<p>I'm getting more and more interested in philosophy as time goes on, and am thinking about majoring in it. I'd love to hear people's experiences with the major or just classes in general :)</p>
<p>Are you currently in college?</p>
<p>My wife is a Philosophy major. IMO it’s the best major for Law school prep, though any major with the right determination can get you into LS. I think I also read a recent report on which majors score highest on the LSAT and Phil was the top. She was going to be a PoliSci major until she took a required Phil class and she felt she just had to get more.</p>
<p>She liked her classes because all she did in them was get presented a topic and the class would have a discussion or debate about it all class and she would need to write papers peiodically. That said, Phil majors write A LOT. She was in a job interview once and the interviewer (who was a lawyer) said “Oh, you’re a Philosophy major. That means you can write!” MOST of her Phil classes didn’t even have a final (test). Just a huge paper at the end of the term. She actually got a concentration in Ethics and enjoyed those types of classes. She told me that in one class were a couple fellas that would try to relate everything discussed in the class to the Matrix series of movies - inspired by “a brain in a vat”/ I think, therefore I am.</p>
<p>She’s worked a few different places in recent years. She has worked as a program evaluator where she interviewed people who are trying to a pply to or qualify for special public subsidy programs. She worked in a US House of Representative’s office assisting in disseminating information brought to him from the public, like reading the random letters/emails sent in, or requests/issues from other municipalities, or other companies/orgs. She is currently a Paralegal (after going back to school to get her ABA accredited certificate - extra 1 year of school) for a law firm that specializes in work visas and immigration. Her ultimate goal is to go to law school, but the way their market is right now and the costs associated are holding her back/leaving her skeptical.</p>
<p>Hope some of that helps!</p>
<p>Wow thank you, this is some great insight</p>
<p>I loved Philosophy up until the time I started majoring in it. I blame this primarily on myself. I had an illusion of what majoring in Philosophy would consist of. I had always been interested in learning different ideas and thoughts on everything and anything, and had strongly believed Philosophy would be the department that would expose me to more than just what I knew.
It did, just not to the extent other departments did.</p>
<p>The deeper I got into the major, the more repetitive it became. Courses emphasized arguments, logic, language, and pedantic details, moreso than the “ideas/thoughts” and how they relate to the big picture of anything/reality. I was more interested in the ideas/thoughts/beliefs/“truths” people express/ed, moreso than how they express/ed them, and/or if they were valid. After a while, at least for me, the courses became about showing up to class(listening to lectures), reading the material, understanding how one would get graded, and preparing for how one would argue any point of view that one would have to make for any given essay prompt…over and over again. </p>
<p>One does learn very valuable skills from Philosophy courses. I don’t regret taking the courses I did. In fact, one of the Philosophy courses I completed was one of the most rewarding life/mental experiences I have ever had. I just happened to find more of them in Literature departments.
You really have to love, love, love, analyzing arguments to not get/feel burnt out/bored by it. It really is the perfect preparation for anyone who wants to go to law school. You’ll definitely have a lot of law school hopeful classmates in your courses.</p>
<p>here’s a table of LSAT average by major. Philosophy majors do very well-just under physics and math folks.</p>
<p>[Average</a> LSAT Scores for 29 Majors with over 400 Students Taking the Exam](<a href=“http://www.uic.edu/cba/cba-depts/economics/undergrad/table.htm]Average”>Business | University of Illinois Chicago)</p>
<p>^those are 1994-1995 numbers.</p>
<p>2008-2009:
[LSAT</a> Scores of Economics Majors: The 2008-2009 Class Update by Michael Nieswiadomy :: SSRN](<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1430654]LSAT”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1430654)</p>
<p>Just click on the ‘One-Click Download’ near the top for the PDF report. Page 7 & 8 have the tables.</p>
<p>Similar to the previous table Philosophy and Economics tie for 1st for majors with more than 1,900 students taking the exam. Physics and Math are 1st overall. Ironic how Pre-Law majors are some of the lowest, but it’s not determined how one may identify as a Pre-Law major.</p>
<p>Philosophy is a useless college degree. The only possible thing you could do, is go on to get a PhD and see if a college would hire you on as a professor.</p>
<p>As for law school, the legal profession is EXTREMELY over-crowded, and currently, only about half of law school graduates can get jobs working in the legal profession. It is not simply a factor of the current recession; the glutted legal profession has been a well known fact for about thirty years now. It has nothing to do with the recession at all (except the current economic climate only makes it worse). You could well owe a hundred thousand dollars by the time you finish law school, if you are taking out loans.</p>
<p>I’m a philosophy major and I think it’s a very intrinsically worthwhile degree. After you take a bunch of philosophy classes, you should come out a better thinker. More self-aware and more reflective. You will probably be able to point out flaws in arguments and justifications faster than your peers. And you’ll be trained (most likely) in the Socratic method. As someone else pointed out, you should also become a better writer. </p>
<p>I have plans to apply to grad school in philosophy (I’m a senior). Since I’ve been pretty adamant all along on applying, I haven’t seriously considered a double major. But if you are skeptical of graduate school, I would recommend adding a double major in something that has more immediate application to the workforce. Philosophy is a great complement in that respect.</p>