Any insight into Pomona neuroscience?

knr802
Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:30:24 +0000

I’m a current senior Neuroscience major so I’ll try to answer what I can!

First of all… the neuro professors are AMAZING. Maybe with the exception of one or two, they are the most laid back, interesting, and engaging professors that I’ve had in my academic experience (especially in the sciences). They also are all usually very good about finding their students research positions in their labs (then again, I think most professors in the sciences at Pomona are pretty good at this). I’ve been working in one of their labs since my sophomore year summer and I’m pretty sure almost all of this year’s neuro majors have had similar experiences.

All of that being said… I can’t comment too much on the curriculum that you would experience. Just this year (and I believe officially beginning this semester), neuroscience is becoming a department instead of a program. This means that neuroscience will have its own chair, its own professors, its own curriculum, and many more classes and opportunities. Previously all of the professors had to split their duties between teaching “neuro” classes and teaching other chemistry, bio, psych, etc classes. So… the real “neuroscience” curriculum is just starting to form.

I’ve been incredibly happy with the neuro classes I’ve taken at Pomona, though. Also - there are some brilliant neuro professors at the other 5C’s that you should try to take classes with if you can as well. They’re really a tight-nit group of Professor which really makes the experience for the students that much better. I have my issues with Pomona, but the neuroscience program is something about Pomona that I will absolutely rave about.

The only negative about the neuro program that I’ve experienced is that you really don’t get to start taking neuroscience classes until your junior year. The way it was set up for me (which I believe has already changed), was that we had to pretty much take two years of intro chem, bio, and psychology classes before taking any neuro classes. Then again, I was also slower to get to the neuro classes since I’m a premed (Premed students unfortunately often don’t have time to take a lot of classes since they’re filling other requirements at the same time). And again, this is all changing now!

I hope that helped!