Title says it all.
My dream is to get into some kind of scientific research, possibly dealing with fields related to neuroscience or artificial intelligence. However, I wanted to pick a bachelor’s degree major that would be a useful thing to fall back on if my “dream of being a rock star” (so-to-speak) doesn’t work out.
I’m only a freshman and am still pondering which field I would like to pursue beyond my bachelor’s degree. Would computer science be relevant for a number of graduate majors, or does my bachelor’s major have to match what I choose in grad school?
Thanks.
A computer science major could be a useful background to most kinds of computational science, but you would need additional coursework to succeed in some areas.
For example, you could easily go into a PhD program in computer science or bioinformatics with just a CS BS. You say also be competitive for a cognitive science program, although you’d be more competitive if you took some classes in other areas of that field like psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, or anthropology. But if you wanted to do computational neuroscience or computational biology, you’d need some additional coursework in neuroscience (or biology and psychology) or biology to be competitive. And if you wanted to go to a straight neuroscience or biology program, you’d need the equivalent of a major to be the most competitive.