What careers are out there: 3 Buckets

Generally, when you graduate with a neuroscience degree, there are 3 big, career buckets that undergraduates fall into in terms of what they are looking to do next:

Medical Careers:

Many undergraduates complete the neuroscience degree as part of a premed path. I will be honest and admit that I do not have much to say about this path and encourage you to speak to your premed advisor about any questions. The only point I will make here is that there are lots of paths to getting into med school and most of them do not involve you going straight from undergraduate to medical school. Many students take a gap year or years doing all kinds of different things. Many students also do not end up in the school of their choice and end up with very successful careers. As the old joke goes: What do you call the person who finished last in their med school class? Doctor.

Research Careers:

Many undergraduates are interested in a career in research, doing experiments, and discovering things. This can take many different forms from doing benchwork/wet work with cells or animals, to running clinical trials with human patients. You can also focus on data analysis as a research data scientist. Research projects can take place in academia (working at a college or university) or in industry (working for a company/non-profit).

If this is you, check out the research careers page.

Similarly, if you think you want to become a college professor with a focus on teaching rather than research, then check out the research careers page. While the end goal is different the initial path there will be similar and you will be making similar decisions right out of undergrad.

Science Adjacent Careers:

Most students end up doing something besides research or medical school and so most will be captured by this miscellaneous bucket. What that is will depend on you. I know of neuroscience majors that are now in sales (see technical sales for information about how to use your degree in a sales role), marketing (again still leaning on their neuroscience knowledge), technical writing/editing, grant work, consulting, teaching (non-college level) and everything else. If you are graduating, don’t want to end up a doctor or doing research, but still love science, check out the Science Adjacent Careers page. Note: I also touch upon non-science careers here.