<p>For a long time I thought I wanted to major in Neuroscience so I was spending time looking up where good schools are for that, but recently I found out that what I really wanted to study was cognitive science because its less biological and focuses more on thought and intelligence, or at least thats what I've been told. So what I'm wondering is where the best places to go for cognitive science are.
Thanks!</p>
<p>MIT and Brown have good programs.</p>
<p>[MIT</a> : Brain and Cognitive Sciences : Academics : Undergraduate program](<a href=“http://bcs.mit.edu/academics/undergrad.html]MIT”>http://bcs.mit.edu/academics/undergrad.html)</p>
<p>[Cognitive</a> Science | Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences (CLPS)](<a href=“Integrating the Study of Mind, Brain, Behavior, and Language | Cognitive Linguistic & Psychological Sciences | Brown University”>Integrating the Study of Mind, Brain, Behavior, and Language | Cognitive Linguistic & Psychological Sciences | Brown University)</p>
<p>[Cognitive</a> Neuroscience | Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences (CLPS)](<a href=“Integrating the Study of Mind, Brain, Behavior, and Language | Cognitive Linguistic & Psychological Sciences | Brown University”>Integrating the Study of Mind, Brain, Behavior, and Language | Cognitive Linguistic & Psychological Sciences | Brown University)</p>
<p>University of Virginia. Offers both cognitive science and neuroscience, as well as allowing you to create your own interdisciplinary major. Gives you a lot of options on what you want to do.</p>
<p>do you know of any liberal arts colleges that have strong programs?</p>
<p>Williams offers it as a major. Swarthmore only offers a minor. I’m not all that familiar with LACs however. If I had to guess, I’d suggest Harvey Mudd and Oberlin maybe.</p>
<p>Cogsci is still a budding field in terms of its establishment at colleges. The paradigm that cogsci operates under (the cognitive one) is quite prevalent now and is easily the dominant philosophy in linguistics, psychology, AI, neuroscience, etc. But because it’s an interdisciplinary field formed by more traditional disciplines, it tends to have difficulty establishing itself as a stand-alone department, and is often relegated to ‘program’ status, or a minor or certificate.</p>
<p>Regardless, there are some schools who have concentrated the efforts of the constituent areas of cogsci into a defined focus/effort for the study of cogsci. IMO the school that dominates most others in cogsci is Stanford - which comes out #1 in cognitive psychology, #1 neuroscience, top 3 for AI, #2-3 in linguistics (with a cognitive focus). Within the area of cognitive science, it has tons of faculty, facilities, departments, programs, centers, institutes, library holdings, etc. It also offers a cognitive science PhD, and for bachelor’s and master’s, it has instead what it calls [Symbolic</a> Systems](<a href=“http://symsys.stanford.edu%5DSymbolic”>http://symsys.stanford.edu), which is its equivalent of cogsci but focuses more on the computer science aspects of the field and requires extensive course work across CS, math, statistics, logic, linguistics, and psychology. The symbolic systems program also requires students to have a concentration and has defined concentrations for neuroscience, artificial intelligence, applied logic, etc.</p>
<p>Other excellent schools in cogsci: MIT, Johns Hopkins, Brown, UPenn, Berkeley, U Rochester, Carnegie Mellon, UC San Diego, UCLA, Columbia, WashU, Indiana U</p>
<p>As for LACs, it’s harder to say - there’s less research that goes on at them, and often they don’t have departments or programs for all the constituent areas of cogsci (like linguistics or neuroscience). Even when they do, they often don’t have the cognitive focus (so they’ll have a psych department but have little offerings in cognitive psychology). On top of that, even if they do have the constituent departments, interdisciplinary majors like cogsci are more of a luxury for schools: once they have all the basic departments, cogsci and the like come next. Unfortunately, because LACs are so small, they tend not to have many of the more established disciplines, much less the more obscure ones (though cogsci isn’t obscure anymore at universities, it is still obscure at LACs). I do remember that Swarthmore is excellent in cogsci, even though it doesn’t have a major for it.</p>
<p>Use collegeboard to narrow down schools by the cognitive science major - using small/medium private 4-year colleges as criteria brings up several schools that offer cogsci as a major: Pomona College, Vassar College, Occidental College, Hampshire College, and a few others. But remember that even if a school doesn’t have an explicit major for cogsci, it can still have very strong offerings in the field.</p>