FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS: DETAILS OF THE SPECIALIZATION IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE

To earn a Cognitive Science Specialization with the PhD, a Northwestern graduate student must take five Cognitive Science courses, three of which must be outside of their home department. A broad range of courses can count as Cognitive Science courses. There are qualified courses in Psychology, Computer Science, Linguistics, Learning Sciences, Music, Anthropology, Philosophy, and the School of Speech. A list of courses is given below. Other appropriate courses can be approved by the Cognitive Science Program Director or Director of Graduate Studies.

A qualified course that is co-taught by one professor inside a student's home department and one professor outside it counts as one half of an outside course. So, for example, a student could take two courses fully outside her/his home department, and two courses half outside, and thereby complete the outside-course requirement. A student taking 499 (Independent Study) earns one half an outside course credit if one of two supervising faculty members is outside the student’s home department, and one full outside course credit if the sole supervising faculty member is outside the student’s home department.

Courses taken P/N count the same for the Specialization as courses taken for a grade.

There is no time limit on when you can do the paperwork. Email the Cognitive Science program assistant, Benjamin Scott-Hopkins, at cogsci@northwestern.edu, to find out how to do this.