How do Grad schools view Custom Majors?

Graduate School
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<p>APOLOGIES FOR LONG POST</p>

<p>This might be a dumb question, but my school (top 100 small research school) allows me to make my own major (as I’m sure a lot of schools do) by having 2 advisers from the majors you’re pulling from. This allows students to customize what they want to do. I never considered it before that it might be a hindrance so I wanted to discuss with you guys before hand since my adviser keeps telling me it’s okay (but…I dont trust here)</p>

<p>Anyway…I want to go into research regarding neurodegenerative disorders. I’m not going to list every class I have but i have:</p>

<p>Animal Behavior, Experimental Psychology, Stats 3, Molecular Biology, Cell Bio, Inorganic (1 yr), Physiological Psychology, Advanced Behavior Pathology, Neurospsychopharmacology, Abnormal psychology, Sensory and Perception, An ethics Writing course in science (A MARC class) Ecology, and Independent Research Project or Independent Reading in Psychology. Along with the genetic psychology courses and bio courses.</p>

<p>This prevented me from having to take classes like…‘psychology in culture’, ‘laughter’ and other annoying courses I didn’t see myself using. Not only that, but it allowed me:</p>

<p>Three 30 page independent research papers
A lab in a neurodegenerative lab for 2 years
1 summer internship in a neuroscience lab
1 Capstone project and presentation </p>

<p>So will grad schools frown upon this? I should also explain my major is about 79 credits…the break down is:
40% Psychology [32 credits]
46% Life science [36 credits]
14% Special Core classes [11 credits]</p>

<p>I just dont want the lack of ‘generally seen psychology/bio’ classes to be a determent. </p>

<p>Thanks. Sorry if this seems pointless…but I wanted to know if i should panic and change my major or something with 1 year left…or take a second year and do something else.</p>

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<p>It’s the classes that you take that will matter, not the name of the major.</p>

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<p>^ What polarscribe said.</p>

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<p>How rigorous are those courses?</p>

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<p>Thanks you guys, that helps.</p>

<p>@catria: what do you mean? I mean…if you were a typical psych major or a bio major at my school you’d take these courses in your normal degree. I just simply picked the courses I thought were important for the path I wanted to take for my career. If you were a bio major taking the BS track, you would Take Cell Bio. if you were a psych major you’d take Experimental. They aren’t taught by different professors just because my major is different, I was still in classes with Biology seniors for my 400 level courses, and psych seniors for my psych 400 courses.</p>

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<p>I did this at my undergrad and before I switched I talked with a very trusted advisor and he basically said if a grad school doesn’t accept your degree the way you have planned it and made it then they are not open minded and you don’t want to go to a close minded grad school. Made good sense to me.</p>