Careers in Neuroscience

Wellesley Neuroscience majors are well prepared and will graduate with a liberal arts background coupled with sufficient concentration in this specialized field to be competitive among students coming from exclusively research-oriented institutions.

Sixty percent of our graduates go from Wellesley to medical school. Approximately 15 percent of our majors continue on with graduate work in neuroscience, psychology, or neuropsychology, and approximately 10 percent pursue careers that intersect with neuroscience, such as work in the biotech industry, pharmacology, patent law, and science writing.

Students with graduate degrees in neuroscience are in demand for faculty positions in liberal arts colleges; research universities; and medical, dental, pharmacy, nursing, and veterinary schools. There are also exciting career opportunities in research and administrative positions in government laboratories such as the National Institutes of Health, in private research foundations, and in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and chemical industries. 

Entrance level positions with an undergraduate degree in neuroscience are also available in biomedical research laboratories as technicians; in pharmaceutical or health product companies as marketing or sales representatives; and in federal, state, and local public health programs as health analysts or managers.

Graduates also can pursue employment opportunities in government regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and in industrial organizations interacting with these agencies.

Do you want to major in Neuroscience but are not interested in having a career in research or medicine? Then check out this article on career alternatives in Neuroscience!

Here's a very interesting article on combining neuroscience with the arts.