Who Scores Highest on College Level Exams?

Students are always looking for ways to score higher on their standardized tests. From the SAT up to the GMAT or LSAT, college students spend time learning every trick in the book to find new ways to up their scores and give them the best chance at admission to the top universities. Most everyone will agree that doing undergraduate work that is similar to the profession one plans to pursue in graduate school is likely the best course of action. For example, one would not major in biology if they planned to take the entrance exam for law school, the information simply would not adequately prepare an individual for an exam that requires that level of knowledge and expertise into a certain area of study. For these reasons most students do spend their time taking many classes that are very much oriented towards their specific goal. Although this is a perfectly acceptable and likely successful way to go about scoring high on a standardizes exam, many do not realize that one major in particular actually prepares students not for one specific exam, but for all forms of standardized tests at the college level and beyond.

This major is Philosophy. Philosophy majors have been shown to receive some of the highest scores of all majors on each entrance exam. While some majors do score higher on specific exams, the Philosophy major scores very high across the board. From law school to business school and even writing exams, the Philosophy major outdoes the vast majority of students and holds scores well above average. According to Brandeis University, Philosophy majors scored 10% higher than Political Science majors on the LSAT, Political Science of course being the preferred major for those preparing to enter law school as one would assume that it best prepares you for the entrance exam. On the GMAT, Philosophy majors outdid Business majors by 15% and were themselves only outdone by the math majors. The Philosophy majors also held the highest scores on the verbal portion of the GRE, outdoing every other college major as well as being the only humanities major to have an overall above average score on the exam as a whole.