I’m not 100% on what I want to do in life, but I know neuroscience and linguistics are my two biggest interests…I might be more interested in the cognitive side of neuro, in which case I’ll instead major in cognitive neuroscience with a focus on linguistics. I’m also going to try and build up a background in comp sci.
So…what are my options in these cases? Especially if I can’t get into academia? I’m not worried about striking it rich—my goal is probably to make 50-60k a year.
Cognitive neuroscience is a pretty narrow major; it’s most often studied at the graduate level. More than likely you’ll major in general neuroscience in undergrad; you could maybe build an informal concentration in cognitive neuroscience with enough classes at the right university.
You can definitely make $50-60K with a neuroscience and linguistics major (particularly if you study it on the master’s level). If you are looking to stay within the field, there are some opportunities. My examples are going to be tech/biotech focused because that’s my field, but right now in tech there’s an explosion of interest in neuroscience (mostly through sensation and perception, both of which are cognitive neuro/psych areas) because of the advent of virtual and augmented reality (think Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear). There’s also interest in linguistics through natural language processing - think tech like Amazon Echo and Siri, as well as written search like Google and Bing. This will be especially true if you put a computational spin on things and/or learn to program. If you do get a PhD or MS, you can still go into research - either at a biotech or pharma company, at a private think tank, a government agency/lab (the DoD hires lots of brain researchers), or somewhere else. One of my coworkers in UX research has her PhD in neuroscience.
If you’re willing to go a little further afield you can still get a job. A colleague of mine has a BA in linguistics and she works with me at Microsoft in a role that has little to do with linguistics.
“You can definitely make $50-60K with a neuroscience and linguistics major (particularly if you study it on the master’s level).”
Really? How? I am not sure your friend with the dgree in linguistics who makes good money but is in a job unrelated to linguistics is a good example of how someone with a degree in linguistics could do well. I know a psych major who makes about 100K. She makes that money modeling and doing commercials but I don’t think that is an example of how psych majors can earn 100K. Usually psych majors make close to the bottom of the salary list for college grads. I’d expect the same for linguistics and neuroscience. You’d need at least a Ma if not a PhD to earn a reasonable living if you wanted to pursue something in that content area. Now naturally if you take a job that is mainly computer science or modeling you probably won’t need that Phd in linguistics. I don’t think Google, Bing or any of those companies would hire an appreciable number of grads with BAs or BSs in linguistics or neuroscience. A phD? Maybe.
For the salary, I meant after whatever graduate degree I have to get. Working on language processing and AI stuff might be pretty good options, considering I’m planning on doing quite a bit of computer science stuff during undergrad. The school I’m going to does offer a cognitive neuroscience major, and I was considering doing that because the subject matter is significantly more interesting to me than the course material for the straight neuroscience major (the latter is more focused on biology, which isn’t really what I want to focus on)…
I guess I’m just worried these degrees will leave me completely unmarketable. I wouldn’t be at all against academia, but that seems pretty much impossible these days, so I just need to make sure I have options.
From what I’m gathering from your posts, it sounds like cognitive science may be up your ally. Of course I’m not sure how widespread that major is either.
I don’t know much about psycholinguistics (which is what you described in your OP), but I’m a graduating senior double majoring in computer science and linguistics. My initial goal was to get into language processing, but I realized around junior year that I’ll probably need a graduate degree to do that. So I got a standard Silicon Valley developer job lined up to both get experience under my belt and start getting my loans paid off before I consider grad school.
Linguistics in and of itself isn’t particularly lucrative at the bachelor’s level. It’s pretty much your typical non-engineering/business/general vocational degree: It allows you to check the “I have a college degree” box when applying for jobs, but doesn’t prepare you for a specific career. So naturally, your prospects with a linguistics major will depend a lot on what you do in college, your connections, and your skills outside of linguistics. But that applies to pretty much any degree that doesn’t prepare you for a specific job.
I don’t have direct experience with neuroscience (besides a good friend doing that and going to med school), but I’m guessing it’s similar with regards to job prospects at the bachelor’s level.
And of course, once you throw graduate education in there it’s a different ballgame. But it’s also good to keep bachelor’s level job prospects in mind in case you don’t end up getting an MA/MS or PhD for whatever reason.
A lot of ways - depends on the career you enter. A neuroscience major could make that in pharmaceutical sales or the biotechnology industry; a linguistics major in tech, marketing, advertising, consulting. Particularly after working for a few years.
To be clear, I wasn’t referring to a recent graduate’s salary. Very few college grads make more than $50K directly after graduating, including finance, accounting, economics, physics, math, marketing, and chemistry majors. I was referring to a salary one might earn after a couple years in the workforce; there’s something about the OP’s construction that made me believe the OP was talking about salaries longer-term.
In case I’m wrong, OP, there are few places that pay recent college graduates more than $50K a year. The only majors that average more than $50K straight out of college are engineering majors, computer science, and nursing. So no, you are unlikely to make $50-60K straight after graduating college with a neuroscience or linguistics major - but you won’t make it with a math or physics major either, most likely.
…of course she is? because she has a degree in linguistics and is doing well? The question wasn’t whether “Can I go into linguistics, do something directly related to linguistics and make $50-60K a year?” (The answer is still “yes” but it’s qualified by “but you’ll probably need a graduate degree and those jobs are quite competitive.”) The question was simply whether one can major in neuroscience and/or linguistics and do well. The answer is yes, especially given OP said they wanted to build a strong background in computer science.
I think this goes back to something I say all the time, which is that people often have limited imaginations for what college graduates can do. If you have to have a job that is directly related to psychology - and you define psychology only as the provision of mental health services (which is only a small portion of psychology as a field) - then yes, you’re unlikely to make much money as a new/bachelor’s graduate. Actually, you’re likely to be unemployed because BA holders in psychology can’t provide mental health services. But if you got an MSW or an MS in mental health counseling? You can easily make $50-60K. I have a couple friends who do this.
Yes, exactly! Pretty much any major that’s not engineering or nursing or maybe business falls into this camp. If everyone majored in computer science we’d have beautiful code that sat on the shelf with no one to use it. (Or not, because there’d be no one to process payroll, and the salaries would be terrible because there’d be to many software developers. And also probably about 70% of those developers would have written terrible code because they really should’ve gone and been a teacher or a lawyer or a marketing manager instead.)