THINKING ABOUT GRADUATE SCHOOL?

CONSIDER PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON

On just about everybody's list of hot skills are communication and analysis.  So, who has those skills?  How about philosophy majors?  Philosophy majors who took the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) finished first among all fields in both verbal and writing skills. 

PHILOSOPHY AND THE GRE:
Philosophy students consistently rank among the highest-scoring majors on the GRE.  They score higher than every other major in the Humanities, higher than every major in Education, higher than every major in Business, higher than every major in the Life Sciences, higher than every major listed under Other Fields, and higher than five out of the six majors listed in the Social Sciences.  In fact, Philosophy students score higher than any other major in two of the three GRE sections--Verbal and Writing--and score highest overall in all three sections.

Verbal Score:
Philosophy majors have the highest scores on the Verbal section of the GRE of all other majors in any of the fields listed (with a mean score of 160).  English majors also score well on this section (mean of 157), but Philosophy majors excel above the other majors in this area (compare Political Science at 156, Foreign Language at 155, Sociology at 152, and Communications at 151).

Quantitative Score:
Not surprisingly, majors in the Physical Sciences and Engineering do better in this area than Philosophy students.  However, Philosophy students (with a mean score of 153) do better in this section than every other major in the Humanities, Education, Life Sciences, and Other Fields.  The only Social Science majors to out perform Philosophy is Economics (with a mean score of 160).

Writing Score:
On the writing section of the GRE, Philosophy majors again scored better than every other major in this area with a mean of 4.4.  English majors once again run a close second with a mean of 4.2, along with Political Science majors.