It would be a dream to become a psychiatrist as I am very interested in the human mind, human behavior, and the biological circumstances that causes certain behavior and mentality, but since I am a realist and don’t exactly want to be depressed for the majority of my life in organic chemistry or in medical school, I thought cognitive science would be a more suitable alternative.
However, I need to break it to my parents that I am switching majors (I am currently a Nursing major). and I need to make sure I have a life plan before I tell my parents that I am switching to this major so that they may feel more secure about my future and less disappointed in me lol.
Furthermore, questions that I need to be answered are
which jobs can I definitely get with a cognitive science undergrad major
where should I apply for grad school
3.what jobs can I get with this masters degree.
4.should I even become a cognitive science major/is it a risky major/do they not offer many jobs
5.should i minor in something along with this major
6.I was thinking marketing, mostly because I am very interested in neuromarketing
How about starting with this: I realized that I don’t want to be a nurse.
CogSci can lead to grad school, or to employment straight out of college. You don’t need a life plan just yet. Pop by the career center at your campus and talk with the folks there about internship opportunities that would let you explore all of your options.
I think you’re going about this backwards. What do you want out of your undergrad? What do you want to do after undergrad? Then choose your major based on what will get you there. If you want to be a psychiatrist, you’ll have to go to med school.
My son is a Cognitive Science major and he has found it very interesting and useful. He’s applying for law school.
^I don’t necessarily think you need to choose your major based on what you want to do after college. You may not know yet. It’s normal for students not to know yet, and also normal for them to change their mind. If they do know, that’s awesome, but if they don’t know they’ll need to choose a major using some other kind of criteria.
I agree that you don’t need a “life plan” to switch your major. Most life plans go sideways anyway, since you can’t predict how you will feel or what you will want very accurately 5-7 years from now. But there are lots of things you can do with a major in cognitive science. I work in technology with a bunch of cognitive psychologists & cognitive scientists; some of us use cognitive science/psychology to understand how the brain perceives and interacts with technology (human-computer interaction, user experience research/design, ergonomics, engineering psychology). Some do work in natural language processing and artificial intelligence - especially if you learn how to code, maybe minor in CS. You could also work in marketing/market research, social science research at a variety of companies, (program) management, consulting…there are so many things you can do.
Lots of jobs! In fact many jobs don’t even require a specific major.
Don’t put the cart before the horse. You may not need to go to grad school at all. If you do, you can decide where to go when the time comes.
See #2
If you are interested in it, then yes, you should.
Maybe. Depends on your interests. Computer science and statistics are good majors to pair with it.
So this is very dated information, as I received my UG degree in 1990. I wanted to be a cognitive science major, but back then my Alma Matter did not have one. So I cobbled one together out of linguistics, psychology, computer science, anthropology and philosophy (not necessarily in that order). Here’s what I could do with it (keeping in mind this was the 90’s.)
–Get a job with a major internet provider (back before the Internet was ubiquitous) as a troubleshooter for large accounts such as NASA, the CIA, and foreign countries.
– Work as a national park interpretive ranger
– Teach English as a second language both abroad and in the US.
– Get interest (but no enticing job offers that wouldn’t require me moving, which was a deal breaker) from various tech start-ups (all went under in short order, so I dodged a bullet there.)
– Get into a top linguistics doctoral program with funding
–Get into a top cognitive psychology doctoral program with funding
– Job offers at an Ivy University to work in various research labs, most involving computational linguistics.
–Strong interest to work for various standardized testing companies, such as ETS
Note I am pretty sure I could have gotten into a computer science doctoral program back then as well, but times have changed.
@ralphwaldocaesar I’m guessing you’re addressing me. If you want to PM me with any questions, I’ll pass them along to my son. I’m sure he’d be happy to answer, but it will take until at least the weekend as he has exams this week.