What do people mean when they say that Neuroscience is a "female major"
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Anonymous
Premed applicants heavily skew female these days, about 60-40, and they all take organic. Organic is not a deterrent for females or anyone else. Pp is wrong, neuro is usually harder than bio, easier than chem. However most biomajors are also premed so they too take organic |
Anonymous
Chemistry and Chem Eng are female majors?? |
Anonymous
I read that percentage of females in CS is going down now. |
Anonymous
It can be if one gets a BS in Chemistry. A growing number of colleges now offer a watered-down degree as a BA in Chemistry. I am told that, at such colleges, some pre-med students go the BA route because it has fewer required Chemistry classes. |
Anonymous
I was a chemistry major 15 years ago and we were about 2/3 female my year. But there were some older professors who were quite sexist. |
Anonymous
| DD who is interested in neurology and biophysics was told by CC to say her potential major is physics rather than neuroscience, esp for strong pre-med schools like Wash U. She does have transcript/grades to support physics major. |
Anonymous
Don’t worry; everyone is puta ton of pressure to make those majority female as well. You know, for equity reasons. |
Anonymous
| There is gender balancing in male dominated STEM fields. In the UK, at places like Cambridge and Imperial where there is no gender balancing in math and CS there seem to be far fewer girls. |
Anonymous
It's easier than chemistry or biology because neuroscience majors take the same base classes (organic chemistry, biochemistry, etc) but instead of tough 300 and 400 advanced/capstone classes in your major, you take intro psychology classes (100 or 200 level). Basically, you sub hard upper level classes with easy classes. So yeah, it's easier. |
Anonymous
No they are just trying to understand their own numerous mental problems. |
Anonymous
| Some people here either are referring to schools with low-ranked neuroscience programs or are completely delusional. There is nothing wrong with psychology, but if you are interested in psych then major in psych. Neuroscience courses focus on an entirely different aspect and is very mechanistic and probably not completely satisfying to a kid mainly interested in psych. And I have never heard students say, for example, that a systems neuroscience class is “easy.” If it is, your kid is not being taught right. |
Anonymous
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Any field where the word “science” is part of the name is not a real science.
(And my degree was Computer Science. I just realize that, very unlike Physics or Chemistry or Biology, experiments in CS or neuroscience or social science are only rarely reproduced and even less commonly are the handful of reproduced experiments published.) |
Anonymous
Most US schools do not admit by major and so there is not gender balancing by major, like you suggest. Some programs are still very gender skewed. |
Anonymous
Good lord. Do you have any idea what the current field is like? The 1990s called and it wants its neuroscience textbook back! But I guess my arguing doesn’t matter, since neuroscience is probably an oversubscribed major much like cs and biology, and most of these kids will never go into research. Neuroscience and bio are classic premed tracks. |
Anonymous
| I think of neuroscience as what kids say when they really want to major in psych, but don't want to sound dumb. |