Neuroscience
Neuroscientists are highly employable. In the graduating year 2021 87% of graduates were in graduate level employment or further study 15 months after graduation.
77% felt that their current activity is on track with their future and 89% felt that their current activity is meaningful.
What skills will I gain during my degree?
As well as the skills developed on your course, participation in extracurricular and work experience, organisations large and small are also looking for students to have developed a range of attributes such as the following while at university. What employers seek from candidates is evolving all the time and it is important that you keep up to date with recruitment trends in the career areas that interest you.
- Collaboration
- Relationship building
- Initiative
- Resilience
- Adaptability
- Influencing online and in person
- Business appropriate communication
- Self-motivation
- Career management
What are my career options?
Neuroscientists are not confined to a single industry. Instead, they find themselves at the crossroads of various disciplines. Whether you're researching neurodegenerative diseases, developing new drugs and health treatments, communicating science, or enhancing data-driven solutions, you will be working in a multi – disciplinary environment and with colleagues and clients in and outside of science.
While many graduates will undoubtedly begin scientific careers, the evidence from previous graduate destinations is that your neuroscience degree opens a world of possibilities beyond the confines of a laboratory. Neuroscience graduates enter a diverse array of roles spanning law, finance, public relations, teaching, science communication, regulatory affairs, patent and intellectual property.
To find out more about your options look at the British Neuroscience Association website.
Roles neuroscience graduates have entered:
- Account manager
- Clinical trial assistant
- Document specialist
- Healthcare scientist
- Journalist
- Laboratory technician
- Marketing assistant
- Pharmacovigilance scientist
- Research scientist
- Retail banking graduate
- Solicitor
- Scientific translator
- Trainee accountant
Companies joined
- Cancer Research UK
- Clinimed
- Deloitte
- Eversheds Sutherland
- Lloyds Banking Group
- Lonza Biologics
- MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology
- Police
- Public Health England
- Roche
- Takeda
- Thomson Reuters
Neuroscientist job profile on Prospects
What are my further study options?
As you embark on your career journey, you may discover the need for further study and specialised skills. Continuing professional development will ensure you remain skilled and expert in your chosen field. In 2021 45% went on to further study.
A wide range of postgraduate degree programmes (masters and PhDs) have been undertaken by recent students such as:
- appetite
- biomedical sciences
- clinical imaging
- cognitive neuroscience
- computational neuroscience and cognitive robotics
- electrical and electronic engineering
- energy balance and metabolism
- hearing research
- medicine
- molecular pharmacology and drug discovery
- neuroscience
- neurotechnology
- physiotherapy
- psychology conversion
- science communication
- tissue life
Most of the above opportunities were undertaken at:
- University of Nottingham
- Kings College London
- Imperial College London
- University College London
- University of Newcastle
- The University of Bristol
Graduate destinations such as those noted above do not necessarily provide a complete picture of what students go on to do with their lives and careers.
LinkedIn can be very useful to track how careers have developed over time. You can also find out where former students work, what they do and how they got there.
This information can be useful to you when making decisions about your career planning, networking
and taking the important next step on graduation.
If you’re new to LinkedIn, watch our videos and get started.
Learn more about online networking
There are many places to look for information and listed below are some that we think you will find useful. It is not exhaustive and no doubt your own research will lead you to other websites.