I am mentoring a lovely hard working well educated intelligent woman who is majoring in neuroscience. Not familiar with the specific job opportunities or how she would find them (LinkedIn?) appreciate any tips and feedback if internships are important.
https://people.rit.edu/gtfsbi/Symp/Neuroscience.htm
This is a link to a site that my daughter used to apply for internships in neuroscience one summer.
She is currently graduated and working in a non neuroscience, sort of sciency job and deciding where she wants to go from here. When she thought she would continue in neuroscience she planned to apply to Phd programs but is probably not going to go that route now so I’m not much help with info about job opportunities for neuroscience majors.
Bookmarking - my kid wants to major in Neuroscience,
Kid is a neuroscience major. After graduation, she worked for 2 years for an NGO and pivoted into public health (got a Masters).
Good writing skills can help land jobs in regulatory affairs in biotech/pharma or medical writing.
Sadly, in science it’s often PhD or tech jobs. Mind you, some of these tech jobs require a lot of skill and can pay well. Another option to consider seriously is getting a science undergrad degree – then an MBA. My daughter (who did neuroscience as an undergrad and is now finishing up a PhD program in cancer biology) says a science background – and, preferably, some lab work experience to boost it – combined with an MBA opens a lot of opportunities in working for pharmaceutical research companies. And the pay can be impressive. She considered that route, but ultimately decided she wanted to be a lab rat rather than a bean counter. But she was tempted by some of those salaries she saw advertised…
There are many pharmaceutical/biotech entry level jobs a neuroscience undergrad can get, in a variety of functions: marketing, sales rep, sales training, regulatory affairs, clinical study program management. Entry level jobs do not generally require MBA or master’s degrees. Advanced degrees can help one progress, however you will find many employees that have been promoted based on hard work, rather than an advanced degree. An advanced degree is however required for many research (lab type) jobs in pharma/biotech.
Those above jobs sound available to many majors and not very science-y. Fascinating subject but popular and job skills may not be there, especially as sciences tend to need further degrees to do the interesting stuff. Plus I can see how some other science majors would be competition for the same jobs.
disclosure- chemistry major/physician here.
Those jobs can be competitive and certainly open to other majors, science or not. But science majors, especially those with good quant skills, can do well. Of course, one also has to be interested in doing those types of jobs. But if one studied neuroscience and wants to work at a company that develops and/or sells migraine drugs, for example, the opportunities are there.
Edited to add: securing internships for the last two summers of college can be instrumental in gaining experience, helping one understand what they want/don’t want to do and opening the door to post grad jobs.
“But if one studied neuroscience and wants to work at a company that develops and/or sells migraine drugs, for example, the opportunities are there” – well, they’re there, but they don’t pay terribly well, are usually located in expensive parts of the country (biotech is big in the NYC, SF area) and the competition for them is from students in MANY science fields, not just neuroscience. A pre-med student who decided to postpone/not apply to med school can be just as qualified, and there are A WHOLE LOT OF THEM!
^^^Yes, good jobs are competitive are in any industry. And many of these jobs pay well, with good advancement potential. Other pharma/biotech hotbeds are Boston, RTP, Chicago, San Diego, but I would not limit my search to those areas.
FWI my husband’s bio grad students who have PhDs, but aren’t going on in medicine have done (off the top of my head):
Worked in technical writing
Worked in the sales end of pharma
Gone on to be technicians
Gone to podiatry school
I always thought it would be fun to write artciles for Scientific American and the like, but I am sure those jobs are very hard to come by.
My son has 3 friends which graduated within the last 2 years with a Neuroscience BS.
One is attending Medical school.
One is a dog trainer.
One is working as a production assistant at a Brewery.
I just read an article about a woman who dropped out of med school to open a brewery…she loves the science behind brewing!
My D2 earned a Bachelor’s in Neuroscience. She originally planned to get a PhD in Neuroscience, but during her undergrad research she found that she enjoyed analyzing the data a lot more than working in the lab generating the data. So by her senior year she started taking additional computer and math classes with an idea of going into Biostatistics.
After graduation she looked into biostats grad programs and was accepted into all seven to which she applied. She picked Berkeley where she earned a Master’s in Biostatistics. She is now a biostatistician living in DC and loving her work.
I think Scipio is making a great point. If a student does internships or does work during term time related to their field, they will figure out what they like and what they are good at.
See employment&education data for Neuroscience concentration at
https://www.brown.edu/about/administration/institutional-research/surveys/undergraduate-alumni-outcomes
choose “Employment & Education Data by Concentration” tab and then select “Neuroscience” under concentration.
The problem is neuroscience major is like biology major these days … so many of them. It is not a good terminal degree if there is no intention to do graduate study. JHU graduates hundreds of them per year, much more than biology related degrees. The explosion of the number of students in neuroscience happened within the last few (4-5?) years.
Yes for any decent job in the neuroscience field you’ll be competing against PHD’s and MD’s., which means you won’t be competitive.
One of my lads majored in Brain and Cognitive Science and he’s now in med school. His Plan B was research and he had several people/professors doing research trying to sway him in that direction, but he also had top grades at a research school and a bit of research there plus a paid research summer at another top school, so I’m not going to say that can easily work for everyone. It’s just a possibility if it works out.
Brother has a PhD in Neuroscience. He has had a very successful career in human performance research / consulting. Worked for a consulting firm that specialized in 24 hr shift industries (chemical plants, transportation, etc.) Opened his own consultancy. Has consulted with federal government on many projects in the transportation arena (safety issues, human fatigue, proper / optimal staffing, work environment / conditions). Has helped settle disputes between management and unions and has helped companies save many millions in human factoring issues.
Note that advanced degrees seem necessary to work directly, as a scientist, in the field. Otherwise it is just another biology degree. It is an education for oneself, not a job training one. I personally would have been bored stiff after a while doing the lab work available to one with only a bachelor’s degree in any science.