The Sociology Major at Johns Hopkins University equips students with the tools to understand how societies work—and how they might work better. The Sociology Department is committed to engaging students in research and teaching across crucial disciplinary areas: from the sociology of health and illness, social inequality, labor, and education to culture, race and ethnicity, gender, climate change, and more.
By engaging with a wide range of theoretical perspectives, the logic of research design, and the tools of data collection and analysis, students will learn how to transform big conceptual and practical questions into meaningful research.
Sociology students build the competencies recommended for a strong medical school application, including empathy and compassion, ethical responsibility, interpersonal skills, oral and written communication, self-awareness and understanding others, critical thinking, scientific inquiry, and a deep understanding of human behavior.
Graduates go on to careers in medicine, law, international development, industry research, nonprofits, public health, business, government, and graduate study.
Benefits of the Major
- Real-world relevance: Study issues of pressing societal concern such as inequality, health, education, global development, cities, and more.
- Research training: Learn how to think critically, ask strong questions, gather data, analyze patterns, and communicate findings.
- Career flexibility: Ideal for students interested in a wide range of fields, including medicine, law, and public policy.
- Small classes & faculty access: Work closely with award-winning researchers and mentors.
Learning Goals
Sociology is the systematic, scientific study of societies and human social behavior. The fundamental premise of Sociology is that human behavior is largely determined by social structure and social process. The goal of the Sociology major is to provide students with a foundational understanding of the discipline and the tools of social science research.
- Understand how social context shapes individuals and groups and explain social phenomena using core sociological concepts such as social institutions, culture, norms, and more.
- Comparative understanding of central classical and contemporary sociological theories and use of them to analyze real-world problems.
- Mastery of quantitative and qualitative research skills including simple description, the logic of statistical inference, hypothesis testing, interviewing, and ethnography.
- Strong, critical evaluation of the quality of social scientific evidence used in academic, public, or policy forums.
- Design compelling sociological research proposals that test theory-based hypotheses by aligning research questions with appropriate data types, measures, and methods for data collection and analysis of empirical patterns, while tending to validity and reliability and the logic of causal inference.
- Complete an independent or collaborative research project that integrates knowledge from coursework on theory, methods, and substantive disciplinary areas.