Reply to Philosophy Rated As One of the Top Majors to Avoid

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[quote=Anonymous]Well, of the peers of mine who graduated in the mid 2000s in philosophy that I know of here is the rundown: one is on food stamps blogging and doing handcrafted leatherwork,  a few are in law school (mostly those all went to top tier schools, Harvard, Chicago, NYU, etc.), a few have finished law school and are gainfully employed at firms, one is working for a nonprofit that deals with US-China relations, two got accepted to fully funded highly ranked (including living expenses) PhD programs, one is working as a paralegal, one is a daycare teacher, one is a freelance journalist with tutoring as a day job, one is interning for a US senator, and one is a construction worker.

So...it's a mixed bag.  Some people completely fit the stereotype of the unemployed philosophy major, or at least underemployed.  Some fit the stereotype of philosophy students becoming lawyers, although many of those did very well on the LSAT and got into top law schools and seem to be doing just fine, getting competitive jobs at national firms, etc.  A few do stuff unrelated to philosophy, but they seem to be finding fulfilling professional careers, although perhaps not the world's most lucrative ones (journalism, working at a non-profit, getting into politics).  Some haven't given up the pipe dream of academia yet, and go on to PhD programs, however no one has taken out debt for it.

The kids who were very academically driven and typically together who majored in philosophy are the ones going to law school, interning for senators, working at non-profits, and getting into competitive PhD programs (also often they went to competitive SLACs, ivies, and other top universities and worked their connections).  The ones who were less together, less driven, and perhaps majored in philosophy out of lack of direction tend to be floundering.  But I'd hazard a guess that they would be floundering even if they chose a more "practical" major anyway.

I'm not saying that there aren't other more practical majors out there, and they certainly aren't as a whole doing as well as engineers, but it's definitely a wide range of levels of success.[/quote]

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