Cognitive Science

I absolutely love Cognitive Science at USC. At first, I wasn't sure if I’d made the right decision, but looking back, it was easily the best choice I could have made. It’s a major that combines philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and many more, giving you incredible freedom to find out your own path.

During my first two years, I explored different areas and discovered a passion for AI, neural networks, consciousness, and logic. The psychological and philosophical concepts I learned about the mind and perception completely changed how I see the world. These concepts also strengthened my understanding of AI both technically and conceptually. By double majoring in Data Science and minoring in AI, I’m graduating with a strong conceptual foundation and a unique, deep perspective on the world that sets me apart in any debate or discussion.

Careerwise, it is something that you will need to figure out yourself unless you are persuing in academia or research.

I think cognitive science is a very broad major because it encompases psychology, coding, philosophy, etc. Because of this the fields that people can go into are a lot because of all the skills gained. You learn a lot about human cognition and the way humans think/ make decisions which is good for careers in UX or marketing.

A lot of freedom for your classes, you can take classes from psychology, linguistics, cs, and philosophy. It’s good if you have a plan for what you want to do in the future, since you might be too spread out across different subjects

My major at UCLA is pretty much a build your own major. I can take upper division classes in Psychology, computer science, communications, anthropology, and statistics. It’s a good major for someone who wants a wide breadth of skills or study an interdisciplinary perspective.

Experience may vary between universities, but generally the major is a bit too broad to build a good specialty in a particular subject — not so great for job prospects. If you have a specific field you’re interested in doing research/going to graduate school in, then this major can provide a good background to study theory in.

I think cognitive science is a very versatile major that gives people the opportunity to explore classes across many different disciplines! I've been able to take stuff across areas such as linguistics, psychology, philosophy, and communication, which has been helpful in narrowing down my interests. People can really tailor the major to what they're interested in learning about, which can be really exciting.

Cognitive Science allows me to understand more deeply about human mechanisms. Through psychology and its related fields, I can draw connections that apply to product and UI/UX design, my projected career path.

love jt, it’s really interdisciplinary, but you do have to narrow your fields

I think that cognitive science allows you to do a lot of different classes and explore what you want to do in the future. This may be confusing to some people, but I enjoyed how many psych classes I have taken during my time here, as well as coding classes.

The cognitive science major at UCLA is very interdisciplinary. I especially enjoy it because it allows me to explore different fields that I would have never had the opportunity to otherwise.

Great for enjoyment but not ideal if you want to enter corporate right after grad (I'd recommend pairing it with some other major)

Flexible major for a lot of different career interests but might feel like you aren’t learning a lot of applicable technical skills to any particular field

not much to share about cog sci but good for career. need to do more projects outside

It’s an interesting field and opens up a lot of different career paths so I like the flexibility. It’s also just interesting to learn about psychology and the mind.

Cognitive science is a very flexible major and lies in between computer science and other majors like economics, psychology, etc. I recommend this major to those looking for a new major to explore.