What's the best major for law school? Forum

[cancelled20080707]

Maybe the grades were poor because the classes were hard?

I can definitely see how PHL majors would be a little pompous haha. We talk about death, life, God and logic all day long.. :]

[zeezoo]

wait... you are a philosophy major, but you actually think you did worse on the LSAT because masculine pronouns "confused" you!?!?!??!?!?

[Fly]

imo, philosophy majors seem to be "entitled and pompous".

Agreed. I'm a Politics major (although, I've taken quite a few philosophy classes), and when I try to talk about philosophy, my phil. major friends act like I'm talking out of bounds simply because I haven't read as much Kant as they have (not that they understand it any more clearly than I do). It's funny; in political philosophy classes (which give credit for both majors), I could always tell who was there for the politics and who was there for the philosophy. There's a pretty clear personality difference between the two majors.

[18488]

I'm fearful that adcoms will have inaccurate presuppositions about some majors. My undergrad was in piano, and my masters are in piano and philosophy. Many seem to think that fine arts majors are very easy, which is terribly mistaken. As someone who has taken calculus and mathematical logic, I can attest that Schenkerian analysis of a Beethoven sonata is much more complex, time consuming, and intellectually challenging. Music history classes at the top music schools are writing intensive and involve reading up to 40 pages per week of academic journal articles. On top of that, we are expected to practice our instruments 4-6 hours per day, and attend concerts nearly every day. The field is also unique in that to gain admission as a freshman at a top 10 school, one must have had at least 8-12 years of serious training with the intent to enter that field as a profession, but as an "extracurricular" activity.

edited for spelling

[ihatelaw]

i majored in philosophy, political science, and history. philosophy majors tend to be douchebags, same with poli sci. everyone seems to think they are much more intellectual than they really are. if i meet one more person who says "utilitarianism is bad cause like it like puts the good ahead of the right" i think my brain might explode.

so yes, philosophy majors are pompous. same with poli sci comp/IR kids. everyone thinks they know why its best for the US to do x strategy.

[18488]

everyone seems to think they are much more intellectual than they really are.

this i agree with--but I can't think of many difficult majors that don't attract pompous people.

[Peachykeen21]

sbrown, I wouldn't worry. I think most of the adcomms at top schools are aware of the difficulty and discipline it takes to be a high level musician. Plus it adds diversity

[Peachykeen21]

philosophy majors tend to be douchebags, same with poli sci. everyone seems to think they are much more intellectual than they really are.

Haha that sounds like the soc majors at my school. One time in class we were discussing an environmental issue when one of the kids was like, "Why is the amoeba in that slide purple?" and spent a good 20 minutes debating why it couldn't be a different color and whether the color affected our perception of the amoeba. I had to use all my will power to refrain from chucking a pencil at his head and asking, "SERIOUSLY??"

[kevsocko]

english majors get no love? all we do is read and critically think about texts, and then make a persuasive argument about why our interpretation of the text is valid/correct. literary theory gets down and dirty as any other humanity study.

[ihatelaw]

ugh, i think ive had that conversation in a philosophy class. i think the problem is that there are whole philosophy classes dedicated to that very topic.

not that i have anything against metaphysicists or anything like that......

i was always told soc/history majors were really dumb but i think the only people left saying that are philosophy majors.

[M51]

This will probably get flamed... but meh

As a double major, I can say that I have a lot more leeway in making bad arguments and getting a good grade for it on my papers for my Political Science classes than for my Philosophy classes. The reason for this is very simple. Philosophy teaches you how to use logic (at least, the logic classes and seminars do), so you end up getting graded heavily on logic. Political Science does not teach you how to use logic (it teaches you empirical truths about society/government), so to grade for logic would be very very unfair.

It makes me sad that my UG allows so many Political Science majors to graduate w/ high GPAs, never knowing how completely flawed their logic is. The political philosophy requirement for the major should tip them off, since most majors do poorer than usual there. But they usually just written it off as an exception to their otherwise stellar grades instead of taken as an actual weakness.

Are philosophy majors generally pompus? Sure. There's good reason for it. I wouldn't say we're more intelligent than other people, but we sure as hell know how to be more logical about things. (We learned it while the rest of you were learning how the world actually works). So... We better have a leg up on the rest of you when it comes to analytical reasoning.

Think of it this way. If you spent four years of your life learning X, don't you think you'd be better at X than if you hadn't? Assuming that there was no negative self-selection in choosing the philosophy major (if anything, I would argue a positive correlation in self-selection for analytic ability compared to the other arts), philosophy majors are on average better at reasoning than other non-hard science/engineering majors. Ergo, philosophy majors (at least the ones who were serious about it) are better equipped at doing anything which primarily involves reason (i.e. Making decisions when no one else has an information advantage.) Is this pompus? Absolutely. It's also objectively true by deduction.

[normalien]

imo, philosophy majors seem to be "entitled and pompous". they are a bit arrogant and think they are intellectually superior to others.

that's b/c we're smarter than you are. for instance, who are you "quoting" above. no need for quotes there, and a philosophy major would never make such a sophomoric mistake. no seriously, we are smarter.

[nipplehead]

imo, philosophy majors seem to be "entitled and pompous". they are a bit arrogant and think they are intellectually superior to others.

yup. and i'm a philosophy major. those kids are annoying as hell.

i'm also a lit major, and i found those people to be far more interesting than the vapid philosophy majors i encountered.

i'm surprised people haven't mentioned lit, as the critical reading/writing definitely prepares people for the RC section of the LSAT, which is the hardest section to improve upon.

[buffalo-best]

I think the real question goes beyond just what major to select. After all, most people here major in a lib arts field that requires only 30-50 of their credits be in that field. We need 120 usually to graduate! So the question really becomes not only your choice of major, but what electives are best, how many upper level electives should I take, etc.

For all the above, I would say Philosophy is best, not necessarily because philosophy in and of itself is inherently useful, but because it play into just about every other subject and with logic courses it teaches you how to make deductions.

For example if you wanted to practice constitutional law, specializing in political philosophy and doing a second major in govt or history makes sense.

For corperate, specialing In Ethics and double majoring in biz or econ makes sense.

for future criminal prosecutors, the philosophy of Mind and/or Law is a good specialization with a double major in psych.

The only real exception is future IP lawyers, and even then I would recommend a minor or a double degree program with philosophy.

Philosophy is one of the few subjects that is whatever you want it to be. That makes easy to tailor to a future legal career.

[awesomerossum]

Not just any philosophy is good for law school. You want that really hardcore meaty philosophy, the analytic stuff. Do some math logic and focus on the linguistic turn and you're set baby.

[buffalo-best]

Also, to the talk about philosophy majors being pompus intellectuals. I went from a B.S math w/ econ minor to a B.A math/philosophy. Most of my philosophy peers have been really enjoyable people! I like having friends who take their field seriously, and for the most part our discussions havent [hopefully] been taken as arrogant or offensive to anyone. perhaps I've just had good luck so far, or maybe the fact that I goto a low ranked party school has just driven the minority of hard working student to philosophy/math/science majors and I just feel more at home now given my major switch.

That said, some Philosophy PROFESSORS tend be egotistical and pompus to a level I've never seen in any other field. Perhaps this perception is aggravated by fact that philosophers use a specialized vocab/language that sounds pompus to those coming from outside philosophy.

[LawSchoolWannaBe]

I found the two phil professors I had very enjoyable. The students in my classes weren't all that bad either. My real problem with a lot of them was their whining about assignments/tests/difficulty. That's just a problem everywhere though.

[brokendowncar]

That said, some Philosophy PROFESSORS tend be egotistical and pompus to a level I've never seen in any other field.

Completely anecdotal, but my two favorite teachers have been philosophy teachers.

I would assume that the hiring committee for each philosophy department picks people a specific way, meaning your school probably looks for the intellectual type, while mine goes for the down to earth ones.

[awesomerossum]

I would assume that the hiring committee for each philosophy department picks people a specific way, meaning your school probably looks for the intellectual type, while mine goes for the down to earth ones.

It depends on the school. Small liberal arts colleges look for good teachers; large research institutions look for good researchers.

[brokendowncar]

That's probably a better classification, but it was my point.

[buffalo-best]

yea, I goto a tier two 28,000+ student "research institution".... they definately dont hunt for the down to earth types

[brokendowncar]

I go to a 20,000+ student research institution too, strangely. Most of my science teachers are not your down to earth type, but the philosophy teachers were. That is why I just assumed it was a departmental thing.

[greygoose]

Quote:
imo, philosophy majors seem to be "entitled and pompous". they are a bit arrogant and think they are intellectually superior to others.


that's b/c we're smarter than you are. for instance, who are you "quoting" above. no need for quotes there, and a philosophy major would never make such a sophomoric mistake. Razz no seriously, we are smarter.

i was being "respectful". i assume you are jesting, because you realize how wrong your position is. if i recall, i owned most of those in my class.

[underdawg]

Before my philosophy final, all the students complained about how tough our class was and one kid talked about how his paper was SO awesome and his FRIENDS read it and it BLEW THEIR MINDS but he only got a B+.

So yeah, philosophy majors are superentitled at my school and they all think all their classes are hard when they're not. The class I was talking about was a freaking breeze!

[greygoose]

^
wrd

i'm not saying that their classes aren't hard, but in general the students are definitely not arms and shoulders above the competition. the hardest major is theoretical physics...