How difficult is Neuroscience as an undergraduate major?

Is an undergraduate degree in philosophy a good background for a MSc in neuroscience?

• Several university programs that offer an MSc in neuroscience consider applicants with philosophy degrees. At my university, there is no undergraduate degree in neuroscience (except a general science degree where you later specialise in neuroscience — I'm not interested in this). While I know that going into neuroscience with a philosophy degree isn't exactly the typical route, how would it be viewed when applying for an MSc in Neuroscience, provided I show I have a knowledge and interest in Neuroscience? Outside of that, while I know that philosophy is known as a good background for pretty much everything, is it a good background for neuroscience? I have a huge interest in philosophy and neuroscience, and studying philosophy has been a life-long dream.

• Answer:

  Absolutely. No matter what branch of philosophy you study, you're going to hone your ability to read critically, think logically, and write persuasively. These skills are rarely formally taught as part of a neuroscience degree, yet they're every bit as essential as technical knowledge to success in the field. If you focus on philosophy of mind, you will be at an even greater advantage. I took three philosophy courses as an undergrad (Consciousness, Emergence, and Aesthetics), and they have greatly enriched my understanding of the brain. Even though I'm not applying philosophical ideas on a daily basis, they help me situate my research within a broader framework. Most neuroscientists laugh at how "naive" Descartes was for thinking the mind and the brain were separate things, but he was grappling with issues on which neuroscience has currently made no headway. You also won't be missing much by foregoing a general science degree. The majority of the requirements for my undergraduate major were not at all useful for my current line of research. My coursework in chemistry and physics, while certainly interesting, isn't applicable to my studies in the field of systems neuroscience. And all the neuroscience material was covered again in graduate school. I'm glad I learned it when I did, but it wasn't necessary in the end. If you do decide to major in philosophy, there are two things you'll need to go out of your way for: Do some hands-on neuroscience research, preferably in multiple labs. It's impossible to understand what real lab work is like just by reading papers. And it's not trivial to find an area of neuroscience that allows you to ask fulfilling questions without getting demoralized by the process of obtaining satisfying answers. Since research assistants are usually assessed in terms of their motivation rather than their quantitative skills, your philosophy background won't put you at a disadvantage. Expose yourself to programming as early as possible. No matter what subfield you end up in, being handy with computers is essential. Force yourself to become fluent in either Matlab or Python by the time you graduate. Good off-the-shelf tools for data analysis are extremely rare, so learning to program now will give you a running start when you enter grad school. If you do both of these things, admissions committees will not be able to question your quantitative abilities. Prior research experience (especially if it resulted in publication, or you took the lead on your project) is looked upon extremely favorably.