<p>Early this year I stumbled upon the symsys major at Stanford, which is basically cognitive science with a stronger CS emphasis. I’m fascinated by the intersection linguistics, CS, and philosophy; psych is tolerable; and I don’t much like bio. So, keeping in mind that I’m NOT looking for neuroscience, what LACs are strong in cogsci? Should I just look for LACs that have ling programs? (Which I’ve already done, and the results are depressing.)</p>
<p>You have found one of the downsides for LACs. By definition, they don’t do sub-specialties well bcos they don’t even exist at many schools. As you have found, linguistics, for example, is hard to find at a LAC – heck, not all Unis offer it either. CogSci is the same – a typically specialized (and graduate?) program offered at the Undergrad level by some Unis. LACs tend to steer interested kids into neuro, but that is bio heavy.</p>
<p>Yes, I wrote about the lack of subspecialties at LACs (though not in such words) in my Why Stanford essay. 
But I’m too much in love with the LAC teaching philosophy and intimate social community to give it up entirely. Consider “strong” to be relative, then; do any LACs come to mind? I’ve done individual research on the schools already on my list, but I want to see if I’m missing any hidden gem.</p>
<p>Sorry, can’t help with LACs. My D was in a similar position last year, and gave up looking, since academic variety was more important to her than a small college.</p>
<p>If you have the stats for Stanford, consider Dartmouth (or Wake Forest as a safety) – two small Unis that offer LAC-like academics. Dartmouth is strong in Ling, Comp Sci, Languages and Psych. Check out other smaller Unis, perhaps Tufts at ~5K undergrads?</p>
<p>^Thanks for the help. A small college is extremely important to me; even with symsys calling my name, it took a month before I could bring myself to apply to Stanford with its reputation in undergrad teaching.</p>
<p>EDIT: For future reference, Tufts and Wake Forest don’t offer cogsci, although my ling-interested friend tells me that Tufts “kind of” has a ling program. I’m not a fan of Dartmouth’s social experience but will investigate further.</p>
<p>Brown could be another good choice but it’s a bit hard to say what linguistics will look like because I’m pretty sure we’re currently doing faculty searchers for two or three linguistics folks.</p>
<p>Keilexandra, excuse me please for sounding like a scold, but you have over 3000 posts and it is now mid-December. You have not sorted this out yet? No LAC is going to give you all that Stanford has to offer in Linguistics and related areas that might interest you (Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing, CogSci, AI).</p>
<p>That said, there are strategies to mitigate the limitations of a LAC. One is to choose a consortium school. If you enrolled at one of the Happy Valley LACs - such as Smith or Hampshire - you could supplement your home school’s offerings with courses at UMass in Computer Science, Linguistics, etc. I would not expect the more specialized of these courses to have huge enrollments (but you may want to investigate by contacting professors).
Course Examples
[CS</a> 585: Introduction to Natural Language Processing](<a href=“http://www.cs.umass.edu/~dasmith/inlp2009/]CS”>CS 585: Introduction to Natural Language Processing).
[UMass</a> Amherst :: Linguistics Department :: Courses](<a href=“http://web.linguist.umass.edu/courses/detail.php?cid=128]UMass”>http://web.linguist.umass.edu/courses/detail.php?cid=128)
[UMass</a> Amherst :: Linguistics Department :: Courses](<a href=“http://web.linguist.umass.edu/courses/detail.php?cid=70]UMass”>http://web.linguist.umass.edu/courses/detail.php?cid=70)
Faculty
[Andrew</a> McCallum’s Home Page](<a href=“http://www.cs.umass.edu/~mccallum/]Andrew”>Andrew McCallum Homepage)
[David</a> A. Smith](<a href=“http://www.cs.umass.edu/~dasmith/]David”>David A. Smith)
Other Resources
[Knowledge</a> Discovery Laboratory](<a href=“http://kdl.cs.umass.edu/]Knowledge”>http://kdl.cs.umass.edu/)</p>
<p>You must have investigated the opportunities and limitations for Linguistics etc. at Smith (where you can do a Linguistics minor) and Hampshire (where you can do a Linguistics concentration). You must have checked out Swarthmore, too (and the feasibility of taking Ling/Lang/etc. courses at Penn). Verdicts? Did you follow stories that Middlebury was starting a Linguistics department?</p>
<p>Another strategy would be to pick a small to mid-size university with LAC-like qualities and an excellent Linguistics department. Such as the University of Chicago.</p>
<p>^Heh. Well, you might note the first three words of my OP–“early this year.” I only realized around October that I was interested in cognitive science.</p>
<p>Having never been much interested in Hampshire, I can’t say much about it; I’ll say that Smith’s linguistics minor requires many consortium courses, and the 5-College set-up is not walkable. I’ve “promoted” Pomona/Scripps on my personal list because the Claremonts do have decent ling and cogsci, and is a walkable consortium. Swarthmore remains one of my top choices–it offers almost everything that I want, on campus–but it’s hardly feasible to count on. Middlebury was never starting a “Linguistics department”; I followed up with multiple people and learned only that a) there are lots of ling-related courses among the foreign lang departments, b) the ling minor proposal hasn’t been shot down yet.</p>
<p>What other small Us with “LAC-like qualities” would you suggest, that haven’t been mentioned yet? What LACs do offer coherent cognitive science programs? (I’ve checked all the ones on my list already, but surely there are also LACs NOT on my list that offer cogsci.)</p>
<p>My intention was for this thread to be a general knowledge compilation on an obscure/specialized topic, not to devolve into “Keix’s personal college criteria,” which include a lot more than just cogsci.</p>
<p>Check out Brandeis.</p>
<p>[Language</a> and Linguistics Program | Brandeis University](<a href=“Linguistics and Computational Linguistics | Brandeis University”>Linguistics and Computational Linguistics | Brandeis University)</p>
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<p>In addition to Chicago (which is not all that small anymore at the undergraduate level, and has all those pesky “Core” requirements), Rice is the first that comes to my mind. It does have a Linguistics department and a Cognitive Sciences program:
[Rice</a> Cognitive Sciences Program](<a href=“Cognitive Sciences | Rice University”>Cognitive Sciences | Rice University)</p>
<p>Dartmouth, mentioned above, offers a Cognitive Science major and a Linguistics major. Wake Forest, also mentioned above, offers a Linguistics minor. Not sure either would appeal much to someone who finds Swarthmore attractive. Oh, and yes, Brandeis (also just mentioned).</p>
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<p>I don’t expect you to find any more that do not depend on consortium arrangements. It’s an interdisciplinary field. It’s researchy. The component sub-fields (including Linguistics and Computer Science) are not areas of traditional LAC strength. To support a strong program, you’d probably want a lot of federal grant money sloshing around or else a very big endowment. So if you have not already found what you want, I doubt it’s out there hiding in the tall grass of relatively obscure or less selective LACs.</p>
<p>Which is not to say you cannot find excellent preparation for graduate work in this area at a LAC, in addition to an overall fine undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>Have you looked into the PNP program (Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology) at WUSTL?
[PNP</a> at Washington University in St. Louis](<a href=“Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology | Washington University in St. Louis”>Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology | Washington University in St. Louis)</p>
<p>Personally, I’m routing for your admission to Swat.</p>
<p>Thanks for the references!</p>
<p>University of Rochester isn’t an LAC, but it’s a pretty cool school:</p>
<p>[Brain</a> & Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester](<a href=“http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/]Brain”>http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/)</p>
<p>Williams offers a concentration in Cognitive Science.
No linguisitics but good psychology, philosophy and CS.</p>
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<p>^Yeah, the previously mentioned ling friend is devastated about Williams not having linguistics. (There’s like one professor who might be leaving, IIRC.) She visited and loved it, but I think her OK-ness with majoring in anthro changes daily.</p>
<p>COGNITIVE SCIENCE SCHOOLS W/< 3000 UNDERGRADS</p>
<p>Carleton
George Fox
Hampshire
Occidental
Smith
UC Merced
U Evansville
Vassar</p>
<p>^What’s your list from, noimagination? I know for a fact that there are other LACs with cogsci majors, although I’ve no idea whether their programs are any good.</p>
<p>EDIT: I haven’t checked all of them, but Smith appears to offer only a 5-College certificate in cognitive neuroscience.</p>
<p>^ Those are the schools that told IPEDS they offered a cognitive science program. Some of them did not have graduates, so we might get a better picture by sorting them by the number of CogSci bachelors recipients last year:</p>
<p>Vassar - 12
Occidental - 5
Carleton - 4
Hampshire - 3
George Fox - 2
UC Merced - 2
<em>OTHERS</em> - 0</p>
<p>Ah. I suspect the picture may be confused by schools that have a Ling & Cogsci major with two tracks. Then there’s Macalester, which has a cogsci track within ling AND a cognitive neuroscience major.</p>
<p>I guess what I’m asking for is a semi-reliable way to find schools with cogsci programs without having to search each individual website manually.</p>
<p>With Linguistics, we could reach a certain consensus (approximately) about the set of subjects to be covered by a complete program. For Computer Science, there is actually an IEEE standard (or recommendation) that specifies a set of courses that should be included in an undergraduate degree. I wonder if that is the case with Cognitive Science, or if some schools are putting together a mix of courses and attaching the CogSci “program” label on them without it necessarily meaning quite the same thing from school to school? I dunno. Maybe the field is more stable and well defined than that.</p>