<p>For life science majors, how did you choose your specific major? What were your reasons?</p>
<p>Which one do you think is most interesting and why? </p>
<p>The ones I'm considering are molecular, cell, developmental biology or microbiology, immunology, genetics or neuroscience.</p>
<p>I'm choosing between molecular and genetics right now.</p>
<p>Molecular because I work in a molec. bio lab right now, and I've loved the experience thus far.</p>
<p>Genetics because I've always had an extreme interest in them- We'll see though after I spend the summer in a lab.</p>
<p>Do you mean in graduate school or undergraduate?</p>
<p>I am in a biology umbrella graduate program and officially entered under cell biology, but I joined a neuroscience lab. In my program, it doesn't matter what you declared that you were interested in on your application, just which lab you eventually join.</p>
<p>For undergrad, your specific sub-field major doesn't really matter very much. Just get a strong grounding in many sub-fields of biology, and you'll be fine for graduate school admissions.</p>
<p>hey Ookla, i go to ucla as well, and i am an MCDB major. IMO, it's the best major ucla offers for someone interested in moving on to graduate studies in biology. it is also the best major in general =P.</p>
<p>MIMG is probably a close second, but i feel that MCDB would give one a broader perspective of the field whereas MIMG, as the name implies, has more of a microbio/virology slant. i don't know too much about the MIMG department, but the MCDB faculty study a broad range of models: arabidopsis, mouse, zebrafish, and drosophila (possibly others) to study a wide range of topics (vasculogenesis, stem cells, development, epigenetics, etc.) i doubt the MIMG faculty have as diverse a group of faculty.</p>
<p>then again, if you're either MIMG or MCDB, you can probably a lot of the other's courses as electives anyway. so for pure research, i don't think you can beat MIMG or MCDB.</p>
<p>i don't know too much about the neuroscience department for undergrads, but my roommate is a neuroscience minor, and he says it's geared toward research. i suppose if you already know for sure you want to study neuroscience, you could go for that major.</p>
<p>hope that helps.</p>