This page provides information for the following Tracks:

• Pre-Law

• Pre-Med

• Pre- Grad School in Philosophy

In each case, the Track information provided below is aimed at philosophy majors who see their bachelor's degree as a step towards graduate school. The Area Requirement for the philosophy major allows you the freedom to tailor your coursework, choosing those courses (within the four Areas) that are of interest to you. Depending on your specific graduate school plans, however, it might make sense to choose specific courses rather than others. The Tracks are intended to help you make choices that will enable you to more effectively meet your specific academic goals.

Each Track consists of a few recommended courses. In some cases the list of recommended courses is quite elaborate; in others cases it is quite simple, recommending very few courses -- perhaps specifying no particular courses in some of the Areas. Where few courses (or none) are specified for a particular Area, this means that you would do well to take any of the courses we offer from that particular Area; so you are advised to take what looks interesting to you. Regardless of how elaborate or simple the recommendations might be, it remains the case (as per the Area Requirement) that you need to take a minimum of three courses from each of Areas I-III, and one from Area IV.

Bear in mind that you can always take more courses than the minimum, in any given Area. Since you will need one hundred twenty-some units for your bachelor's degree, you might as well take additional philosophy courses to help you reach the grand total, thereby rounding out your philosophical training.

Where a course number has an asterisk, *, this means that we recommend the course so strongly that you ought to think of it as non-optional.

Pre-Law Track

The Pre-Law Track is ideal for those planning a professional or academic career in law or politics.

Pre-Med Track

The Pre-Med Track is ideal for those planning a professional or academic career in medicine, or in related public policy fields.

Pre- Grad School in Philosophy Track

Over the last two centuries, philosophical traditions have coalesced into two broad camps that have come to be called Analytic Philosophy and Continental Philosophy. Since our departmental strengths lie with the analytic tradition, we can do a better job of preparing students for graduate work in analytically oriented departments. Even so, we do offer a few courses (notably in Area III) on figures and issues that are prominent in the continental tradition. In the majority of cases, graduate programs tend to emphasize one or the other (but not both) of these traditions. We thus provide two sets of Tracks recommendations.

For graduate programs oriented towards analytic philosophy

For graduate programs oriented towards continental philosophy

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