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what's the difference between these two courses??

i've seen kcl offer two different courses - neuroscience and neuroscience and psychology.

i'm possibly interested in studying neuroscience but the neuroscience and psychology course offers time to study abroad which is appealing to me. what's the difference course wise and prospects wise between these courses?

Reply 1

cyberhex

technically an unbiased perspective here since I'm at KCL for biomed but specialising in the neuro side. The main difference between the two courses is their faculty and therefore differences in the aims of the course - the Neuroscience BSc is part of the School of Bioscience with Biomed, Biochem etc, which means it does what's called the Common Year One so you do basically zero neuroscience in your first year, and then second and third year are mostly compulsory modules that deal with the 'physical' neuroscience side, for lack of a better term. In contrast, the Neuroscience and Psychology BSc is part of the Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience and so from the course page on the website, much of the first year is psychology focused. Second/third year (excluding year abroad/on placement) seem to be much the same, in that you have a research project and a mix of compulsory and optional modules - again, it's that the Neuroscience course has more of the anatomical and physiological side, whereas the N+P one has a mix of neuroscience and psychology, but I can see that several of the optional modules overlap based on my experience of picking neuroscience modules.

I'm unsure if study abroad was allowed on the Neuroscience BSc but you do have the option of doing an extra-mural year in-between years 2 and 3, the equivalent to a year in industry/placement which I can see is also an option with the Neuroscience and Psychology course.

From my somewhat limited knowledge as someone specialising in neuroscience (who still doesn't know what to do with their life lol), I would say the Neuroscience and Psychology course is definitely better prospects-wise if you're wanting to do neuropsychology or neuropsychiatry (both of which I believe also require approved specialist training post-grad). Otherwise, your options with neuroscience from a science perspective are kind of limited to research or neurotechnology, and then it's things like scientific writing etc in which I would say there's not much difference between the two except you'd maybe have a wider scope of opportunities with experience in both neuro and psych.

Hope this helps! :smile: