<p>I am contemplating majoring in philosophy. Does any one know how strong the BC philosophy department is? How useful the major is? Ideally, I’d like to attend law school and teach one day. But political science is much more popular for law schools. So really, I’m really asking if political science is worth ditching for philosophy because I find the later to be more interesting than our Congress and its politics.</p>
<p>Average</a> LSAT Scores for 29 Majors with over 400 Students Taking the Exam</p>
<p>Source for 2003-04 data: Nieswiadomy, Michael, "LSAT Scores of Economics Majors: The 2003-2004 Class Update," Journal of Economic Education (Spring 2006): 244-247.</p>
<p>Source for 1991-92 & 1993-94 data: Nieswiadomy, Michael, "LSAT Scores of Economics Majors," Journal of Economic Education (Fall 1998): 377-379.</p>
<p>BC has THE greatest continental philosophy department in the U.S, and what's more, they have a combine 5 years program!!!</p>
<p>Continental philosophy is basically mainland European philosophy (i.e. French, German, Medieval, Greek...basically 90% of philosophy). BC has a very solid department. Where philosophy elsewhere is dying a death of a thousand cuts, philosophy at BC has remained strong and growing. Since the time I matriculated here two professors has been added. </p>
<p>The major itself is a intellectual adventure. When you think about it, Ph.D stands for Doctor of Philosophy, that means philosophy has traditionally touched a wide ranging number of fields. The thinking critically should never be underestimated (as seen by philosophy consistently having the second highest Lsat score while Political Science having the 16th). Furthermore, philosophy is the easiest major to complete (2 introductory classes and 8 electives of your choice). A lot of folks I know have philosophy and another major.</p>
<p>Thank you guys so much for your reply. These responses, combined with some of my own research (dntw8up, I came across what your chart said, only in word form, so thanks for linking the chart for me because it's nice to see cold hard numbers to verify such a claim), have strengthened my decision to major in philosophy. Like Reddune mentioned, philosophy majors can pursue a wide-range of careers and I like the fact that I will have a lot to choose from. In regard to the five year program, I will have to research that a bit more to see if it is right for me. </p>
<p>Philosophy, here I come.</p>
<p>This is an old thread, but what majors best prepare for law school is still an important question. </p>
<p>@dntw8up I appreciate you posting a link to those statistics. But it is wrong to extrapolate from the association between philosophy and high LSAT scores that studying philosophy will achieve higher LSAT scores than pursuing other majors. There are many viable alternative explanations for this correlation. For one, those taking the LSAT who studied philosophy might tend to be especially devoted to pursuing law, so they study harder, and are more apt to achieve high scores on the LSAT. This is born out by significantly smaller number of students applying from Philisophy, then say Psychology or Political Science (15,000 to 2,000). These higher scores could also be potentially explained by Philosophy’s tendency to be a choice of more intellectual students, whereas Psychology is a much more widely pursued subjects. Thus, the scores of Psychology and Political Science portray the capabilities of the general population, while Philosophy high scores stem from a smarter, more intellectual sample size. It’s just the old correlation vs. causation.</p>
<p>Although nothing is for certain, I find the last explanation to be most viable. As such, I encourage the study philosophy because this suggests genuine intellectual vitality. That’s what’s most important.</p>
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<p>I hope you don’t use the same ‘logic’ on a PL paper at BC. :)</p>