<p>I am a high school senior currently considering my college options. My ultimate goal is to get my PhD in neuroscience, after which I will work either in academia or in the private sector. I eventually hope to get an MBA and work at a company related to the neuroscience field (if I do not go into academia), but more on the business side of things.</p>
<p>I want to keep my options after college open, however, if, for whatever reason, getting my PhD does not work out. While originally considering a neuroscience degree, I then thought a biomedical engineering degree would be better in this regard. That way I could have the option of getting my master's and then getting a job in the BME field. I am interested in math, physics, biology, and neuroscience (obviously), and I believe I would also be happy with a career in BME.</p>
<p>After doing further research, however, I see how difficult it is to find jobs with a major in BME. It is a pretty limiting degree, and does not have a very solid core set of skills and requirements. This led me to the idea of pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering. If I get a degree in mechanical engineering, I could also get my master's in BME, or I could get a job directly in mechanical engineering. I also have read about biological engineering; where would that degree put me at in terms of my situation?</p>
<p>So here is my primary question: if I choose to keep my options open and major in ME, will I be too limited in my initial goal of going into neuroscience? What is a good path to take that will not limit me too much if things do not work out as planned? What is a path that would lead me to neuroscience and possibly a related business career?</p>
<p>You have way too many assumptions built into this plan which make it too hard to answer.</p>
<p>Let us start with one. BME has a limited future but a PhD in Neuroscience has bigger future? Seems a bit farfetched to me.</p>
<p>With graduate school applications, the gold standard is your research record, not necessarily your curriculum (which is, of course, important by extension since you won’t be let into most labs without having taken some specific courses first).</p>
<p>But the basic theme of this is still that you can major in mechanical engineering and go into neuroscience. Especially neuroscience, actually, as it is a heavily interdisciplinary field that people from a variety of majors end up in. Just fit in certain courses into your university curriculum (talk to your advisor and a neuroscience professor about which) and work really hard to do good lab work.</p>
<p>As an aside, you’d probably have an easier time mixing neuroscience with an electrical engineering degree than with a mechanical engineering degree, but it really depends on how creative you are and how flexible your school is.</p>
<p>texaspg: Yes I know it’s true that both fields have pretty limited options. I just figured that it would be useful to have other skills to fall back on if I cannot get a career in neuroscience even after getting my PhD. Would it just be better to focus on one thing and hope it works out as planned? I know it’s very difficult to get a job in academia and get funding, but I still want to pursue neuroscience because it is my strongest interest.</p>
<p>Philovitist: Thanks for the advice; I’ll be sure to keep it in mind regardless of what I decide to major in.</p>
<p>From my freshman through sophomore year I worked in a neurobiology research lab under a professor who did his undergrad in Electrical Engineering and his PhD in biomedical engineering. He is now a tenured professor housed in the biological sciences and joint appointment in biological engineering at my school. In other words, it can be done and in my opinion, the next revolutions of neuroscience will come from engineers/physicists.</p>
<p>The Biomedical Engineering Department at my university, Illinois Institute of Technology has faculty whose degrees are in Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Physics. You might have to take some courses to catch up on physiology and other areas of biology but there should be no impediment.</p>