The best philosophy liberal arts colleges are those with rich histories of influence, proven through the work produced by the program’s faculty and alumni. Beyond demonstrating scholarly impact in the field, the best philosophy degree programs maximize your opportunities to interact with outstanding philosophy faculty.
Earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy can open numerous professionals doors. As a philosophy major, you’ll spend a great deal of your time poring over compelling historical texts, exploring complex ideas, and engaging discourse over subjects like ethics, religion, and politics. This education will provide you with valuable skills of debate, communication, and persuasion. Moreover, areas of consideration such as morality, behavior, and the human condition have historically factored into the way we understand entities such as national governments, religious organizations, and communities. Philosophy majors must build a strong background in these dimensions of human life in order to contextualize much of the literature they’ll be required to read. As such, philosophy majors are uniquely positioned to understand history, participate in the political process, analyze policy impacts, and even to serve in public office.
Back to TopPhilosophy is a great major because it is interdisciplinary in nature. This means you’ll gain various practical skills. The skills of communication, research, and critical analysis that you’ll develop as a philosophy major are highly transferable to a wide range of workplace settings. Increasingly, progressive companies in the tech, marketing, and retail industries have recruited professionals with a background in philosophy to help attack challenges and seize opportunities with creativity, critical thinking, and a strong grounding in ethics.
This makes the work of today’s leading thinkers extremely consequential. Today, top influencers in philosophy are breaking new ground in feminist theory, the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and much more.
Back to TopOnce you’ve declared your major in philosophy, you will likely be required to complete a set of core courses in a number of humanities-related subject areas. While your concentration will give you a chance to choose from a wide range of highly-specialized philosophy electives, there are several common courses that most philosophy majors will be required to take, including:
Philosophy is not an inherently career-oriented major, insofar as this degree may not necessarily lead you down a specific career path. Instead, majoring in philosophy will arm you with an array of 21st Century workplace skills that are applicable in a wide range of fields from education, marketing and government to healthcare, information security, and corporate ethics. This means that your philosophy major can lead to a wide range of career opportunities, including these top jobs:
In pursuing a bachelor’s degree, you will need to choose between three kinds of schools: research universities, liberal arts colleges, and online colleges.
Research universities are colleges and universities whose faculty are active in research and publishing. These schools offer a wide array of doctoral programs, especially in the sciences. They tend to be big, with tens of thousands of students.
Do you prefer a larger university setting, such as largest public university in your state? Research universities are typically big, offering degrees in many different disciplines. Is a big high-powered research environment the thing for you. If not, you should think about a liberal arts college. In deciding on an undergraduate institution, ask yourself what sort of environment will best help you to be happy and excel.
Often referred to as “teaching colleges” liberal arts colleges put a premium on undergraduate studies and offers a broad range of subjects for students to study. A college of liberal arts typically provides smaller class sizes, more direct engagement with professors, and, most importantly, the opportunity to sample a wide range of subject areas on the way to a bachelor’s degree.
Online colleges are typically the same colleges and universities you could attend in-person, but for certain degree programs the college or unviersity has made the degree programs available to be completed online. For over 5 million students, online degree programs allow students to earn their degrees in the most flexible format available. Online degrees are as respected as the on-campus degress you could earn from the same schools. There’s usually no disctinction between the two degrees, and your degree and transcript will not say that the degree was earned online. Online degree programs are offered by a vast majority of colleges and universities, and the number of offering continues to grow. Whehter you are searching for an associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate, there’s a good chance you can earn your degree online from a respectable online college.
If you interested in an online bachelor’s degree, check out what the best online colleges offer, or search our online degrees for the exact program that interests you. In either case, you will find well respected colleges and universities that offer online degrees.
Back to TopIf you think a research university may be a better fit for you, see our ranking of the best research universities for a bachelor’s in philosophy.
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why we rank the best colleges and universities based on what we call “Influence”.
The influence of a college or university is based on the schools’ top academic influencers related to the discipline in this ranking. We track the influence of faculty and alumni affialiate with these school counting not only the publicaitons and citations of the school’s affiliated people, but we also consider the overall web presense of the faculty and alumni. The greater the citations, authority of web links, web searches, and pageviews, the greater the individuals’ influence. Those combined make up the departments’ influence in the field of study. We believe tracking the academic influence of the people affiliated with a school is the best indicator of academic excellence.
If you are serious about finding the best colleges and universities, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence. Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and misuesed performance metrics. Influence, as measured by our InfluenceRanking engine, provides a ranking that is more insulated from manipulation, and more reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
Tuition + fees
$62K
Acceptance
21%
Graduation
91%
Student body
4K
Wesleyan University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$56K
Acceptance
9%
Graduation
97%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1460/33
Swarthmore College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$61K
Acceptance
20%
Graduation
94%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1445/32
Wellesley College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$61K
Acceptance
12%
Graduation
95%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1415/32
Amherst College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$60K
Acceptance
15%
Graduation
96%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1480/33
Williams College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$57K
Acceptance
9%
Graduation
94%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1465/33
Pomona College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$60K
Acceptance
14%
Graduation
90%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1430/32
Barnard College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$62K
Acceptance
27%
Graduation
91%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1415/32
Colgate University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$63K
Acceptance
42%
Graduation
77%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1422/32
Reed College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$58K
Acceptance
13%
Graduation
92%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1435/32
Claremont McKenna College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$58K
Acceptance
9%
Graduation
95%
Student body
2K
Bowdoin College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$61K
Acceptance
18%
Graduation
93%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1460/33
Haverford College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$60K
Acceptance
22%
Graduation
94%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1445/33
Middlebury College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$55K
Acceptance
20%
Graduation
93%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1397/31
Davidson College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$63K
Acceptance
25%
Graduation
88%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1445/32
Vassar College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Acceptance
9%
Graduation
85%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1270/27
United States Military Academy’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$63K
Acceptance
37%
Graduation
89%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1365/31
Kenyon College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$60K
Acceptance
35%
Graduation
86%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1380/31
Oberlin College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$56K
Acceptance
38%
Graduation
85%
Student body
2K
Bryn Mawr College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
84%
Graduation
55%
Student body
25K
Median SAT/ACT
1045/20
San Francisco State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$61K
Acceptance
39%
Graduation
93%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1415/31
Macalester College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$59K
Acceptance
31%
Graduation
88%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1375/31
University of Richmond’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$59K
Acceptance
19%
Graduation
87%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1450/32
Grinnell College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$62K
Acceptance
14%
Graduation
88%
Student body
2K
Colorado College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$60K
Acceptance
21%
Graduation
94%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1450/32
Carleton College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
If you want to know more about philosophy, then check out our related content:
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