<p>My D “discovered” neuroscience while taking a required intro to Psych course at Barnard. Prior to this epiphany, she had been rejoicing that she did not have to have any more math and she was looking for the “least science-ey” science she could find (Psych). Then, lo and behold, she feel literally in love with all things to do with the brain. She declared her major in neuroscience and proceeded to take EXTRA science classes as well as math. </p>
<p>She is currently working on her PhD and is just as happy as can be. AND we discovered along the way that acceptance into a good Neuroscience PhD program means full tuition and a generous stipend for the duration of the program (5-6 years). That does not hurt!</p>
<p>So, yes, having a neuroscience major with real, meaningful lab experiences (meaning you have faculty who are doing the research) helps a lot with admission into these PhD programs. And it’s a fascinating and expanding field of study.</p>
They live in a state without any public universities?</p>
<p>Sorry to be facetious, but I think your friends are getting manipulated somewhat. They need to tell their kid that they can afford X for college. If their EFC is more than the cost of their in-state public, then I would put the blame on the parents for not saving – a high EFC family ought to be able to put together enough between savings, current earnings, and student loans to pay for a pubic university. And if the problem is that they have, indeed, told the daughter that they will provide support but do not have the funds for a private college …and daughter is insisting that she needs X major which is of course being offered at pricey private schools where she is not likely to get merit aid… well, then this family is being played. The issue isn’t the majors that are offered, the issue is money. </p>
<p>(I’d point out that it doesn’t take long with an internet search to find that these majors are also offered at some public university and lower ranked privates, presumably where a high stat kid is likely to get more in the way of merit aid – of course, that doesn’t mean that their departments are particularly strong. But any public university is going to offer courses in biology, chemistry & psychology - which are the building blocks of a neuroscience major. The kid could look up the requirements for the major at Prestige U… then take the intro courses at Public U, with the idea of possibly transferring later on if she still felt the undergrad major was needed and she needed more than what Public U offered. )</p>
<p>Real Estate management; E-commerce; Sports management… you can track the booms and bubbles of the last three recessions based on the things that sounded cool to an 18 year old that turned out to be busts by the time that kid graduated. I meet these people all the time in interviews for middle management positions and they spend waaaay too much time explaining why they didn’t get a good old fashioned degree in Urban Planning or Comp Sci or English literature.</p>
<p>I would be leery of a new-fangled major which cobbles together the weakest elements of a stronger program in order to be interdisciplinary. You can study “the history of the sweater” in a rigorous manner if you’re required to learn about the chemistry of dyes or issues in land management/wool production, plus the sociology of apparel, the history of out-of-home consumption and production, etc. But many of these non-departmental programs at some schools take the “lowest common denominator” approach to learning- weak pre-req’s, weak faculty, watered down course content, and minimal standards to ensure that all the students in the program get through. If it were my nickel, I’d want to make sure that in addition to getting a diploma in the end, my kid has also demonstrated some facility in a body of knowledge that is both rigorous and meaningful in academic terms.</p>
<p>Having a business degree which has covered accounting, marketing, operations research, statistics, technology management, organizational behavior, etc. sounds to me like much better preparation for a solid career in the sports/entertainment industry than a major which focuses on… well, the stuff these majors focus on. Which is the easy part of a business degree, the easy part of a psychology degree, a course on “business law” and the easy part of a “general studies” program.</p>
<p>My son stumbled into IR in the process of looking at colleges. It seemed like a great way to combine his interests. Since at his college it requires seven semester or fluency in a foreign language I figure he should be good for something at the end of it. (He’s taking Arabic as the language.)</p>
<p>In answer to the tongue in cheek question re: game design majors: “I wonder what these skills are.”</p>
<p>In addition to programming, they include concepts and methods of usability assessment, current business models in games and interactive media, methods for pitching and getting products funded, copyright an intellectual property, 3-D game development, story and character progression, emergent game-play, comprehensive game mechanics, artificial intelligence, custom-made physical interfaces, various technologies and techniques involved in software/hardware integration; and peripheral design-just to name a few.</p>
<p>:) My s is an interactive media major at the USC film school which is not focused on art or compsci, but is focused on teaching the design side of this business. The billion dollar entertainment industry needs educated creative talent to dream up the next generations of iPhone, game console and PC apps or all those the programmers would sit there without anything to program. Some may smile, but designing and building software is not the same as playing with it late into the night. LOL. The interactive field is also responsible for creating “serious” games. My s did research funded by Sesame Street to create Kinnect based literacy games designed to be played by siblings–encouraging older sibs to play with younger ones while both learn at their own level. The opportunities and applications are really endless–for instance he also designed a breathing rehab games for post-op use in hospitals. In the past month, recruiters from Microsoft, Disney Online, Time Warner and many more. Of course, maybe it is easier for me to understand the work behind the scenes because I have been a writer for many years–and worked for years as staff answers & questions writer for “Jeopardy!” Not your standard occupation, agreed. So we’re pretty used to creative and open to the new roads.</p>
<p>In the other majors mentioned, I find nothing wrong with any of them. It is certainly possible to take the same sort of courses on one’s own that would comprise a neuroscience major or IR major, but a college that has made the effort to add these sorts of majors, gives value to these interdisciplinary studies. Attending these universities would mean a student will find others who have the same interest and will follow the same path–a great way to find friends with a lot in common. </p>
<p>To my open-minded way of thinking, the majors mentioned are valid to the gifted student to whom these areas are meaningful. Not every sports management major will go on to run an NFL team, but neither will every Anthropology major land a job in his field right out of undergrad.</p>
<p>My husband works in pro sports. His degrees are in economics and statistics. His boss once told me that if he had the chance to do over his education, he would have majored in finance. It is the most helpful degree, he said, when it comes to management because those skills are used so often – in everything from salaries to budgeting to ordering food to working in marketing.</p>
<p>DD completed a bachelors degree with dual majors in bioengineering and biology. She has NEVER intended to go to medical school. She liked engineering and the idea of tying her interest in biology into it made sense. Thus the double major.</p>
<p>My S was in search of a college that emphasized interdisciplinary study in the sciences, as he felt this is where the “cutting edge” of discoveries are being made these days. He found that Northwestern U (where he’s currently a freshman) has the Integrated Science Program. Interestingly, this is not a new program. NU’s had this program for about 30 years.</p>
<p>I was hoping that madbean would jump on the game design question. </p>
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<p>Agreed. Of course, it’s entirely possible to have a rigorous interdisciplinary program, much like a prepackaged double major, or a pre-selected concentration in a more traditional major. The thread title majors could be Biology, Finance, Computer Science or Political Science, each with an appropriate concentration. When the concentrations become specialized enough, or develop enough of an independent curriculum, it’s a kind of academic evolution in action to spin off into its own major or department.</p>
<p>Gotta say…times are changing. Some of these majors didn’t even EXIST years ago. Gaming? This has become HUGE business in the last 20 years. This didn’t exist when I went to college. Ditto some majors associated with computers. The technology and focus of some courses of study have changed. In the past, mechanical engineers, for example, might have dealt with the design and research for durable medical equipment. Now there is a more precise major…biomedical engineering. I don’t see what is wrong with majoring in one of these disciplines if that is what interests you.</p>
<p>The Integrated Science Program at Northwestern (ref. post 30) is quite rigorous. Per S, the McCormick engineering students don’t feel the regular Weinberg science majors work as hard as they do, but they definitely give a tip of the hat to the ISP students. Most of the students who make it through an ISP major also double major in another science. Almost all of them go on to grad or professional school. A major research project is a given. The ISP students are advised, when inquiring about a reserach area, to include in the email subject line: “ISP Student Interesting in XXXX” as this will get a professor’s quick attention.</p>
<p>D is involved in research related to alzheimers and memory which is being run by the head of the neuroscience concentration in biology in conjunction with the psych department. You can’t get into this project if you aren’t a neuroscience major or a bio grad student. </p>
<p>Next year, though, she hopes to get involved in the project related to the neurological causes of anxiety and depression. </p>
<p>Again, a biological neuroscience project in conjunction with the psych department.</p>
<p>I think this is a good point. Schools are offering biomed engineering, but the more I read, the more it is apparent the industry prefers a more general undergrad and specialization at the graduate level. Sure schools offer biomed at the undergrad, but its been driving by student’s interests, not necessarily the markets.</p>
<p>I think that is a fundamental problem, especially in professional schools: offering degrees that students like, to appeal to the consumer, sound good on paper, attract great students…when a more general degree might actually be as good, or even better for overall educational and career goals.</p>
<p>My nephew is majoring in Game Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. It’s a very demanding, technical program, both more focused and more interdisciplinary than the general undergraduate computer science major that my son is doing (S is more interested in computer security). I don’t think Game Design would be a good choice for some slacker who just wanted to play a lot of Halo. There seem to be tons of internship and job opportunities–the skills developed in a Game Design degree are also increasingly used to design all sorts of simulators, like those used to train pilots, drivers, surgeons, etc.</p>
<p>Some universities like MIT have had a separate neuroscience department for over 20 years, completely distinct from the biology department. It is one of the fastest growing majors at the school. The field has been growing so fast it is getting full department status at an increasing number of institutions. </p>
<p>The latest trend is the spinning off of biological engineering from other engineering disciplines. Unlike biomedical engineering which is not really a separate discipline as much as the application of any engineering discipline (mechanical, electrical, materials science) to medicine, biological engineering is truly a new discipline fusing molecular biology and engineering just as chemical engineering fuses chemistry ad engineering. </p>
<p>The rapid growth of these new disciplines has little to do with pleasing undergraduates with fancy new majors and everything to do with meeting the demands of science and industry.</p>
<p>Cellar, nobody is disputing your comment- the issue is, can an undergraduate find happiness and a challenging curriculum at a school without a separate neuroscience department if the ultimate goal is med school. I’d be hard pressed to find a research university which could not prepare a kid for med school even if the “neuroscience major” was non-existent.</p>
<p>For a PhD candidate or for a $100 million research grant or for Pfizer’s R&D lab- yes, the actual discipline matters. For a 17 year old kid who claims he or she can’t attend the state flagship- not so much.</p>
<p>And I doubt that industry is pressing for more graduates of “sports management” programs. YMMV.</p>
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