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I Think, Therefore I Major

Cognitive Science

Silicon Valley Overlords

The birthplace of the discipline. These schools essentially built the bridge between the human cortex and artificial intelligence. They treat the mind like a complex algorithmic system. Graduating from here means possessing a golden passport directly into tech product management, AI safety labs, and human-computer interaction startups.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 Brown
Providence, RI
Providence, RI 149 5% 39% / 61% 13% $69,389 48 86% —
2 Carnegie Mellon
Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh, PA 14 11% 14% / 86% 14% $158,864 100 100% —
3 Johns Hopkins
Baltimore, MD
Baltimore, MD 32 6% 22% / 78% 16% $61,773 31 100% —
4 MIT
Cambridge, MA
Cambridge, MA 44 5% 34% / 66% 5% $80,972 81 — —
5 Rice
Houston, TX
Houston, TX 32 8% 28% / 72% 6% $71,816 58 95% —
6 U. of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA
La Jolla, CA 689 29% 42% / 58% 13% $85,159 86 90% —

High-End Hallucinators

Elite universities with massive endowments where cognitive modeling is treated as a fine art. Expect heavy emphasis on probabilistic neural networks and mathematical logic. You will spend your weekends training algorithms to mimic human bias and trying to figure out why your code hates its parents.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 Northwestern
Evanston, IL
Evanston, IL 32 7% 31% / 69% 16% $84,007 79 94% —
2 UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles, CA 271 9% 27% / 73% 10% $78,267 82 95% —
3 Vanderbilt
Nashville, TN
Nashville, TN 54 4% 31% / 69% 13% $56,190 13 95% —
4 Yale
New Haven, CT
New Haven, CT 39 4% 36% / 64% 10% $79,977 72 — —

The Qualia Quibblers

The philosophical capitals of the cognitive science world, now consolidated with elite legacy programs. You will find yourself trapped at a house party listening to someone passionately debate whether a machine can experience the true redness of a tomato. Fortunately, their hard research labs are just as intense as their philosophical crises.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 Columbia
New York, NY
New York, NY 12 4% 25% / 75% 33% $77,409 70 — —
2 Cornell
Ithaca, NY
Ithaca, NY 1 8% 0% / 100% 0% $72,371 57 — —
3 New York University
New York, NY
New York, NY 19 9% 26% / 74% 5% $69,601 58 — —
4 U. of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Berkeley, CA 217 11% 23% / 77% 9% $100,651 97 97% —
5 U. of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI
Ann Arbor, MI 126 16% 33% / 67% 8% $77,436 69 100% —
6 U. of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia, PA 45 5% 44% / 56% 18% $109,527 97 90% —
7 Tufts
Medford, MA
Medford, MA 32 10% 34% / 66% 6% $128,185 99 100% —

The Applied Cyborgs

Programs obsessed with the concept of the embodied mind—proving that human thinking isn't just trapped in the skull but integrated with technology. This tier trains you to be the translation layer between software developers and real, flawed human beings. Highly lucrative pipeline into high-end UI/UX architecture.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 Dartmouth
Hanover, NH
Hanover, NH 14 6% 29% / 71% 7% $79,211 73 — —
2 Emory
Atlanta, GA
Atlanta, GA 8 12% 13% / 88% 13% $69,464 52 — —
3 U. of California, Davis
Davis, CA
Davis, CA 163 44% 33% / 67% 7% $67,094 65 100% —
4 U. of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA
Irvine, CA 31 29% 29% / 71% 6% $55,434 35 — —
5 U. of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles, CA 64 12% 27% / 73% 9% $91,571 87 100% —
6 Washington University in St Louis
Saint Louis, MO
Saint Louis, MO 84 12% 37% / 63% 2% $69,114 46 100% —

The Academic Anarchists

A consolidated powerhouse tier of interdisciplinary misfits. These programs smashed together ecological psychology, computational physics, and linguistic philosophy because they completely reject traditional department boundaries. Come here if you want to piece together a customized mind-science degree out of spare engineering parts.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 U. of Connecticut
Storrs, CT
Storrs, CT 22 54% 18% / 82% 0% $79,256 85 100% —
2 U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL
Champaign, IL 16 37% 50% / 50% 13% $58,820 50 — —
3 Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA
Blacksburg, VA 219 55% 29% / 71% 0% $58,520 57 100% —
4 Duke
Durham, NC
Durham, NC 2 5% 50% / 50% 0% $71,539 49 — —
5 Indiana
Bloomington, IN
Bloomington, IN 4 76% 25% / 75% 0% $51,926 26 — —
6 U. of Chicago
Chicago, IL
Chicago, IL 7 5% 43% / 57% 14% $74,719 61 — —