I’ll be an incoming college freshman this fall and I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would like to pair with my psychology major. I’m thinking of double majoring because I have so many college credits already and if I were to do just one major, I’d be done in nearly 2 years.
I’ve known for a year or so now that I for sure want to go for a psych degree. I originally thought I would pair a neurobiology major with psych, but I then found out that the neuroscience major had more classes in common with the psych major, allowing me to take fewer classes altogether for the two degrees. If I’m trying to become more specialized in cognitive psych, does anyone know if neurobiology is better than the neuroscience route? I feel they’re very similar and I’m just curious if one is better than the other for what I’m going for.
I also realized that even with double majoring I’d still be able to graduate a year early, so now I’m thinking of adding a minor in philosophy. Does philosophy sound like a compatible pairing with a psych degree? I find philosophy interesting but I’ve never taken a class on it, and I don’t want to waste my time on a minor if it won’t help with my main degree. I’m also worried that a minor wouldn’t be significant in the long run. Would it even be worth it to go for a minor at all, or should I just skip out on a minor altogether?
Thanks!
Ditch psychology and just do neuroscience. Get a few coding / math classes instead. Psychology is only useful in the phd / masters level. The undergrad major is bogus.
I am planning on eventually getting my masters or PhD in psychology. I’m simply wondering if neuroscience and philosophy supplement psychology well.
No, data analysis and statistics or other research skills useful.
You don’t need an undergrad degree in psychology to do a phd / masters, but the schools do prefer a closely related field which neuroscience should cover. Get math and coding classes and sprinkle them out throughout your degree.
You will be far more employable than any business marketing major can ever dream of and slightly better off than average / low gpa accounting majors who hate math but want a stable job.
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Ohh okay, I see. I’ll play around with math and coding courses my university offers and make a rough outline. Thank you!
yes there are a lot of overlaps and it is doable. I’m majoring in Cog & Brain Sci. I’m also taking Computer Sci and AI along with Psy, Linquistics, etc …there are many different ways to proceed. Go with what you love to study.
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Without looking at the offerings at your particular school, it’s hard to know: “neurobiology” and “neuroscience” are sometimes used interchangeably. Generally, though, neuroscience is broader: neuroscience is about many kinds of research related to the brain and is an interdisciplinary field, whereas neurobiology is more about the biological structure and processes of the brain. Based on your interest in cognitive psychology, I think neuroscience is probably a better fit for you. There’s a whole subfield called cognitive neuroscience.
Minors aren’t intended to “help” with your main degree. They’re simply intended to designate that you undertook a focused course of study that is less comprehensive/intensive than a major. You can pick one that’s related or you can pick one that’s completely unrelated - that’s totally up to you and your interests. If you are interested in philosophy, go for it. Philosophy is one of the core components of cognitive science, a field interested in how humans and artificial intelligences “think”. There’s a huge ethical component to AI and technology, and a raging conversation going on right now in the field (hence U.S. Congressional hearings with Mark Zuckerberg et al.) So it’s definitely applicable. But if you aren’t gravitating towards anything specific or would like to explore many fields, it’s certainly not necessary to select a minor.
Programming and math classes can certainly be useful, and you will almost certainly be required to take the calculus sequence as a neuroscience major. (If you aren’t, you should take it anyway, as well as linear algebra and statistics.) If you’re not interested in those things, though, you don’t have to grab those things (although programming is a very marketable skill, not just as a software developer but as a scientist who needs to analyze data).
I strongly disagree that psychology is only useful at the PhD or master’s level; it’s an oft-repeated statement, but the truth is the vast majority of psychology undergraduate majors are gainfully employed in middle-class jobs (the unemployment rate for recent college graduates in psychology is on par with that of computer science and some business and engineering majors, Resource Library - CEW Georgetown → From Hard Times to Better Times). Major does have a big influence on salary and post-college earnings, though.
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