<p>Since I was very young I wanted to be a lawyer (or at least my family designated me to be a lawyer). I was majoring in political science for my first two years as an undergrad. Then before this year (my junior year) I switched to a philosophy major. I fell in love with philosophy. I now want to apply to philosophy grad school shoot for a PhD and do research in "postmodern" continental philosophy. </p>
<p>What made me shift plans was when I wrote a paper and one of my TAs told me I that it read like a "first year grad student" and I should go to grad school for philosophy. </p>
<p>I've taken one semester of philosophy courses and still feel a little behind and I'm not well-acquainted with the faculty. I'm guessing I need to really kiss my professors' as*** so I can get good recommendation letters.</p>
<p>I have almost 100 credits and a gpa of approximately 3.91 and received some A+s last semester in philosophy courses. (If it matters I've actually gotten 5 A+s in college so far.)</p>
<p>I go a to a top 50 large public school. I have taken a very diverse range of elective courses, and not just gpa patters. </p>
<p>I'm giving all this information because I want to know, given my circumstances, if it would be wise to shift plans like this and whether I could get into a decent philosophy graduate program. I also want ask, since I haven't really looked into the matter yet, what it would take going forward to make that probable.</p>
<p>*What made me shift plans was when I wrote a paper and one of my TAs told me I that it read like a “first year grad student” and I should go to grad school for philosophy. *</p>
<p>This alone should NOT change your entire life plans and make you want to go to get a PhD in philosophy. Being a good writer in an undergrad philosophy course isn’t enough to be a good philosophy grad student, and I wish more TAs would spend more time talking with their students before they just blanket advised going to graduate school. If you’ve only taken one semester of philosophy classes, you don’t have enough information to decide if you really want to go to grad school in it.</p>
<p>First, grad school is much more about independent scholarly work and research, not about classes. Try doing an independent study project with a professor on a philosophical topic. If you really enjoy doing an ISP, then you have a better idea about whether a philosophy PhD is for you. Also try to assist a professor, maybe with library or archival research.</p>
<p>Second, a PhD is a means to an end - you get it because you want to do something in particular. “Philosopher” is not a high in-demand job. The humanities has an absolutely horrible job market right now; there are often 300 people applying for ONE tenure-track faculty position in philosophy, even in undesirable areas.</p>
<p>If this is something you are bent on, you will need to complete upper-level classes in philosophy. See if you can write a senior thesis or at least do an independent study project under the supervision of a professor, because you will need experience doing long-term scholarly research projects with some measure of independence. You may also need a language, although I’m not sure about that.</p>
<p>If you reconsider and decide that you want to go to Law School anyhow, Law Schools consider philosophy one of the best pre-law majors.</p>
<p>You do not need a ton of philosophy courses for grad school. For example from the University of Michigan’s Philosophy Grad School FAQ page:</p>
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<p>Juillet’s advice on research and the job market is spot-on. Still, you need to chart your own path and not embark on a career path chosen by your parents. Best wishes.</p>
<p>Do what you want to do, but have a backup plan. There is no reason why you couldn’t get a Ph.D. in Philosophy, with law school as your backup plan.</p>
<p>In the new economy and the still developing new job market, the sky is the limit. As information has become universally and instantly available, companies are going to increasingly need people who can think and process the info creatively and synthetically, not just “know” it or retrieve it. I know several Philosophy majors (albeit not Ph.Ds) who have been successful in Law, business, and especially aspects of the internet economy. The same for other humanities majors; I have known 3 hired by Google. The idea that studying Philosophy will land you at a fast food counter is a 1980s caricature.</p>
<p>Do what you want to do, but have a backup plan. There is no reason why you couldn’t get a Ph.D. in Philosophy, with law school as your backup plan.</p>
<p>This is very true and many people do it, but realize that after 6-8 years of PhD work you may not feel like spending another 3 going to law school. I’m almost done with a PhD in the health sciences and part of me wants to get a BSN with RN license to increase my marketability, but I can’t bring myself go to back to school quite yet.</p>
<p>I also agree with snarlatron - there’s nothing wrong with getting a PhD in philosophy, and getting one doesn’t doom you to life behind a fast food counter AT ALL. Visit VersatilePhD.com for ideas about how humanities PhDs have spun their training into all kinds of interesting and important non-academic jobs. The alternative is certainly not “get an academic job or work at Starbucks.”</p>
<p>However, I will venture that the vast majority of students who start a PhD in philosophy intend to be philosophers - that is, working as professors at research universities, in which role they are paid to think and write about philosophy. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who begin a PhD in philosophy will never have that role. Half drop out before finishing the PhD, and of the other half that stays in, most will become teaching faculty at colleges at which they teach 3-4 classes per semester and write maybe one article every year or two, or publish a book every now and then. Only a relative handful will end up somewhere like Princeton or Yale or Rutgers at which they are valued primarily for the philosophical scholarship they produce.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that that’s not a fulfilling life (many people love teaching philosophy to bright undergrads), or that you shouldn’t pursue the PhD. Just go into it with eyes wide open, knowing that you probably won’t become a professor - but there’s no harm in trying, as long as you have a backup plan. There are worse ways to spend 6-8 years of your life.</p>
<p>Also, bear this in mind. ‘be a philosopher’ is not the same thing as ‘have a PhD in philosophy and become a philosophy professor’ (your chance of succeeding in the second goal if you start a PhD program is about 1 or 2 in 100, I think). You’ll be expected to cultivate a specialty in some dead guy’s writings, dig around for material to do with that specialty and re-package it in order to publish at regular intervals, teach, and constantly explain what you do and why it’s important to crop after crop of administrators, budgeteers, and even politicians. </p>
<p>This will not leave you very much time to live the life that the famous dead guys did, just reading masterpieces and writing original philosophy all the time. They all had either independent wealth or the patronage system (and a particularly generous form of it wherein the patron delighted enough in what they did, or else paid so little attention, that they weren’t made to do anything specific to keep their job, they could do whatever they liked) underwriting them. To be paid to write original philosophy is probably a 1 in 1,000 shot if you happen to enjoy writing about business-y, motivation-y, not-too-hung-up-on-originality-or-intellectual-rigor type stuff, and a 1 in 20,000 shot if you’d only be satisfied writing about rarefied philosophy.</p>