Neuroscience Major: Questions for current students or knowledgeable individual

wgmcp101
Sun, 02 Jan 2011 22:26:04 +0000

Neuroscience is a difficult major, but a typical honors college student should have no trouble achieving a high 3.x.

One undergraduate program of the CNBC (whose website is [here](http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/)) is the Computational Neuroscience program (see [here[/url] and [url=http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/upnc/]here](http://www.neuroscience.pitt.edu/programs/undergraduate/ComputationalNeursocience.php)).

As far as getting involved in research being done there, one would only need to contact the faculty involved (listed on the websites). Look for faculty you might be interested in working with, and just send them an email introducing yourself and your interest in their work, and any possibility to learn more or get involved in their lab. So, you can be super proactive with this, and even do it before you get there. However, there will be mechanisms set up within the Honors College and Department of Neuroscience to help guide you into labs as well. It depends how quickly and how much you want to get involved in undergrad research.

What people are like? I think you’ll find a range. Pre-med types, and also many that are interested in it for the research/science aspect. It is a popular major. I will tell you, for at least one previous version of the intro neuroscience class, they essentially forced you to work and study together. In fact, the professor (Wood) flat came out and said the first day that you need to find study groups, and he was right. In general, I don’t think you find the typical Pitt student to be cut throat.

Honors college classes are more in depth, so it depends on how you weigh the interest of their topics for you vs risking your GPA. If in doubt, wait until you’ve gotten some experience with the rigors of college there so you have a better feel for the classes and class loads that you can better handle. They don’t force you to take honors college classes, though you need to have some in order to get the BPhil. So, I actually wouldn’t worry about that at this point.