<p>Don’t know what kind of schools your son is looking for (family member is in this area) - “big” undergrad institutions with neuroscience majors include Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Minnesota, Northwestern, UCLA, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Univ. of Penn, Univ. of Rochester, USC, Univ. of Texas, Vanderbilt, and Washington University (in St. Louis). LACs with neuroscience majors include Amherst, Bowdoin, Middelbury, Pomona, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, Wesleyan. Brandeis I guess is technically a LAC - either way they have a neuroscience program (well regarded graduate program). Availability of big lab research biggest at research universities, and particularly those attached to medical centers (or in proximity) depending on what type of neuro you’re interested in and generally speaking, but also know many folks in/with PhDs from the LACs (good mentors/hands-on research opportunities, depending on the school). There are many “flavors” to neuroscience (cell bio/philosophy/cognition/psychology/etc) and different programs can place different emphases and prepare differently.</p>
<p>From what I remember, Brandeis is amazing for artificial intelligence, on the level of MIT or better. I’m not sure about the more biological subfield of neuroscience.</p>
<p>turn up or transfer </p>
<p>FWIW, my guy also had been accepted to UA a couple of years ago, but ended up not choosing them due to wanting a neuroscience major. He ended up at U Rochester with Pitt as his second choice (both good schools - he just preferred URoc’s campus). He has not regretted his choice… though has shifted to preferring their Brain and Cognitive Studies major once he’s seen the difference in what each covers. Part of his decision to go to URoc was because they offered more than one specialty and he wasn’t really sure which he’d prefer.</p>
<p>URoc does have a bit of depth to their classes for both science and math. (I work in a public high school and get to compare when kids return sharing, but I only compare science/math - “my” subjects.) A student looking for a deeper level would not be disappointed. Someone looking for “easy” could be.</p>
<p>For students who want to study the brain, having an undergrad option to do it fits well.</p>
<p>if he is at ua already, could look into a transfer to UAB (birmingham), which has a neuroscience program, and certainly has incredible research opportunities.</p>
<p>Neuroscience BS, PhD here with 20 years in the field at multiple different institutions of various types. </p>
<p>Whether one should transfer depends the happiness of the student. Certainly, one can get into a Neuroscience PhD program without an undergrad neuroscience degree. Majoring in it is absolutely not necessary for going on in the field at the graduate level, so it likely comes down to the satisfaction of the student. I was a neuroscience undergrad, but my significant other was in marine biology but ended up getting her PhD in neuroscience. I will say this, if a student spends his whole spring break looking for places to transfer, then seems to be telling because not many kids would do that, but you have make sure that such a thing would make sense on several different levels, including financial.</p>
<p>For grad school, beside GPA and GRE scores that get you to the admissions interview stage, you need to show interest in biological research with lab experience working on research projects. Admission committees generally want to see that you understand what you are getting yourself into (because working on a PhD includes soul crushing stretches for almost everyone), that you have a predilection for the field field and are motivated to become a scientist, and that you demonstrate an aptitude for science by understanding of the research projects that you were involved in beyond just performing instructed tasks or following a protocol. Grad departments invest a lot in their students, so they want, as much as is possible, to make sure that their admitted students are going to be successful (and trainees success can eventually impact a departments’ funding). Letters of rec are important in that they reinforce seriousness and promise of someone hoping to become a scientist, but the prestige of the name of the letter isn’t as important (although it can’t hurt, but few undergrads get letters from big wigs).</p>
<p>Certainly an applicant’s research would absolutely not have to be specifically neuroscience related. Most of the techniques used in other biological disciplines are used in neuroscience, and really, it is about understanding what it means to do science and what it means to spend (a lot of) time in a lab environment. It is more important than the classes that you take, to be honest. That said, looking at Alabama’s catalog, there are plenty of bioscience courses to be had. Now, they obviously aren’t going to be as interesting as neuroscience-focused ones this student, but things like Molecular Bio, Developmental Bio, Biochem, Immunology, Genetics, Endocrinology, animal behavior, Physiology, Abnormal Psych, Cognitive Psych, etc, are going to provide more than enough background to be successful in grad school. The bigger reason to transfer, if such a decision were made, would be the ease of obtaining immersive research opportunities, probably at a location where the school is conjoined to a major biomedical center complex (as was mentioned, a place like UAB). Summer programs are nice, but they typically don’t give you the opportunity to get involved in research projects to the level that occurs when one can devote consecutive semesters to a lab and thus really master bench techniques and delve deeper into a meaningful project. In an ideal goal for a student is to obtain some sort of authorship, at least on a poster presentation if not a journal article, and that almost never happens if one is only doing summer research programs. Authorships stick out to admission committees, and shows integral participation by that student in a lab’s work (Having an authorship…and for undergrads this usually means being a secondary author… isn’t necessarily required, and how important they are to an application depends on the caliber of grad school. Heck, some PhD programs don’t require authorships from their PhDs… hint hint, see the star of the Big Bang Theory…which I find near tragic).</p>
<p>There are some statements above that I completely disagree with. Major research universities, those with large research medical centers on campus, typically have plenty of opportunities for undergrads and it isn’t generally a competitive situation for undergrads to find places to do research unless there one is talking about a particularly popular lab. I’ve never known a lab to make a distinction between taking one student over another because one started as a freshman and another transferred in. That notion, in fact, is absolutely ridiculous in my experience. Nor do they really put weight on underclassman vs upperclassman, other than the payoff for training a student. I’d say most prefer the maturity of upperclassman. But it’s like anything else, you don’t want to invest time in training someone if they are going to leave in a semester, so ideally it would be a student that will be around for a year or ideally two. Now, obviously, each lab’s situation is different, some may already be crowded with people, but generally labs are looking for extra hands and they’ll typically put undergrads under the wings of their post-docs or grad students. It also depends how students approach the labs. There are formal programs where students are filtered into labs with the intent of immediately working on projects and those might be more competitive some places, and there are informal ways of approaching labs where a student might determine a few labs conducting work they are interested in and proceed to contact the PI in order to discuss the research and feel out any opportunities the lab may have to let them participate. Such participation may start off in the form of volunteering (which labs absolutely love) or they may start off as a work-study position…Obviously, you’re much more likely to link up with your lab of preference if you express genuine excitement in its work and are willing to volunteer including if that means doing menial tasks like making solutions. Demonstrating reliability and competence should lead to greater responsibilities. If you look at labs as just jobs or internship settings, instead of showing real interest in the work, yeah, labs may be less likely to find such a student a spot or may be more selective. At the undergrad level, it’s about getting the foot in the door, and frankly, that is pretty easy because undergrads are cheap labor. But this also assumes the faculty member running the lab is concerned about his lab personnel, and like every endeavor in life, there are some jerks.</p>
<p>Finally, the comment about undergrad neuroscience being gimmicky is true to some extent, because a lot of colleges have quickly added neuroscience majors due to the surge in the topic’s popularity. A lot of these majors are just cobbled together within psychology or biology departments and have little actual focus on neuroscience as a field. For instance, if the major is offered through a psych department, it is more likely to focus on psychobiology than general field of neuroscience. If a student is interested in neuroscience at the undergrad level, I recommend that they look for programs that offer plentiful courses specifically on neuroscience topics (like neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neurochemistry, neurodevelopment, etc, etc). You want to find a place where there are faculty that are themselves immersed in the field (members of the Society for Neuroscience, for instance), committed to teaching courses focused within the field, and most importantly, a place with a substantial number of faculty conducting research in the field (so there are undergrad research opportunities that match the interests of the student). One sign to look for is if the neuroscience major that does not fall under the purview of another department (as mentioned above). The next level up are neuroscience majors within semi-independent interdisciplinary programs that borrow faculty from other departments. For instance, they’ll have faculty in the biology department teach a neuroscience class, and that faculty probably already has a research interests with a neuroscience bent. But the gold standard, and there are a few of them, are self-sufficient full fledged neuroscience departments that offer an undergraduate neuroscience major. Departments have their own dedicated faculty and resources and would provide the most robust immersion into the field. But it is fairly ridiculous to condemn all undergrad neuroscience majors as unnecessary or something to be restricted to graduate study any more than it is to pronounce the same thing about any other biological sub-discipline. Most biological undergrad degrees pretty much put you on the path to graduate education because they are research fields that eventually demand higher degrees, and that is no different whether you major in neuroscience or microbiology. Neuroscience is an inherently fascinating course of study. Lord knows I wouldn’t have become a scientist if I had to major in biochem or immunology, so its worthiness to undergraduates that are interested in scientific careers is directly proportional to the motivation that the topic itself provides to those students; and if its popularity is any indication, that is substantial.</p>
<p>I agree with pretty much everything said above. (I was considering expressing some disagreements to what had previously been posted, but wgmcp101 did a nice job of refuting several of those specific points.)</p>
<p>Undergraduate major matters little when it comes to grad school admissions. The focus is on mastery of broad-based science (high grades, difficult classes, grad-level coursework) and exploration of the science world through independent research (summer, term-time, post-baccalaureate, technician work). A glowing letter of recommendation from a research mentor gets a lot of mileage.</p>
<p>I majored in Biochemistry as an undergrad…but I did a substantial amount of neuroscience research at the nearby medical school. It was easy to secure a lab position if a student showed initiative and enthusiasm. Term-time research received course credit (coded as thesis work), and my lab PI paid me for my summer work. I also received various competitive scholarships to supplement summer income. My undergrad institution provided an ideal environment for growing science talent (exceptionally strong academics + numerous research opportunities + smart peers), and I’m sure all of it looked good when members of grad admissions committees discussed my application.</p>