neuroscience vs psychology

Hi I’m currently a year 11 student planning to take chem, psych and bio for a levels. I have an interest in studying human behaviour and also how the human mind works and process things; is anyone able to provide me more info on whether neuroscience or psychology is the better suited degree? What are the main differences and what job opportunities do they each propose? If I was to go into neuroscience would I be able to become a psychiatrist eg?

Reply 1

Scotland Yard

Clearing and Applications Advisor, Universities Forum Helper

20

Original post by Layna_

Hi I’m currently a year 11 student planning to take chem, psych and bio for a levels. I have an interest in studying human behaviour and also how the human mind works and process things; is anyone able to provide me more info on whether neuroscience or psychology is the better suited degree? What are the main differences and what job opportunities do they each propose? If I was to go into neuroscience would I be able to become a psychiatrist eg?

If you're interested in human mind and behaviour, then psychology would be more interesting to you than neuroscience. Psychology is basically the study of mind and behaviour, while neuroscience is the study of the brain itself. Content-wise, they'll have a considerable overlap because the brain is the main star of both degrees, but neuroscience will delve much deeper into how the brain works than psychology, while psychology of course deals with all the mind and behaviour and, well psychological matters that neuroscience doesn't.

I have no idea what exactly you can do with a neuroscience degree other than become involved in research or get into a graduate scheme but I'd imagine there's plenty more you can do with it, so I hope a neuroscience student can pop in and answer this bit more in detail. For psychology, it opens the door to you to a great deal of psychological professions (psychologists, therapists...) but they all require training/further study, and the competition for these and the psychological profession jobs is fierce. It also opens the door to other types of job, like the graduate schemes I mentioned in neuroscience - these are jobs that want you to have a degree but they don't care in what it is. Marketing is also a popular route for psychology students who decide to sell their soul to the devil and use what we learn in our degree on how to influence the mind for bad, marketing purposes :tongue:

Psychiatry is a branch of Medicine so you wouldn't be able to do that with a neuroscience degree, you'd need a Medicine degree for it! Similarly, you can't become a psychologist with a neuroscience degree, although you can do a psychology conversion masters after your degree, which will allow you to chase jobs in the psychological profession.

And if you're really undecided between the two, don't worry about it, you still have lots of time to make up your mind, and you can just cheat anyway and do combined a psychology and neuroscience degree :smile:

(edited 2 months ago)

Reply 2

Lancaster Student Ambassador

Official Rep

15

Original post by Layna_

Hi I’m currently a year 11 student planning to take chem, psych and bio for a levels. I have an interest in studying human behaviour and also how the human mind works and process things; is anyone able to provide me more info on whether neuroscience or psychology is the better suited degree? What are the main differences and what job opportunities do they each propose? If I was to go into neuroscience would I be able to become a psychiatrist eg?

Hi! So, a standard psychology degree will cover aspects of neuroscience as it is a required part of BPS accreditation. It would also cover other areas of psychology so you would gain a wider knowledge of psychology as a whole. A neuroscience degree would only focus on this one aspect of psychology, so whilst you would gain a significantly deeper understanding you would not get the breadth of knowledge. Additionally, I am not sure if a pure neuroscience degree would be accredited by the BPS. This could potentially limit jobs in the future if you wanted to go into any type of clinical psychology.

Psychiatry is not a branch of psychology, it is a branch of medicine. So you would have to do a medical degree or do a postgraduate medical course in order to access that area of work.

In my personal opinion, I would recommend doing a psychology degree first and then specialising at a postgraduate level. This is because you would receive graduate membership of the BPS with a pure psychology degree, as well as access to a wider selection of careers and postgraduate courses.

Best of luck with the future!
-Kat (2nd year psychology undergrad at Lancaster University)

Original post by Layna_

Hi I’m currently a year 11 student planning to take chem, psych and bio for a levels. I have an interest in studying human behaviour and also how the human mind works and process things; is anyone able to provide me more info on whether neuroscience or psychology is the better suited degree? What are the main differences and what job opportunities do they each propose? If I was to go into neuroscience would I be able to become a psychiatrist eg?

The above comments pretty much say it all! I would also say that, from my experience in the course I'm taking, you do study a fair amount of neuroscience/biopsychology. What modules cover will be dependent from university to university as it really depends on the lecturers at your university. If you're interested in learning about the biological aspects of the brain but aren't so interested in committing to a neuroscientific career for example, psychology is a great choice.

But yes, I would agree to not worry too much at this stage 🙂 Just to again add to the above, there are some neuroscience masters degrees that accept psychology undergraduate degrees if you wanted to pursue that deeper. Equally, there are postgraduate conversion courses into psychology (which are BPS accredited) if you found that you wanted to get into psychology later in life, but didn't take a psychology degree.

I hope that has helped!

~ Fatiha, Cardiff University Student Rep

Original post by Layna_

Hi I’m currently a year 11 student planning to take chem, psych and bio for a levels. I have an interest in studying human behaviour and also how the human mind works and process things; is anyone able to provide me more info on whether neuroscience or psychology is the better suited degree? What are the main differences and what job opportunities do they each propose? If I was to go into neuroscience would I be able to become a psychiatrist eg?

Hi @Layna_ ,

I hope year 11 is going well.

The above responses have been very detailed.

Just to echo what some of the others have said and add a bit more, you do have plenty of time to decide so there is no rush. I would say now is a good time to do your research by looking at prospects (a website showing you different jobs and how to get there - this will give you an idea of the different jobs related to neuroscience and psychology) and see which videos/topics you are more drawn to when watching YouTube. There are many branches of Psychology eg social, developmental and even moral psychology. This is something you can explore later on if you do decide to go down the root of choosing Psychology.

When you are in year 12 or college, I would recommend booking some open days and looking at universities websites who offer courses you may be interested in. More specifically, when looking at a university website you can look at the module choices they offer each year and see exactly which topics are covered. You could (if you have time as year 12 can get busy quickly!) even watch videos or read books about these topics to see if they interest you at all. Do keep in mind that you are likely to not enjoy every single topic that gets covered which is completely normal so if you see a few topics or modules try not to be completely put off. The topics may even surprise you, for example one of my lectures (I am a final year Psychology student) was going to cover gravity. Before I had the lecture I was dreading it as cognitive psychology and physics is not really my thing at all but I actually came out of that lecture with more questions and found myself doing extra reading for it!

Going back to open days, these are a great chance to talk to academics and students at the uni about what they study and how they find the course. You may also get to sit in on some sample lectures/seminars or workshops where you can get a flavour of what university will be like studying that course. At these open days you can ask staff (they may be in a better position to respond than a student) what they think about neuroscience vs psychology.

If you do have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.

I hope this helps and wish you all the best in your a-levels and GCSEs! :smile:

Alia
University of Kent Student Rep

Reply 5

Layna_

OP

3

Thank you so much to everyone that replied!! I appreciate the help and advice so much. I’m leaning more towards psychology after reading the replies but for now I’m going to focus on my GCSEs and hopefully soon it’ll become clearer to me the route I’d like to take :smile:

Reply 6

Toomanychoices

3

Original post by Layna_

Thank you so much to everyone that replied!! I appreciate the help and advice so much. I’m leaning more towards psychology after reading the replies but for now I’m going to focus on my GCSEs and hopefully soon it’ll become clearer to me the route I’d like to take :smile:

Hi Layna, a little late to reply, but if you are unsure between the 2 King's College offers a Neuroscience and Psychology degree, which combines both, but is also BPS accredited so you can become a psychologist with it, Worth having a look, and good luck.

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