Careers With a Religion Degree
"When done right, the work of the humanities is the work of anti-racism...of undercutting assumptions and stereotypes about the people around us and bringing nuance to our perspectives, so that...we begin seeing the richness of our human experiences."
(Simran Jeet Singh, "Why Universities--and the Rest of Us--Need Religious Studies," Religion News Service, December 2020)
While some of our graduates go on to study religion or related fields in graduate school, most of them are equipped with their religion dual-major to find employment in fields that value analytic, research, reading, and writing skills, and an understanding of diverse perspectives from around the world. Most Brooklyn College religion students thus end up in careers in other fields, including law, business, medicine, education, teaching, social work, and public policy.
Religion majors have advantages when aiming to get into law school, business school, or medical school:
- Humanities majors were among the highest-scoring cohort taking the MCAT, scoring well above the biological sciences, behavioral and social sciences, and specialized health sciences. The dual major in religion allows students to major in physical sciences in addition to religion, providing student with both a science degree and proof of the well-roundedness desired by medical schools (Source: Humanities Indicators).
- Religion majors outperformed all other majors, second only to physics and math, on the LSAT (Source: University of Florida).
- Religion majors join other humanities majors in having the most desirable skills that business look for in their job candidates. Believe it or not, businesses would rather employ humanities majors—like religion!—than business majors (Source: Fortune).
Many successful people have majored in religion and have gone on to have a variety of successful careers:
- Shane Battier (NBA player)
- James Comey (former FBI director / lawyer / U.S. Attorney)
- Emile Durkheim (social theorist)
- Sigmund Freud (psychologist)
- Maggie Gyllenhal (actress)
- Zora Neale Hurston (writer)
- Rashida Jones (actress, writer)
- Carl Jung (psychologist)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (activist)
- Panda Bear (lead singer of music group Animal Collective)
- Christy Turlington (model, charity founder, filmmaker)
- Max Weber (social theorist)
