Hello,

My background
-undergrad in psychology with a distinction
-4+ years Research assistant experience
- published papers, presented at scientific conferences

I'd like to go on to do a PhD in cognitive neuroscience but I am trying to figure out if it's worth my time to do a masters? Does anyone have any suggestions about this in this field? I specifically want to work with MRI's but I don't have any previous experience.

Thanks,

Jennifer Siegel

Hey, cognitive neuroscience is my field. I guess you are a UK student? Though I'm a bit confused about the undergrad distinction thing.

Generally in psychology/cognitive neuroscience doing a masters is the norm. But you'd be a very good candidate for funding so I'd suggest to do the masters as part of a 1+3 studentship. As an RA, did you ever work on any neuroscience research? If not, the masters year would give you a chance to pick up a lot of the skills you need - programming experiments, training in MRI data acquisition, data analysis etc. Knowing this stuff can save you a lot of time during the PhD.

Hey there! I am in clinical psychology but have a lot of pals doing cognitive neuroscience PhDs in the department. It sounds like you have a great background in psychology but I suspect you would be better off doing an MSc first if you have no experience of scanning. A lot of my friends started using the scanner (fMRI) in their MSc year, and then carried on to do a PhD afterwards, so I think you would need that extra year really to get to grips with things and to stand out from the competition- an MSc is usually a standard requirement for a psychology PhD anyway, although 4 years of experience is definitely good! Might be worth trying for a 1+3 ESRC award so that your MSc is covered too! Good luck! KB