Top Schools for Classics Degrees

UIUC. UIC also has at least two extremely well-known and respected scholars in ancient studies.

Around 250 colleges offer at least some form of classics, so yes, there are plenty I didn’t mention. Some of them have only a couple of professors; others are rather good. If you’re not planning on graduate studies in classics, or if you don’t have any background in Greek or Latin, you can take a much less rigorous approach to college selection than I indicated above.

For such a student, colleges like UVM, the College of Charleston, CUA (Catholic), U Dallas, Rhodes, Villanova, LMU, Dickinson, Trinity, and dozens of others provide perfectly good classics educations. Among bigger schools, there’s some outstanding classics programs to be found among good but not hyper-selective public universities like Cincinnati, SUNY Buffalo, CUNY Hunter (especially for those eligible for Macaulay), FSU, and so on. I’d suggest starting with a college search engine such as IPEDS, College Board, or the one here on CC and come up with a tentative list based on desired size, location, selectivity, cost, etc. and then narrow the list down based on the quality of the classics programs, keeping in mind that many students change their majors.

For those interested in graduate studies in classics, many students coming from weak(er) undergraduate programs choose to complete a Post-Bac program in classics (at Penn, UNC, UCLA, Columbia, et al) or a MA program. In fact, MA programs are becoming common even for very qualified applicants, as classics PhD programs are very competitive.

All of that said, unfortunately there is a much steeper slope in quality among classics programs than in, say, English or biology, where one can find many strong programs. That is far more true and relevant at the graduate level, of course, but to some extent it affects undergraduates as well.

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