Why Major In Philosophy?
While philosophy’s encouragement to sapere aude—“dare to think”—will appeal to all
students, many wonder: Is a philosophy degree practical? What do philosophy majors do
other than become philosophy professors? Here are some answers that may surprise you.
1. Philosophy is the “ultimate transferable work skill”
 You learn to analyze and solve problems
 You learn to think and write clearly
 You learn how to persuade others
 You learn how to research
2. Philosophy majors do excellently on graduate exams.

Philosophy rules the GRE: Thinking about grad school? Add up the three sections and
Philosophy majors have the highest overall score on the GRE.

Philosophy rocks the GMAT: How about business school? Philosophy majors outperform
majors in Economics, Statistics, Finance, Accounting, etc.

Philosophy owns the LSAT: Need that J.D.? Philosophy majors do better than Political
Science, Pre-Law, and anything starting with “Business”.

Philosophy gets you into Med School: Philosophers enjoy the best chance of admission to
medical school of any major.
3. A philosophy major makes an ideal component of a double major.
The critical thinking skills you develop by studying philosophy help you in any other
field of study, and that is why the philosophy major works so well as part of a double
major degree program. Philosophy pushes you to examine the fundamental beliefs of
every area of knowledge. Because of this, for every subject you can study in a university,
there is a ‘Philosophy of’ that subject: Philosophy of Psychology, Philosophy of Science,
Philosophy of Art, etc. Even if your primary interest is psychology, biology or literature,
you will gain much greater insight into your field if you can think clearly about the
deeper aspects of it. No companion major can equip you for that better than philosophy.
4. Philosophy majors do very well financially in non-academic fields.
Philosophers have better employability and upper average salaries compared to many
other majors. Graduates with a B.A. in the humanities do earn lower starting salaries than
some other majors; however, over the course of a career philosophy graduates do quite
well in the earnings department. PayScale.com’s data on “Best Undergrad College
Degrees By Salary” 2014-2015 lists 129 majors for beginning and mid-career salary.
Philosophy majors earn an average starting salary of $42,200 and $85,000 by mid-career.
Philosophy majors outearn all other humanities degrees in salary and even outearn
Marketing & Communications, Business Management, Political Science, Microbiology,
and Accounting majors!
Even Forbes is celebrating the inroads that philosophy majors are making into seemingly
unrelated fields like the Tech Industry:
“Stewart Butterfield [is] Slack’s 42-year-old cofounder and CEO, whose estimated double-digit
stake in the company could be worth $300 million or more. He’s the proud holder of an
undergraduate degree in philosophy from Canada’s University of Victoria and a master’s degree
from Cambridge in philosophy and the history of science.
“Studying philosophy taught me two things,” says Butterfield, sitting in his office in San
Francisco’s South of Market district, a neighborhood almost entirely dedicated to the cult of
coding. “I learned how to write really clearly. I learned how to follow an argument all the way
down, which is invaluable in running meetings. And when I studied the history of science, I
learned about the ways that everyone believes something is true–like the old notion of some kind
of ether in the air propagating gravitational forces–until they realized that it wasn’t true.””
http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/07/29/liberal-arts-degree-tech/
5. Philosophy majors include a host of amazing people.
Want to have the same major as Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and David
Souter? Film directors Terrence Malik, Wes Anderson, Ethan Cohen, and Wes Craven?
Writers David Foster Wallace, E.L. Doctorow, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Cartoonist
and The Simpsons Creator Matt Groening? Civil Rights Activists Stokely Carmichael and
Angela Davis? Business giants Peter Theil, Carly Fiorna, and George Soros? Nobel Peace
Prize winner and human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi? They all majored in
philosophy.
You can see a list of famous philosophy majors here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17753117/Famous%20Philosophers%20Poster.pdf