Nueroscience undergrad programs

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

Hi all,
I have been surfing these forums and have found plenty of threads talking about undergrad nueroscience programs. Problem is none have truly answered my questions.

Those being:
Which schools offer strong UNDERGRAD nueroscience programs?
Which of these schools are selective but not too selective (brown, harvard, yale, duke, columbia, etc.)?
Which of these schools have a strong med program?
I want to be challenged but I don’t want to be slaughtered by the program.
To give you an idea my unweighted is looming at around 3.6 and ACT is 34. Freshman year I didn’t do too well and because of this my fundamentals in math are foggy. Additionally biology isn’t a strongsuit. I want a scoop that can help me with weaknesses and not weed me out.

Plan is to undergrad in nueroscience and from there decide whether I will go to grad school for neuroscience (Ph. D) or apply to med school.
Preferably I would like to go to med school/grad school wherever I am doing my undergrad.

All feedback is appreciated, thanks!

2

preferably, you don’t get a PhD at the same school that you went to undergrad. You should go elsewhere to be exposed to more profs.

Who knows who’d accept you for med school, so picking an undergrad because of its med school is pointless.

What are your stats? What is your home state?

3

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/neuroscience-behavior

US News list of top graduate neuroscience programs. While a strong grad program doesn’t guarantee a good undergrad, this list will offer you a place to start.

Basically most major state universities and top 100 private research Us will offer you the undergrad rigor in neuroscience you’re looking for.

Don’t plan on attending grad school at the same school where you attend undergrad. Some programs feel strongly that they want their student to attend other institutions for post-grad education (to avoid academic inbreeding) and as a policy do not accepted their own undergrads or accept them only rarely. Also your area of concentration in grad school may not coincide with your undergrad’s strengths and you’ll need to go elsewhere to pursue your interests.

At most universities neuroscience is part of the biology department and a neuroscience degree will require a number of upper level bio classes to fulfill degree requirements. Graduate work in neuroscience will require at a minimum a coursework in statistical analytical methods. Some computer programming is also extremely useful.

Med school pre-reqs include a full year of college-level mathematics, including one semester of statistics and a recommended semester of calculus.

I assume you mean school, not scoop…

Colleges will offer you opportunities to get help, but they’re not going to hold your hand and spoon feed you. College education follows a different pedagogic model than high school. The responsibility for learning course material falls squarely on the shoulders of the student. The professor is simply one of the many resources a student will use to teach themselves the material.

It’s going to be difficult to find a rigorous undergrad science program that doesn’t weed in bio and/or chem in intro level classes–simply because that’s how those classes are designed. Med schools (and grad schools) depend on undergrads to winnow down the number of potential applicants.

Science and medicine are both intensely competitive fields–with weeding occurring continually–even at the professional level.

4

Exactly what I was looking for… and yes I meant schools haha

5

I am sorry for not answering your question. I rather would like to point out that if you are planning for the medical school, then your focus is not correct. You really do not care about strength of any UG program. You will care a lot about getting very high college GPA, which preferably should be higher than 3.6. Let me tell you, that 3.6 would be absolutely bare minimum. So, I would make plans based on this goal vs goal of the strong program. Whatever will make you happy at certain school. you should consider it first and foremost as being happy will help you achieving high GPA. If the strong “undergrad nueroscience programs” will make you happy, then go for it!
Another preferable aspect is having free or close to free UG education if planning for medical school. Anyway, as cheap as possible.

Selectivity of the UG will be irrelevant when applying to medical school.

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Undergraduate Neuroscience = Brown. It’s was one of if not the first undergraduate neuroscience departments in the country - inspired by a student’s independent concentration several decades ago.
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2013/04/05/neuroscience-grows-as-u-emphasizes-brain-science-research/
http://www.brown.edu/academics/neuroscience/home

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as a hopkins person, i m very biased, but Hopkins= best undergraduate/graduate neuroscience. One of largest majors , a lot of research activities, and active student groups.
http://neuroscience.jhu.edu/about/history-of-neuroscience/

Another program that is slightly less competitive than brown, hopkins, etc is emory. Emory is doing a lot of cutting edge research right now in neuroscience that average folks outside of academia don’t know about it. In terms of innovative neuro research, emory>>>>hopkins.
Just look at Helen Mayberg’s work, Also Tom Insel, a former head of NIMH, working for google now, he used to be a faculty member at Emory and set up a lot of interesting neurobehavioral research.

Also look at UCLA- i know their undergrad is large and it might be harder to get involved in research until you are junior compared to smaller private schools like emory,brown, or hopkins, but UCLA does an incredible amount of neuroscience research- including the human connectome project that’s a part of president obama’s brain initiative and the world renowned Semel Institute which is more prestigious than many neuro depts such as Stanford, Penn, Yale, etc is also a part of UCLA.

Another top/up and coming neuroscience program is USC. It’s private and smaller than UCLA so you will easily get more opportunities than UCLA. Also a part of the connectome project with MGH (Harvard’s hospital). A lot of cutting edge alzheimer’s research- they just stole a bunch of top researchers in the field from UCSD. They are putting a lot of $$ and new buildings are going up for neuroscience and undergrad ed. Plus a lot of shadowing and clinical opportunities through Keck and USC+LAC hospital. Very active pre med clubs.

http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/about/collaborators/
http://dornsife.usc.edu/usc-neuroscience/

UCSD is one of most top funded neuroscience research depts in the country. Obviously a lot of pre meds,strong pre med opportunities, but neuroscience is a concentration within their bio major.

I am sure Brown is a great school esp for undergrads and a lot of individualized attention vs a lot of schools on my list, but in terms of their neuroscience research, they are nowhere near top, more of low to mid tier research program.

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Yeah, Brown is a low to mid tier neuro program but John Donoghue is on Obama’s BRAIN initiative advisory committee whereas no one from Emory, Hopkins, USC, or UCLA is. UCSD’s Tsien is.

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Yeah but ppl at these schools are actually running projects and getting funded from the initiative as opposed to being in an advisory board.

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But once again brown does some interesting work with neurodevelopmemt

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Brown has a T32 training grant from the NINDS and the NEI and was the largest player in BrainGate (and the only school with undergrads working on it currently) http://www.braingate2.org/researchTeam.asp. If you had simply claimed that these other schools have better funded (which may not be better when done at the per investigator level) or larger departments I wouldn’t have even batted an eye, but to claim Brown is a “low to mid tier” Neuro program is simply laughable unless your list of neuro programs is only about 10 long.

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There aren’t that many universities in the countries with large neuroscience departments. For example, if you look at NIMH funding list for this year, there are about 20 universities who receive 10 million + which is just about a decent amount to have a comprehensive program (there are plenty of internal medicine departments who have 100 million+ easily). Brown isn’t one of them (decent-7 million). In fact, BU has more funding from NIMH from BU and that doesn’t even include a lot of neurorehab work that BU does.
Per investigator funding doesn’t matter whole lot esp for undergrads because they are not specialized yet so you want as many options as possible with different research labs so the scale do matter.

Also a plenty of schools have undergrads involved in big projects. I recently visited Washu- a plenty of undergrads working in their neuro labs and it’s a far better department than brown with multiple training grants and T & K awards.

Anyways, the point of whole thread for OP was to suggest that might be less competitive than schools like harvard, brown, hopkins, etc that would still give him great opportunities in terms of name, pre-med, and research opportunities.
I just wanted him/her to expand his/her options. Most people wouldn’t think schools like UCLA or UCSD are better at research esp in neuroscience than brand name programs like Brown or Dartmouth. Once again, from undergrads perspective, it’s probably easier to get into a lab in small schools like Brown and at Hopkins based on my own experience, but large good funded departments that are open to undergrads are out there that are as good or better than Brown/Hopkins/Cornell, etc

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I think OP said ‘not too selective’…so you might be interested in Pitt.

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NIMH isn’t the only funding source available. If we are limiting ourselves to only 20 neuroscience departments in the country, then you are right, I wouldn’t disagree that Brown is a low to mid tier program at the graduate level. I would assume most readers on this forum would consider there to be more than 20 neuroscience programs in the country - particularly at the undergrad level and thus “low to mid tier” has a very different meaning to them than it does to you.

Not just in neuroscience, but in general, there is no university that makes it easier for undergraduates to participate in research than Brown - part of that is precisely because our graduate programs are smaller than our undergrad peers’.

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2muchquan is definitely right- pitt is one of the top institutions in terms of neuro/NIH research (better than stanford believe it or not)

brown is great, but no one can beat hopkins in terms of research opportunities for undergrad- less than 5000 undergrads with top federal research funding in research for 30 years in a row or something like that. a lot of ppl got involved in research as early as freshmen year fall semester w/o previous research experience, but obviously both of us are biased =)

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Thank you all for the replies. What’s your opinion on University of Colorado–Boulder for a nueroscience undergrad?

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CU has a fine undergrad neuro program run thru the psych dept. It’ll give the foundation you need for grad school, if that’s what you decide on.

Are you instate for CU? I ask because CU gives absolutely lousy OOS aid. Plus Boulder isn’t exactly an inexpensive place to live. (Lovely town, though…)

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Fixed that, with edits in bold.

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Not instate, live in IL

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@Mriduls

CU OOS is going to cost you $60K/year to attend–the price of private college. CU is very stingy with OOS aid so don’t expect any. (I live in an area when every year lots of local kids apply to CU OOS; nearly all go elsewhere because of the cost–either to higher ranked privates that cost the same [or less with merit] or the lower cost instate publics.)

PhD students (esp in the sciences) often get tuition remissions and living stipends for being research/teaching/graduate assistants–thus have grad school paid for. Med school, OTOH, is self-funded–meaning you’ll pay your own way thru. There is laughably little FA for med school except huge loans and the average med school grad leaves school with $200K in loans–assuming there is no undergrad debt. By the time the new doctor finishes residency some 3-7 years later that debt has often ballooned due to interest being accrued during residency. (Residents are paid less than a nurse or high school teacher.)

While I understand it’s too soon for you to make a decision about your path, you need to keep the above in mind. I always recommend to potential pre-meds to find a undergrad that is less expensive so that some of the money that would have gone to pay for undergrad can be used to pay for med school and help minimize the debt load a new doctor has to deal with.

As a FL resident, have you considered FSU or UF? Are you eligible for Bright Futures?

UF’s neurobiological science major has a mandatory thesis requirement–that means independent research is built in to your degree. For grad school a having independent research and a thesis is a plus.

Additionally, Florida has several stand alone research centers devoted to neuroscience (though at the grad or professional level, but a high achieving and persistent undergrad may be able to get a internship at one of them) --Mayo, Max Planck Institute, Center for Neuroscience Research.

So…food for thought.