Comparision between UVA Neuroscience and VATech Neuro Science

ColdWombat
Wed, 17 Aug 2022 01:04:41 +0000

I’m a neuroscience professor so I want to offer some additional advice based on my perspective.

DadTwoGirls:

My understanding is that a graduate degree is likely to be useful for a career in neuroscience.

This is absolutely true. In fact, if you truly want a career in neuroscience, you should to plan on doing a PhD. Neuro majors are kind of a trendy new thing, but the job market is pretty bad without a graduate degree.

DadTwoGirls:

Attending a very good university such as UVA or VA tech is likely to set you up very well for a very good graduate program.

You should be able to get into a high quality neuroscience PhD program regardless of which college you attend. The most important things are to learn a lot in your classes and get good grades, and ideally do some undergraduate research. You should also think carefully during this time about if you even like doing research (don’t do the PhD if you dislike research). This can absolutely be done at smaller schools. But one advantage of a larger school is that you’ll get to see what grad school is like if you work with grad students on research.

DadTwoGirls:

If you can do it, then avoiding debt for your bachelor’s and if possible saving a bit of college money for your master’s would be a good idea.

The good news is that neuroscience PhD programs are all fully funded: you get free tuition and a pretty good stipend. (If that’s not the case for a program then don’t do it). Master’s degrees in neuroscience have fallen out of favor and should only be pursued in very special circumstances. They are NOT usually funded, which is another reason to avoid them.