Life After College

There are resources both inside and outside of the Department of Philosophy to help students imagine these and other careers and then successfully launch their chosen career path.

The Department of Philosophy holds events for current and prospective Philosophy majors and minors designed both to help them succeed in the philosophy program and to develop post-graduate plans. For instance, the department has invited alumni back to campus to answer questions about how they got a job in various fields (law, Internet entrepreneurship, academic administration, consulting) and how philosophical thinking still shapes their professional and personal lives.

Career Advancement is the university’s career office for undergraduates. Their career counselors meet one-on-one with students, helping them define their career goals, hone their interviewing techniques, and produce materials such as cover letters and CVs. The office also holds a variety of career-focused events to help students refine their career choices and to give them contacts (especially University of Chicago alums) who can aid them with their job search.

It may be a pleasant surprise for some parents of undergraduate philosophy majors to learn that the logical, linguistic, critical, and rhetorical skills acquired in philosophy classes make our students highly marketable in a variety of careers. Some of our graduates have jobs in non-profits or new media concerns; teach in secondary schools; or work as programmers, technical writers, editors, or consultants. In a survey of recent alums, over 50% of the BA graduates with whom we are in contact went into the for-profit business world, and over 20% of those became consultants/analysts (a hot field for those with philosophical training!). A little less than 25% of those graduates worked at non-profits (including teaching), and about 25% of them went to various types of graduate school (more than half of those went to law school). And about 5% of those graduates have gone on to PhD programs in Philosophy!

Here are brief profiles of some of our alums describing in their own words what they do and how studying philosophy at the University of Chicago has shaped their professional interests, career paths, and day-to-day work. Click on the areas of interest to you below to read their stories:

We invite alumni of the Department of Philosophy to visit our Departmental Alumni webpage!