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.