Hi guys,
I’ve been thinking about majoring in Neuroscience for undergrad and hope to go to grad school after that. I have been researching schools with good neuro programs and have been looking at USC, Brown, Penn, JHU, MIT, and some others. Does anyone know whether any of these (or other) undergrad neuro programs are particularly good for someone wanting to go into grad school after? I have seen posts about some being more oriented towards pre-med. Also, if you have any programs I didn’t mention that are good please comment those!
Just some info about me for context:
I have a 35 ACT that can be superscored to a 36, a 4.0 GPA unweighted, and some
lab experience. My courseload is close to as hard as my school offers and i’d say my EC’s are average.
Those schools you listed are highly regarded in neuroscience research and if you do well in any you will be able to attend a good grad school upon graduation. The premed portion of the curriculum is mostly lower level classes that are designed to weed out premed hopefuls, it has little to do with someone interested in research.
All of those schools you listed are reaches. You’ll need to find some matches and safeties.
The reality is you don’t have to go to a school with a Neuroscience specialty at the undergraduate level. My D plans to go into Neuroscience as well and her search concentrated on finding schools that will help her be successful at the graduate level, i.e. prepare her the best for obtaining her PhD.
She’ll be attending Princeton which does have a Neuroscience concentration but the main thing she likes is that everyone does research and completes a Senior Thesis. Her other top choices were UChicago and MIT (was not admitted).
As far as safeties and matches she really liked Pitt. It has Neuroscience and offers a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in which you have to write a thesis and defend it against a committee from other colleges. Since they have rolling admissions she applied early and found out she was in in September and had gotten a full tuition scholarship by November. For this reason she didn’t apply to a couple of other schools because she liked Pitt better. One of those was Case Western. They offer merit and you can probably get your COA down to 35K or so with your stats. She was also accepted at Fordham-Lincoln Center. They have an Integrated Neuro program. She was also attracted to NYC.
Are you female? Smith and Mt Holyoke are Women’s college part of the 5 College Consortium that have Neuroscience programs. Being LACs they offer certain advantages and being Women’s colleges they also have other advantages.
The first thing is to determine your budget. I can give you a lot more suggestions but your budget needs to drive the process.
Amherst has the oldest neuroscience program in the country.