Performance on Graduate Admissions Tests by Major
*As reported in the Chronicle for Higher Education
Percentage by which the mean score of test-takers from specific undergraduate majors differs from the mean score of all test-takers.
| Major | LSAT |
GMAT |
GRE verbal |
GRE Quant. |
Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mathematics | +12.8% |
+13.3% |
+2.7% |
+26.3% |
+13.8% |
| Philosophy | +8.7% |
+11.0% |
+17.6% |
+4.6% |
+10.5% |
| Chemistry | +7.6% |
+7.5% |
+2.1% |
+18.3 |
+8.9% |
| Biology | +4.0% |
+3.3% |
+5.4% |
+8.0% |
+5.2% |
| English | +5.6% |
+4.1% |
+14.5% |
-5.7% |
+4.6% |
| History | +2.9% |
+4.6% |
+10.8% |
-5.5% |
+3.2% |
| Foreign Langs. | +5.7% |
+3.3% |
+7.9% |
-4.2% |
+3.2% |
| Gen. Humanities | +4.7% |
+1.8% |
+7.3% |
-5.0% |
+2.2% |
| Psychology | +0.9% |
+0.8% |
+3.1% |
-4.0% |
+0.2% |
| Political Science | -1.6% |
+.06% |
+3.5% |
-5.0% |
-0.8% |
| Arts & Music | -.05% |
-1.2% |
+1.7% |
-8.4% |
-2.0% |
| Business Admin | -4.5% |
-0.8% |
-9.1% |
-2.3% |
-4.2% |
| Management | -5.4% |
-7.7% |
nr |
nr |
-6.6% |
| Speech | -2.7% |
nr |
-6.0% |
-14.3% |
-7.7% |
| Sociology | -7.0% |
-5.0% |
-5.0% |
-15.0% |
-8.0% |
| Education | -8.7% |
-4.2% |
-10.4% |
-15.8% |
-9.8% |
| nr=not reported | |||||
Performance by Students Majoring in Philosophy and Students Majoring in Other Areas on LSAT, GMAT, and the GRE (Verbal and Quantitative)
A recent comprehensive study of college students' scores on major tests used for admission to graduate and professional schools shows that students majoring in philosophy received scores substantially higher than the average on each of the tests studied.
The study compared the scores of 550,000 college students who took the LSAT, GMAT, and the verbal and quantitative portions of the GRE with data collected over the previous 18 years and was conducted by the National Institute of Education and reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The performance of philosophy majors on all 3 tests was remarkable. On the LSAT, for instance:
- Philosophy majors received higher scores than students in all other humanities areas, and
- Higher scores than all social and natural science majors except economics and mathematics, and
- Higher scores than all applied majors.
Moreover, the differences are in most cases substantial.
- Philosophy majors scored 10% better than political science majors on the LSAT.
- Philosophy majors outperformed business majors by a margin of 15% on the GMAT and outperformed every other undergraduate major except mathematics.
- Philosophy majors' scores on the verbal portion of the GRE were higher than in any other major, even English.
- Although several science majors showed higher averages in the quantitative portion of the GRE, philosophy majors scored substantially higher than all other humanities majors and were alone among humanities majors in scoring above the overall average.
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