossible to do when I want to do pre-med and take random electives. When do I have to declare a major anyway? Can't I take a few classes from different majors and see which ones I enjoy the most?
Thanks</p>
<p>I would guess that most of the people in the psych-bio program are pre-meds, but they probably can't take many random electives, if any. You can't declare a major until second semester freshman year; I don't know when you're required to declare, but I know you can wait longer than that. You can take classes from different majors and see which you enjoy, but you need to look at the requirements to graduate in the areas that interest you and make sure that if they have any long sequences of courses, you start those as early as possible, or you might have trouble fitting everything in. Technically, every H&SS major can be completed in 2 years as long as you have the 'pre-requisite' courses and general requirements out of the way, but in some cases the prereqs are 2 years of sequential classes.</p>