Top Schools for Classics Degrees

[warblersrule]

I disagree with some of the advice in this thread. While some LACs are indeed very good for classics, the powerhouse programs are at universities, and the top programs offer a breadth and depth of classes unmatched by any LAC except Bryn Mawr. Because classics is such an unpopular subject these days, you’ll find that classical language courses are inevitably quite small (<20 students) even at very large universities. Moreover, it is only universities that offer related ancient languages, both Indo-European (e.g. Sanskrit, Old Persian, and Hittite) and other (e.g. ancient Egyptian). I would especially emphasize universities if she’d be entering college with a background in one or especially both of the languages.

As for anthropology programs, they have no more overlap with classics than other liberal arts disciplines like art history, philosophy, religion, economics, and political science.

It will be difficult to beat the top British options, if you’re from the UK as your name implies – either in cost or quality. Oxford has the world’s best classics program by a wide margin, of course, but there’s also Cambridge, UCL, Bristol, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Exeter, St Andrews, KCL, Glasgow, Liverpool, etc…all of which stack up quite well against the best American programs.

I’ve written about classics programs extensively over the years; post #3 links to pretty much everything I have to say on the subject, except I oddly forgot Princeton in my Tier 1 of university classics programs. I’ll quote the relevant parts here, making a few edits:

My rule of thumb for a strong classics program:
[ul][]Beginning Greek and Latin offered every year
[]Intermediate Greek and Latin offered every year
[]At least one advanced seminar in Greek and Latin every semester
[]Decent civilization courses
[li]Other things like a good classics library, collections of papyri, squeezes, and/or numismatics, and a good classical art collection are nice to have but definitely not essential for undergraduates.[/ul][/li]
If you are interested in late Latin, I highly recommend looking for colleges with Medieval Studies departments and courses in Late Antiquity.

Liberal Arts Colleges
Very few liberal arts colleges (LACs) have sufficient faculty to have diverse offerings in classics. If you have an extensive Latin background, you may be bored at a typical LAC.
[ul][]If you’re female, Barnard is a good option - in addition to a decent classics program of its own, cross-enrollment with Columbia makes its classics offerings superb.
[]Bryn Mawr (and by proxy Haverford) is another excellent option. In addition to the strong program at Bryn Mawr, both offer cross-registration with Penn and Swarthmore. Swarthmore is less conveniently located than Haverford in terms of the consortium arrangement, but it would also be a good choice for classics.
[]Oberlin has a fairly strong program and, unlike many LACs, also a strong tradition in archaeology.
[]Reed has a small but strong classics program and a humanities sequence the freshman year that might appeal to you.
[li]Other good programs: Wellesley, Davidson, Franklin & Marshall, Wesleyan, Holy Cross. Decent programs include Colgate, Grinnell, Carleton, Skidmore, Kenyon, Middlebury, and a few others.[/ul][/li]
Private Universities
Ranking university programs is very difficult and arguably pointless, as it changes a lot depending on your interests. For example, Cornell is one of the best for archaeology and top 2-3 for Indo-European linguistics, but it’s weaker in classical philology. Harvard and Chicago, on the other hand, are excellent for ancient history and classical philology but have virtually negligible offerings in classical art & archaeology.

That said, I’d sort them into tiers as follows. Of course, all of the following colleges are sufficient for an undergraduate’s needs.

TIER 1
Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, Yale

TIER 2
Boston U, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Tufts, Tulane, USC, Vanderbilt, WUStL

TIER 3
Dartmouth, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Rice. Also others that I’m less familiar with like BC and Fordham.

Public Universities
Berkeley, UT Austin, UNC Chapel Hill, UCLA, and Michigan are the top 5.

There are many other strong programs, however, including Wisconsin, Cincinnati, Penn State, Ohio State, Illinois, Washington, UVA, Minnesota, and Arizona. Some of the less selective flagships like CU Boulder, UGA, U Oregon, and Kansas also have extremely good classics programs.