Students declaring an
intention to go to graduate school in Philosophy score higher on the
Graduate Record Examination (GRE) than all but four other major fields
(out of fifty recorded by the Educational Testing Service, which runs
the Graduate Record Exam)? The only fields that score higher mean
scores on the combined Verbal, Quantitative, and Analytical sections
of the GRE are (in rank order) Physics and Astronomy, Mathematical
Sciences, Materials Engineering, and Chemical Engineering.
Philosophy students score
higher than every other major in the Humanities
and Arts, higher than every major in the Social Science,
higher than every major in the Life Sciences, higher than
every major in Education, higher than every major
in Business, and higher than every major listed under "Other
Fields." In fact, Philosophy students score higher than four out of
the six majors listed in Physical Sciences, and five out of the seven
listed in Engineering.
Students declaring an
intention to go to graduate school in Philosophy have the highest
mean scores on the Verbal section of the GRE than any other
major in any of the fields listed (mean score: 589). English
majors also score well on this section (mean score: 561), but not
as good a Philosophy majors do! Honorable mention goes to History
majors in this category (mean score: 546). Philosophy majors simply
blew away other popular majors in this area (compare Foreign
Languages at 526, Political Science at 517, Religion and Theory at
516, Sociology at 479, and Psychology at 479). Not surprisingly, dead
last in this category were Accounting majors, who got a dismal mean
of 408 in Verbal. The best score outside of the Humanities and Arts
in this category was Physics, with a Verbal mean of 545.
Students declaring an
intention to go to graduate school in Philosophy get the third
highest mean scores of any major on the Analytical section of
the GRE (mean: 625). The only higher majors in this area were Physics
and Astronomy (mean: 646) and Mathematical Sciences (mean: 635). Philosophy
majors scored better in this area than every major in the
life Sciences, Engineering, Social Sciences, Education, Business,
and "Other Fields," as well as every other major in the Humanities.
Students declaring an
intention to go to graduate school in Philosophy score much higher
in the Quantitative section of the GRE than any of the other Humanities.
Compare the mean scores of Philosophy students in Quantitative (593)
with English (524) or History (532), for examples, who are the next
best two in the Humanities in this area. Not surprisingly, majors
in the Physical Sciences and Engineering do better in this area than
Philosophy students do. But Philosophy students do better here than
every major in the Life Sciences, Education, and "Other Fields,"
and all but one of the majors in Social Science (Economics students
do well here, with mean scores of 660 in this area), and all but the
Banking and Finance students in the Business area (whose majors get
a mean score of 606 in Quantitative). Compare Philosophy students'
mean score in Quantitative of 593 with Accounting majors, who get
a mean of 513 in this area. Aren't they supposed to know math?
Thinking of going into
Law? Compare the GRE mean scores with other popular pre-Law majors:
Philosophy (overall mean: 1807), Political Science (overall mean:
1641), Communications (overall mean: 1505), Public Administration
(overall mean: 1450). Now, which looks to you to be the best training
for pre-Law? None of these majors did better than Philosophy students
on any of the three sections of the GRE.