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Current Students


For classes being offered in a specific term and additional courses approved for the Cog Sci major that are not a part of our permanent curriculum, please see our Course Lists and Bonus Lists.

Major Curriculum

The Cognitive Science Major is comprised of four tracks.
Each track consists of a total of nine courses (a minimum of 27 credits):

  • Three core courses
  • Six elective courses
    • Four elective courses chosen from a track-specific list
    • Two elective courses from any of the Cognitive Science tracks
    • Electives must be distributed over a minimum of three departments (example: students on the Decision and Cognition track must have one course take from outside of PSYCH and PHIL)

Major Policy & Considerations

  • The combined set of students' required and elective courses must be selected from a minimum of three departments (example: students on the Decision and Cognition track must complete one course from outside of PSYCH and PHIL).
  • Students often double major in BCN (Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience), Linguistics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, Computer Science or other fields. However, to ensure that these students have devoted significant, independent effort to each major, only three courses can be counted towards both majors.

Declaring the Major

In order to declare the Cognitive Science major, students must take the Gateway Prerequisite course, COGSCI 200, which provides an overview of all the disciplines that comprise the field of Cognitive Science. Students enrolled in COGSCI 200 must remain enrolled past the Add/Drop deadline for the semester, after that point they may make an advising appointment to declare. At the time of declaration, students must also select one of the four tracks.

For questions about enrolling in courses for the CogSci major (LSA classes, EECS, Ross, and School of Information), please review the Enrollment Guide.