What degree is best for preparing to go into Neuroscience?

What are the (most) recommended courses to take in college for someone who aims to go to grad school in neuroscience?

• I know that it's highly dependent on the branch of neuroscience that one wants to enter, say computational neuroscience or developmental. My college does not offer a neuroscience degree and only has 1 to 2 neurobiology classes (that are meant for juniors and seniors only). I Also, as a side question, would I need to take loads of math/stats/engineering/programming modules?

• Answer:

  I'm most familiar with computational neuroscience (though most of these would be helpful even to those who don't study computational neuroscience). Digital Signal Processing (if you can find a way to take it) Calculus/Differential Equations/Linear Algebra/Multivariable Calculus/Partial Differential Equations Programming courses that are heavy on Matlab (e.g. scientific computing courses) Calculus-based Statistics. Try courses in regression analysis and time-series analysis if you can. Applied Math courses (especially dynamical systems) Neurophysiology (also, find courses that are heavy in biophysics) Machine Learning Cognitive Psychology (also, try upper-division/graduate level psychology courses if you can). But it's not difficult to self-study if you go down a different route. Molecular Cellular Biology (not too difficult to pick up as you do research) (if you're more into wet-lab neuroscience, you can simply major in neurobiology or psychology and take the same courses as the other students). By and large, there is a very wide range of backgrounds among neuroscience students, and I don't think the majority of neuroscientists have taken most of the courses I've listed above (asides from having a basic math/statistics background) [1] - many of these courses aren't even offered at many universities. At the University of Washington, it would be impossible for a neuroscience student to take the full range of courses that I'd advocate because many of these courses are scattered across different departments and restricted to in-majors only. Furthermore, many professors are not liberal about allowing students to add-code in. You can also use Coursera to fill in gaps. Coursera has courses in medical neuroscience (where you can learn neuroanatomy), computational neuroscience, Drugs & the Brain, Systems Biology, Machine Learning, Statistical Analysis of fMRI data (simple), and many others. [1] But you can do better than them! :) The wonderful thing about fast-moving fields like neuroscience is that you have access to so many resources that your professors didn't have access to when they were your age.