I just read that the average IQ of a philosophy undergrad is 129. The AVERAGE?! Note: statistically, this estimates about 2% of the population. Found this here: http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-intended-college-major/
After getting a bachelor’s 20 years ago, I decided to work on a master’s this Spring. My long term goal is a career writing and/or editing and/or a job at Pearson creating content for standardized tests or something at least vaguely similar. Because my GPA was relatively low, I didn’t even bother applying to a graduate program; low GPA a consequence of being a different person than I am today in multiple dimensions.
I am a Tech Communication major ATM. I want to go to school at least through the Fall semester, I think, before applying to graduate school. After taking a course in tech writing and linguistics, I’m thinking it will be just too damn dry and one dimensional.
The bottom line is I’m considering a degree in something more stimulating than what would be a"stereotypical" major for someone interested in writing, etc. In lieu of a MASTER’S that’s very rigorous and scientific in something as one dimensional as the methodology and theory of writing (essentially it seems), I’m thinking it I might be better off studying something with more substance (if you will) at the UNDERGRADUATE level with a great GPA.
Additionally, an undergrad or master’s in linguistics is among other considerations.
Incidentally, my job experience includes IT and scoring academic essays for primary and secondary schools, including SAT essays.
Anyone majoring in philosophy and/or have thoughts about how intellectually demanding it is?
If you want to do one of those things, particularly since you already have a BA, then I think that your focus should be on getting degrees that will qualify you for those jobs. So in that case, I say why would you study more philosophy at the undergraduate level if you want to be a writer or a standardized test writer?
If you want to work on standardized tests, potential master’s degrees are degrees in educational measurement and testing and/or psychometrics. Those are usually in schools of education at universities. If you want to work as a writer, you’d maybe not need a new degree, but if you did get one technical writing/communication would likely be a good choice.
A philosophy degree is not necessarily going to help you to either of those career goals, not since you already have a BA.
The data presented have no context. No study is cited; no methods for how the authors obtained the information are described. I am skeptical. A quick guess is that they took SAT scores and tried to convert them to IQ scores, but SAT scores cannot be easily converted to SAT scores. It also seems very skewed - that would mean that the average physics major is more than two standard deviations above the mean IQ (which would put them in the top 2.5% of the population). I am very skeptical that the average physics or philosophy major is in the top 2.5% of the population.
Thanks for your feedback. I have had temptation to 86 the University and just write. It’s a work in progress. I certainly appreciate the 2 undergrad degree negligibility. It’s possible but FEELS unlikely for me to accomplish a master’s in philosophy, but generally, whatever my choice, a master’s makes the most sense.
Yeah, the “IQ’s” - I think it was accomplished with “fuzzy math”. A specific IQ is questionable at best - attracting interest to their website; people like such “bold” data… Perhaps the proximity of the Philosophy in “IQ”, second to the top of the list of majors, at least seems roughly plausible and makes the decision to major in it more contemplative.
I concur on the comments above about IQ but I will say, yes, philosophy is challenging.