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MissPickwickian
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14 Jul 2010, 8:07 pm

I am going to college in a few weeks, and I want to major in neuroscience. Yes, I did choose that major myself - I love chemistry and psychology, and I want to do autism research once I've earned my degrees. I have some questions, though:

1. My school is known for kicking students' butts. What should I do to prepare for having this undoubtedly tough major? Requirements include lots of biology, psychology, and chemistry, while basic physics and calc are recommended. There is also a liberal arts core.
2. Where exactly can I go career-wise with it if I just get a BS? If I get a master's? A PhD? An MD? I have not found enough information about this on the internet because neuro is such a new major.

Thankee.


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astaut
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15 Jul 2010, 3:28 am

1. Taking the harder classes at junior college (during the summer) will make it easier, but your school will have it's own rules about that. They may not allow classes that are part of your major to be taken at another school (many schools don't). The only other thing I can think of is don't take so many hard classes at one time...take one fun class if you can. I start at a 4 year school so I don't know many tips yet :wink:

2. BS-I'm not sure of what you could do with a BS. Maybe some work in a lab.
MS/PHD-research, academia
MD-hmm not sure. Obviously you would go to med school and probably specialize, so I'm not sure how it would relate to neuroscience exactly. There are PhD's in medical neuroscience that focus on stuff like strokes, parkinsons, stuff like that. So you can do medical related without getting a MD. But neuroscience is a good undergrad if you want to go to medical school and become a psychiatrist or something.

Neuroscience is something I like a lot too, but also don't understand much about what careers there are available in it.
http://www.indiana.edu/~neurosci/


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ratonlaveur
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18 Jul 2010, 10:31 pm

I did cognitive neuroscience for my B.S. and a lot of people ended up doing computer stuff. I did research assistant work for a few years. Most everyone else ended up getting another degree, either a doctorate in a similar field and a few went to med school.



Awesomelyglorious
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23 Jul 2010, 8:08 pm

Well, my advice is, as it always is, shoot yourself now rather than suffering later.

As for advice, well... I don't think you can do very much with a BS in neuroscience, so you should think about either double-majoring or about grad school. This can be a PhD, or an MD, but Masters degrees usually are insufficient for many fields. (PhDs still might be a crapshoot)

Now, if you went for a degree in cognitive science, that would be a different matter, but that's psychology and computer science more than psychology and biochemistry, and computer science is a very useful degree/field.