You’ll never know if you don’t take the chance!
Warning: I am highly opinionated about Classics programs.
With only 3 full-time faculty and one visiting professor, Hamilton has a smaller classics department than some of the other selective LACs. The limitations are readily apparent – Hamilton doesn’t offer intro Greek in the fall, for example, so new classics majors are forced to start Greek in the spring and wait until the following fall semester to finish the normal first year sequence, hardly an ideal scenario. Additionally, only one course each in Greek and Latin are offered this semester beyond the intro level. (Needless to say, intermediate and advanced students have no business taking the same course.)
Are you considering any universities in the UK? There are no better options worldwide for classics and Old World archaeology than Oxford and UCL, respectively. The deadline for Oxford is in one week (October 15).
UK universities require you to have lived in the UK for 3 years prior to university to qualify for UK tuition, though, so that may be an issue.
UBC is well worth a look too, as it has arguably the best classics program in Canada after Toronto.
Agreed. Only the wealthiest and most selective universities have the resources to run obscure ancient history programs in fields like Egyptology and Assyriology, but good Classics programs are more widespread.
The best flagships have superb classics programs (e.g. Michigan, UNC Chapel Hill, UT Austin, Berkeley and UCLA, etc.), but there are many good but not hyper selective public universities with very strong classics programs. Examples include but are not limited to U Arizona, Florida State, Ohio State, U Minnesota, SUNY Buffalo, CU Boulder, UGA, U Kansas, U Florida, and U Cincinnati.
I strongly second this. Haverford/BMC/Penn and Duke/UNC are the standout classics consortiums in the US. Additionally, the Penn Museum is fantastic.
I disagree somewhat with this assessment. It is not yet a powerhouse in classics, admittedly, but it has taken great strides in recent years. Last year the department hired a whopping 3 (!) new faculty members; it is rare for a top university to hire even new classicist (i.e. one that is not simply replacing a retiring faculty member). USC’s philosophy program is also quite good.
Your grades are very good and your scores excellent. Don’t get caught up in the CC thing of viewing excellent as mediocre in comparison to other posts you read here. You’ve done well in very rigorous classes. Your 5s on APs suggest your high school is not suffering from grade inflation. You seem on the right track.
Thank you @warblersrule ! That is all incredibly helpful, I had been thinking about UNC and this is an excellent prompt. It’s a really good point about Greek, I would need to start from scratch unless I take an intensive course next summer. On the UK universities, I am putting a UCAS application in, although not for Classics but for Ancient history and archaeology, looking at London and Oxford. I’m glad to hear the USC update too, I was really impressed with them. This really has been extremely helpful.
thank you @lostaccount …CC is brutal sometimes, but also very useful in setting expectations. I certainly won’t be applying anywhere with an over-optimistic view of my chances 
With respect to the smaller colleges recommended, it is worth noting that, using figures available through IPEDS, the number of classics majors at Hamilton is greater than the combined total for Bryn Mawr and Haverford. The same holds true for archaeology.
Yes, Hamilton’s resources are stretched more thinly. In 2016-17, 8 of the 507 seniors at Hamilton majored in classics, and 7 of the 628 seniors at Haverford and Bryn Mawr were classics majors. Of course, one has to factor in the 5 or so PhD students BMC produces each year.
Faculty by each school:
[ul][]Hamilton: 3 full-time, 1 visiting
[]Haverford/BMC: 12 full-time, 3 visiting
[list][]Haverford: 3 full-time, 1 visiting
[]Bryn Mawr Classics: 5 full-time
[li]Bryn Mawr Classical Archaeology: 4 full-time, 2 visiting[/ul][/list][/li]Students at Haverford and Bryn Mawr also have access to courses at Swarthmore (4 full-time, 2 visiting) and Penn (13 standing faculty, 3 lecturers).
Bryn Mawr has additional resources such as the Rhys Carpenter library, one of the best specialized collections of classics books in the country, and a small but representative collection of ~6000 Greek and Roman artifacts.
It’s also worth noting that Haverford and Bryn Mawr students have access to other ancient language offerings at Penn (Akkadian, Sumerian, ancient Egyptian, Sanskrit, Hebrew, etc.) as well as courses in Mesopotamian archaeology, Egyptian archaeology, Etruscan archaeology, Bronze Age Aegean archaeology, etc. on top of Greek and Roman archaeology. As I noted earlier, Penn’s archaeology museum is one of the best in the world, its collections including the largest collection of Levantine objects in the western hemisphere, one of the 9 largest collections of cuneiform tablets in the world, and the 8th largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world.
It’s not a mark against Hamilton to note that its classics program pales in comparison to the offerings of the Quaker consortium – most classics programs do, universities and LACs alike. As one measure, admittedly at the graduate level, Bryn Mawr fared well against some heavyweights in the 2010 NRC ranking of classics programs:
1-4 Stanford
1-7 Harvard
1-9 Columbia (Classical Studies)
2-10 Berkeley (AHMA) / Princeton
2-11 Duke
3-16 Cincinnati
4-15 Michigan (IPCAA) / Penn
5-16 Michigan (Classics)
6-17 Berkeley (Classics)
6-19 Columbia (Classics)
7-19 UCLA / UNC Chapel Hill
7-20 Bryn Mawr
9-21 Brown
10-21 Cornell
I usually recommend against these degrees unless you plan to be a teacher or college professor. Humanities degrees aren’t very employable, even if they come from Chicago or Yale. If that is the career path you want to do, you don’t need these schools to to do it.
“I usually recommend against these degrees unless you plan to be a teacher or college professor. Humanities degrees aren’t very employable, even if they come from Chicago or Yale. If that is the career path you want to do, you don’t need these schools to to do it.”
So do you feel there is no value in the amazing research, writing, and group assignments with equally bright and talented students and professors. I think we lose sight sometimes that college is MUCH more than getting a job once you graduate…
Research shows graduates with Humanities degrees actually do okay on the job market but where they got their degrees matters a lot more than for stem graduated because there’s no equivalent to abet for humanities. In addition, the career services at top colleges serve all students, whereas at some universities where most majors are in preprofessional majors career services are different for different colleges.
Therefore attending a high level, well-connected college for Humanities is more important than for most STEM majors.
Finally, at third or fourth tier colleges, business majors are often vocational and not rigorous. In that case, a traditional major with lots of writing/reading, with perhaps a nod to preprofessional expectations with specific classes from business, analytics, and statistics, would serve a student as well as a ‘general management’ major.