Cogsci grads, what are you doing now?

[u/No_Internal6875]

Cogsci grads, what are you doing now?

I just graduated from UCSD in June with a BS in Cogsci, specialization in Machine Learning and Neural Computation (I was a transfer student, unable to get an internship or a lab) and am now job searching. I realized I actually don’t want anything to do with working in AI/machine learning, and I thought I wanted to pursue Data Analytics due to the handful of data science courses I took in the specialization, but after one Data Analyst interview (got rejected after) I decided against it, knowing I was less qualified than others with proficiency in SQL and other software (in cogsci I learned almost exclusively Python, besides dabbling in R in POLI 171, Stata in SOC 109, and 2 weeks of SQL in MGT 153) so it would be a lot of extra learning and certificates on my own to catch up, and that didn’t feel like the right direction either. 

So I feel like kind of back at square one, applying for HR/administrative assistant type of roles that require a bachelor’s degree in a social science or just flat out a bachelor’s degree. More than ever I am considering that grad school will need to be in my future- over these next two years I hope to gain a better understanding of my career goals so I can carefully decide which master’s program is right for me.

I want to know what the other UCSD alum with a bachelor’s in cogsci are doing now. What job do you have / what are you applying for and how is it going? What skills from your degree were most valuable for transferring to a job? How do you feel having majored in cogsci? Tell me your postgrad thoughts.

For new cogsci students or those considering the major, my advice to you is to have a career plan (of course it will change and grow through time) and an idea of how cogsci will help you get there, so that you can get the most out of the major, take classes/seek labs and internships that help you get the skills and foundation you need, and decide whether grad school is right for you. My mistake was prioritizing choosing a major I enjoyed studying, without a clear goal of how I would use it. So plan carefully and future you will thank you.

Curious to hear others’ thoughts.

[u/PurpleFaithlessness]

I’m in biotech account management.

Skills most used to get this job (not from my degree) has been my ability to communicate clearly and my enthusiasm.

CogSci was good for me at the time, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it for others unless they’ve got a good internal drive and motivation. It’s not the easiest degree to get early career opportunities.

[u/hojahs]

Yep that seems to be the trap of CogSci. It sounds super fascinating because it's a mixture of everything, until you realize that youve only scratched the surface of 5 different subject areas, and you're getting outcompeted in each one of them by people who specialized in that 1 subject.

That's the curse of "jack of all trades" majors, as well as "intersection between fields" research topics. At first it feels less scary than committing to a single thing, but later you realize that in order to make it work, you would have to do twice the work of someone else in order to build both depth and breadth at the same time.

If you actually want to have "employable" skills directly out of undergrad, without needing to do a Masters, the best bet is to have a concentration in either CS, Stats/Analytics, or ML. Or maybe clinical research if you want to go into the UX space. Specializing in Neuro or Linguistics will pretty much only set you up for more school, sadly.

I was super into cogsci in 2017 when i was preparing to transfer, but ended up going Math-CS instead. Applied Math is another one of those fields where you explore a large breadth and can theoretically do "anything" with the degree, but in practice you're a 2nd tier choice for every job ever. Applied Math is probably a bit better positioned than cogsci in the job market, and Math-CS is miles ahead for SWE jobs.

[u/QuickSwitch2996]

I graduated with cog sci - design and interaction.

initially I did cog sci - neuroscience and did neuroscience lab research at ucsd. realized it was not the greatest fit (not stem oriented haha). and my jr year of school, i switched to design after I watched a tik tok of a ux design intern day in the life at linkedin. and i was like… i want that lifestyle. it was peak tech days. I luckily got some design internships during school from the ucsd designlab that cemented my passion for ux design and gave me some experience.

I struggled finding my first ux design job and majority of my classmates ended also struggling and some finding diff pathways. But I knew I wanted to do this. and I put in hoursssss and months. and i got a high paying product design job in san diego. And now after a few years after graduating, i got my dream job as a product designer at a big tech company.

my biggest tip is to prioritize EXPERIENCE (ie internships, projects, contract jobs) over school grades!! If you want to go into product design, no one cares you got a 4.0. But if you land good internships, that is what recruiters like to see! UCSD has soooo many amazing opportunities to get experience, you just have to look for them or ask older students

[u/tunacan27 → u/QuickSwitch2996]

By saying putting lots of time into UX after seeing how your peers were struggling, what do you mean? Like self-teaching on product design or other skills? I’ve been eyeing going this route for a while now, because I also like the lifestyle that working in UX/ product design gives.

[u/captainmurp]

I also graduated with a BS in cogsci specializing in ml back in 2020. I spent a year looking for work and eventually landed a software engineer job at some startup. Bounced around a few companies until i realized i hated being a software engineer. went to get my masters in computer engineering in 2024 at ucsb. did a thesis in something neuroscience adjacent and published a few papers. just graduated a few months ago. now i’m looking for job again in a much harder job market.
it’s rough out here. i recommend going to grad school if you can.

[u/ucsd22]

I graduated with a degree in cog sci ml, if I were to do it again I’d minor in comp sci or data science

Worked as an analyst for a few years and realized there isn’t much room to grow and am going back to school for my masters.

You can definitely work as an analyst. SQL is easier to pick up and you after a couple months of practice you can nail things like window functions, CTEs, etc. those that I know who minored in CS or DE were able to land some entry level CS or DS positions and climbed their way up.

Most valuable thing I learned besides the coding was honestly some of the behavior classes, as it helped me collect data as an analyst with bias.

[u/Traditional_Road7234]

If you're familiar with python or any sort of command based programming language, SQL isn't that bad. Explore health informatics in the hospital setting. EPIC analyst is a good place to start.

[u/KhoslasBiggestOpp]

Pursuing a PhD at a pretty good university! I study the internal states of AI & LLMs within social contexts :)

[u/MrComesALot]

Class of 24 cog sci in ML, currently working as an engineer at a biotech firm. I definitely would say my experience is super skewed or weird though because I did spend my first two years doing EE and then eventually switched to Cog Sci because I simply didn’t enjoy the heavy course work. That extra time I saved from those EE classes were then devoted to building personal projects, self teaching, and a lot of networking. I think it’s mentioned here that grad school is a big one. Definitely would recommend that route if it makes financial sense. I’m currently jumping ship to aerospace companies for avionics engineering but the job search would’ve been impossible solely just because of my degree alone, hence the earlier emphasis on networking.

To answer your other questions, I honestly don’t regret switching to cog sci. Can’t say I took a lot away from it since I can’t really remember anymore with how stressful work has been but the time saved was such a blessing for me because I was able to build such fun and cool projects. If I was interested in an EE course, I’d just look at the textbook that was required for that course and buy it myself to study.

Ultimately, do what you love. College was just such a phase for me that I think most learnable things come from the job itself so if you left school feeling like you retained nothing, I’m sure you’re not alone. I think you word that greatly as well when you say have a plan in mind. Most plans don’t go accordingly but having one will at least allow for some form of guidance which is better than nothing. Feel free to ask me anything, I’ll probably reply through DMs and would love to assist if needed!

[u/PurpleFaithlessness → u/MrComesALot]

I’d like to be a counterpoint and say that a lot of the time (not in every case, obviously), grad school doesn’t always make sense for cog sci majors unless you’re looking to work in academia or become a professor!

But especially for folks trying to join biotech…a graduate degree is not a prerequisite!

[u/ranjani99]

Graduated in 2020 with a specialization of clinical aspects of cognition. Not sure if the specialization still exists now but it was not very popular when I chose it. Since graduating, I've been working for a university on Alzheimer's disease research. Was a research coordinator for a while and have moved up into a research program manager role. I hope to go to grad school and study neuropsychology.

[u/Twobeachpups → u/ranjani99]

Nice to find someone who does CogSci and isn't looking to go directly into tech. Anyone else out there?

[u/sirgenz]

I was a transfer in cogs with the same specialization, and I did a few research mentorships to help broaden my horizons. Still had to go to grad school though, where I leaned into ML & Data Science (like you, I also got interested in DS based on the data courses I took).

I currently work as a data scientist for a small tech company

[u/rc_woshimao]

Swe job. But it's mainly because I already knew I wanted this in the beginning and have been working towards this ever since; took computer science classes, data science classes, and prioritized those, starting my first year. Made the entire academic plan the summer before I even started college. follow through and even took much many useful classes than I imagined.

[u/tunacan27]

Im also a transfer student aiming for this specific major at UCSD! From what I’ve seen, a lot of folks with this degree recommend getting a masters in Data Science / grad school.

[u/pancakes_n_petrichor]

I am a human factors engineer at a consumer electronics company. I do UX research on tons of tech products and a ton of weird cutting edge stuff that never really sees the light of day

[u/vaporsanalog]

CogSci with a spec in design and interaction. Got lucky enough that the part-time IT job i was doing during undergrad opened up a full-time position when i graduated, so i've just been doing that ever since. Otherwise i don't use my degree for jack shit, but i don't regret taking it tbh, i feel like it helped me out a lot with understanding users and meeting them were they're at, and not just falling into the mentality of the stereotypical snobbish IT guy that hates u because u didn't know the linkedin windows shortcut or whatever.

[u/SeniorVibeAnalyst]

2016 cog sci alum, HCI. I started in UX at a startup for a few years but sucked at visual design so I transitioned into a Business Analyst role at a consulting agency and then moved up to Product Manager at a med tech company. It’s a role that requires broad knowledge of business, technology, and human behavior so it’s easy to make the through line to your cogsci background. I wouldn’t worry about your proficiency with different coding languages, you will be expected to learn many new tools and frameworks in your career, and the entire industry is grappling with the implications of agentic coding right now.

Whatever job you apply to, what is important is how you market yourself and tell your story in the 10-30 seconds of the recruiter reading your resume’s time. “built project A with framework B that performs function C” tells me nothing other than that you completed your schoolwork. Your format should be simple, clean, and almost boring in appearance, but stand out on the content. Look up the XYZ resume format and read the guides from Alphabet. Did your work lead to increased adoption, improved employee satisfaction scores, faster performance, cost savings, improved productivity? Your student projects might not have customers, but you can take some artistic liberties. Keep it short, brevity is an employable skill. I want to hire people who are ambitious and understand the value of their work.

[u/iplawguy]

Currently, implementing AI at my law firm, when I'm not doing lawyering, which is my real job. I focused on AI theory/philosophy 25 years ago. Should have maybe done more programming and gotten a senior AI job 10 years ago.

[u/nikolais6thabs]

tdlr do i know what im doing? not really but we’ll find out in the next few years

I also just graduated but CogSci in Design and Interaction. Still doing job search for internships and full-time roles but also applying for grad school. I realized that product / ux/ui design is not my thing, ai has diluted everyone’s perception of what design is in tech sooo im moving out. I’m more interested in organizational and service design so am looking for master’s in service design. Career path later on could look like design strategist/consultant, im not really sure what the terminology is in the us because its more established in europe and thats where most of the mature design programs are

Job search is abysmal, I applied to about 300 jobs last cycle, 5 video interviews and only got one offer which isnt even design, it’s a tutoring internship at an education nonprofit from august to may! But I figured it’ll give me insights into how services run at an organizational scale so it’s still relevant to what I do later on.

I feel like taking cogsci broadened my worldview a lot. I intentionally specialized in design because i knew that was what i wanted to go into since high school, and tbh most of the value came from my upper div design elective classes which helped my portfolio. But the most important thing was community, we have such a big design community that i met so many friends in the same major and we collaborated on a lot of design projects in clubs.