Pre-Law Statistics for Philosophy Majors

According to the American Bar Association, "There is no true pre-law curriculum. Generally, a broad-based education that is rigorous and that stresses analytical and verbal communication skills will be useful."

 

Philosophy is an excellent choice for prelaw majors since it develops the skills law schools value most. Philosophy students learn to read difficult and closely argued texts, extract and critically evaluate arguments, and formulate their own arguments grounded in solid understanding of moral and political principles. They learn to speak and write clearly and precisely.

 

Philosophy has maintained a long and noble affiliation with law and degrees in philosophy are regarded very highly today by law school admissions committees. According to the Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, philosophy is unsurpassed as a prelaw major or minor. A recent comprehensive study of college students' scores on major tests used for admission to graduate and professional schools shows that philosophy majors received higher scores on the LSA T than students in all other humanities areas, higher scores than all social and natural science majors except economics and mathematics, and higher scores than all applied majors.

 

The differences were substantial: for example, on the LSAT philosophy majors scored 10% better than political science majors.

 

Here ranked by major are some notable results from an annual survey:

 

Rank	Major
1	Philosophy
2	Economics
3	Psychology
4	History
5	English
6	Political Science
10	Business Administration
11	Criminal Justice

 

Among arts and humanities majors, the ranking is as follows:

 

Rank	Major
1	Philosophy
2	Religion
3	Literature
4	Music
5	French
6	English

 

A larger 1995 study showed:

 

Rank	Major
1	Physics/Math
2	Philosophy/Religion
3	Economics
8	History
9	English
12	Forign Languages
18	Political Science
24	Business Administration

 

The Illinois State Philosophy Department has about 40-50 majors at any one time. Among Illinois public universities, only the University of Illinois located in Champaign-Urbana, has more philosophy majors. This is a large enough group to reach a critical mass of student support and participation in departmental functions, but it is small enough that albeit allows us to provide individual attention to advising. Relatively small class size, especially in upper level courses, means that students get individual attention from all our instructors.