The best anthropology programs are those with rich histories of influence, proven through the work produced by the program’s faculty and alumni. Beyond demonstrating scholarly impact in the field, the best anthropology degree programs maximize your opportunities to interact with outstanding anthropology faculty.
Anthropology, the study of “what makes people human,” investigates the intricacies of human beings. Anthropologists study people’s lifestyles, how the human species evolve, and how the past has impacted humanity in the present.
If you are fascinated by how people live and behave, anthropology may be the perfect degree and career path for you.
While many students earn their college degree and flow directly into a career, many anthropology majors go on to pursue a graduate degree in either anthropology or a related field.
Anthropology studies humans from an international perspective. This means the potential for more doors opening for global travel. Upon completing your anthropology degree, you can opt to work and live among different groups of people across the world, studying and researching how they live.
Anthropology has different subdisciplines, or concentration areas, giving students the flexibility to focus on a particular area of interest. The four major areas of anthropology are archaeology, linguistic anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, and physical anthropology.
A degree in anthropology gives you a wide range of useful skills that you can use in many job roles and industries. You will also gain anthropology-related skills and improve in other areas like research, communication, problem-solving, independent and collaborative work, reasoning writing, and information organization.
Many employers highly regard all these skills. With this degree, you can work in practically any field—from community development to journalism, to research and even teaching.
Once you complete your anthropology degree, you can continue your education in a Master’s or Doctoral degree program to become a researcher or a member of the academe. With a postgraduate qualification, you are allowed to specialize in your chosen anthropology subfield, and this could mean entering the job market at a higher level.
Degree holders of anthropology can lead different career paths in various sectors. Anthropologists can work either in government, business, or academia, among others. You can also pursue a specialization in archaeology, ethnology, paleontology, or primatology.
With your skills in the assessment of needs, perception, cross-cultural understanding, participation in groups, sampling, and surveying, the field of anthropology will open doors to many different career paths.
Earning a bachelor’s degree in anthropology can open numerous professionals doors. In addition to fields such as archaeology and museum curation, the research, critical thinking, and communication skills learned in this major can apply in a wide range of educational, scientific, and social services work settings. The best schools for anthropology will put you in a position to become an innovator and a leader in this exciting field.
Today, top influencers in anthropology are bringing new light to topics like military uses of anthropology, cultural influences on economies, human organ trafficking, and much more.
Anthropology studies human behaviors and characteristics with less focus on social influences than sociology. There are a lot of similarities, especially between cultural anthropology and sociology, but the focus is different. Anthropology focuses on the people - their behaviors, physical characteristics, and their responses to social structures, ie, their culture. Sociology focuses more on group behaviors and relations with social structures and institutions. Sociology uses qualitative and quantitative methods to study the causes and effect of social structures. Anthropologists more often utilize qualitative research methods like ethnography to study the changes that occur in people given their circumstances.
In an interview with us, Princeton Univerity Sociologist, Vivian Zelizer noted their similarities and common difference with psycholgy, [T]here are a lot of parallels between both fields in the sense that they’re both trying to understand social life, and in that sense, a contrast with psychology, which of course they’re interested in social life, but the focus is on the individual. Individual development, individual cognition, and both sociologists and anthropologists are more interested in the social relations, even though there are many splendid scholars in both of those fields that may specialise in cognitive aspects of social relationships. And I would say that in the past, the boundaries between sociology and anthropology were stronger in the sense that anthropologists would study primitive communities and other kinds of groups and less contemporary capitalist societies. But in the past years, anthropologists have done splendid ethnographies and studies of contemporary societies.
Anthropology is an excellent interdisciplinary major. The degree is typically composed of numerous distinct but related subject areas from history and linguistics to studies on world religion and race, alongside science-driven subjects such as evolutionary biology, archaeology, and forensics. As an anthropology major, you’ll get the chance to flex both your scientific muscles and sharpen your skills of critical analysis.
Once you’ve declared your major in anthropology, you will likely be required to complete a set of core courses in a number of related subject areas. While your concentration will give you a chance to choose from a wide range of highly-specialized anthropology electives, there are a several common courses that most anthropology majors will be required to take, including:
Anthropology is often divided into four distinct subdisciplines:
To answer this, we looked at internet search queries within the Education
category on Google Trends. Biological anthropology (also sometimes called physical anthropology
) is currently the most-searched field in anthropology, followed by medical anthropology, cultural anthropology, forensic anthropology, and linguistic anthropology (also known as ethnolinguistics
).
Anthropology is a highly specialized field. Those who will ultimately practice anthropology or archaeology will typically have earned a master’s degree. This will qualify you for a wide range of opportunities doing fieldwork, consultation, or education as an anthropologist, archeologist, or historian. But anthropology is also a versatile degree program. In addition to preparing you to enter into an advanced degree program in anthropology, a bachelor’s degree in anthropology could lead to a wide range of opportunities in forensics, education, biology, and much more. If you do choose to pursue anthropology as a career, your major can lead to these top jobs:
In pursuing a bachelor’s degree, you will need to choose between three kinds of schools: research universities, liberal arts colleges, and online colleges.
Research universities are colleges and universities whose faculty are active in research and publishing. Research universities offer a wide array of doctoral programs, especially in the sciences. They tend to be big, with tens of thousands of students.
Do you prefer a larger university setting, such as largest public university in your state? Research universities are typically big, offering degrees in many different disciplines. Is a big high-powered research environment the thing for you. If not, you should think about a liberal arts college. In deciding on an undergraduate institution, ask yourself what sort of environment will best help you to be happy and excel.
Learn more about research universities by reading about the best research universities in the US.
Often referred to as “teaching colleges” liberal arts colleges put a premium on undergraduate studies and offers a broad range of subjects for students to study. A college of liberal arts typically provides smaller class sizes, more direct engagement with professors, and, most importantly, the opportunity to sample a wide range of subject areas on the way to a bachelor’s degree.
Learn more about liberal arts colleges by reading about the best liberal arts colleges in the US.
Online colleges are typically the same colleges and universities you could attend in-person, but for certain degree programs the college or unviersity has made the degree programs available to be completed online. For over 5 million students, online degree programs allow students to earn their degrees in the most flexible format available. Online degrees are as respected as the on-campus degress you could earn from the same schools. There’s usually no disctinction between the two degrees, and your degree and transcript will not say that the degree was earned online. Online degree programs are offered by a vast majority of colleges and universities, and the number of offering continues to grow. Whehter you are searching for an associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate, there’s a good chance you can earn your degree online from a respectable online college.
If you’re interested in an online bachelor’s degree, check out what the best online colleges offer, or search our online degrees for the exact program that interests you. In either case, you will find well respected colleges and universities that offer online degrees.
Go to The Best Anthropology Research Universities
Go to The Best Anthropology Liberal Arts Colleges
Go to The Best Anthropology Online Colleges
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