<p>does anyone know about this dept. at harvard?</p>
<p>I have two good friends from my singing group who were classics majors.</p>
<p>They were both very happy academically. There's a lot of depth to the program because you can take all the graduate courses you qualify for. One of them, who is insanely brilliant and graduated summa, was in mostly grad courses junior and senior years.</p>
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<p>I believe classics is a great department. One of its members is Kathleen Coleman, who acted as advisor for Gladiator (and has written about her experience); my S took the perennially popular Greek Hero class and enjoyed it very much.</p>
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<p>thank you both for your reply.
Where we live(asia)not many people know what majoring in Classics is. So we have limited knowledge. It is hard to get good advice on this area. My sons Latin teacher(one of very very few who could teach latin vergil in my country ) told my son that Harvard, Yale and princeton have one of the best classic dept in the world. However I can not compare them with whats there on the web.
Will you be kind enough to let me know about Harvard(or any three)classic dept.? How are professors etc...</p>
<p>Are they looking to increase enrollment each year?
How popular is the department?
Is the dept. being actively supported by the school?
My sons dream is getting in to harvard.....</p>
<p>thank you.</p>
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<p>Many schools, not just HYP have great classics departments. They tend to be fairly small, but they are also well supported, I believe, because of their long tradition. I've been told that interest in Latin is on the rise. I know my S's high school felt very lucky to be able to hire two new Latin teachers recently, to replace one that was retiring.</p>
<p>HYP are extremely difficult to get into. You should look into other schools as well: Chicago, Columbia, are two schools with great classics departments. Smaller Liberal Arts Colleges (LACs) also have excellent classics departments.
Bearing in mind that your child may change his mind when he gets to college (a large proportion of students do), look for colleges that fit his criteria in terms of size, location, general social scene, types of extra-curricular activities available.</p>
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<p>Harvard and Stanford classics departments are both unusually well funded, due to some large and department-specific donations. Harvard needs to produce a steady stream of Latin orators for the graduation ceremony if nothing else, so they can't neglect this program at undergraduate level.<br>
H's grad students in classics were alleged to be underfunded, but I don't know any people currently enrolled in that program who could confirm.</p>
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<p>thank you marite.
My son is a junior now and we are researching many colleges. ITs just that there is no information on this particular subject except for what we can find on the internet. My son gets very excited when he is translating lines of virgil and cuirious to know about greek history. We have hard time comparing the colleges on this dept through college website.
No one in my country knows or could help on this.<br>
My son thinks because it is HPY that many great classic prof. would be there. His dream is to go to the very best classical dept. in US. Is your son at Harvard?</p>
<p>If they're grad students, they would get the same 5-year guaranteed financial aid package as other Ph.D. students, consisting of both outright full funding for two years two years of funding based on teaching and one year of dissertation funding. It's possible the teaching part may be more difficult because of lack of enrolment in classics.</p>
<p>jmom: yes, my S is at Harvard, but not in classics. The provost of UChicago is a classics prof (Greek?)</p>
<p>If you look into the websites of some of the more selective schools, they should have information about their classics departments. Consider both universities and LACs.</p>
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<p>siserune thank you
Marite thank you again</p>
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<p>Columbia has an excellent classics department; the acceptance rate for Columbia was lower this year than for Harvard and Princeton -- so it is a reach for everyone.
Here are a couple other possibilities:
On the west coast, UC Berkeley has a great classics department; its comparative literature department, also a top-ranked program, also has many students who specialize in Latin and/or Greek.
Among the liberal arts colleges, Oberlin has a terrific classics department.
All of these schools have information on their websites about the departments.</p>
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<p>^^ I second that about UC Berkeley. It has an excellent Classics department.</p>
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<p>thank you mamenyu and coureur.
what possibilities are there to show that he has passion for classics?
Since we are in asia it is so hard. He can not go to the states this summer do to some volunteer work he has been commited to.
are there anything he could do through internet or....
thank you for any comment on this.</p>
<p>I wouldn't worry too much about showing a passion; I can't think of many Classics extracurriculars. Taking Latin helps, and an essay centered around his interests should be sufficient. </p>
<p>As a less selective alternative to HYP, I strongly recommend Duke (shameless plug, I know). Our department is, in my opinion, in the top 10 if not the top 5. Duke has extremely close ties with UNC Chapel Hill, which also has an extraordinarily good Classics program. I'm taking a course at Chapel Hill this semester with the professor in charge of all archaeological fieldwork in Turkey (president of the American Research Institute in Turkey). One of the Roman History professors here wrote the</a> textbook many universities use in introductory courses, in addition to being consulted on the History Channel's series on Rome. As a sophomore, I'm in a graduate-level course that's working with pieces from the large</a> anonymous gift of Greek art, as well as doing an independent study in my specific area of interest. Thanks to the great courses and professors here, I won an NSF all-expenses-paid fellowship to go on a dig in Cyprus this summer. :D </p>
<p>As marite said, many colleges have great Classics programs. It might be better for him to identify a particular area of interest. For example, if he's mostly interested in languages, a separate Greek/Latin major might be preferable. Departments vary in strength and focus. </p>
<p>In addition to the Ivies, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, Michigan, UT Austin, Duke, UNC, Stanford, UVA, Wisconsin, Washington, Penn State, Johns Hopkins, Minnesota, NYU, Boston U, Chicago, Emory, William & Mary, and Notre Dame have strong programs.</p>
<p>Among LACs, Wesleyan, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Davidson, Bowdoin, Wooster, Haverford (with Bryn Mawr), Carleton, Pomona, Oberlin, Holy Cross, Kenyon, Reed, Grinnell, and Hamilton are the best. To a lesser extent, Trinity (TX), Beloit, Rhodes, Skidmore, Franklin & Marshall, Colgate, and Bates also have decent programs.</p>
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<p>thank you so much for the great info warblersrule!!</p>
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<p>Sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but I was interested to see people mentioning doing grad work relatively early in undergrad. I'm a junior in high school now looking at Harvard & equivalent schools, as a definite classics major. I had the good luck to start Latin in 7th grade and Attic in 9th, and comparing my work now to Ivy syllabi it looks like I would place out of undergrad classes. The FAS website says that undergrads need "special permission" to do grad work--how "special" is the permission? Is it normal to have an undergrad or two in a graduate-numbered class?</p>
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<p>Hey philoglossia, just curious but how far advanced are you in your Latin class? Have you taken both AP Lit and AP Vergil yet?</p>
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<p>My Latin is extremely good. I was a national winner for the CAMWS translation contest, although since I've never been able to go to NJCLs I have no awards for that. I have several perfect scores on the NLE...blah blah blah. I don't think tests mean a lot when it comes to languages anyway; people can have amazing ability at comprehension without being able to make a fluid translation and vice versa. </p>
<p>My school actually doesn't offer AP classes. I go to a great books magnet school where there are no electives, so my curriculum is slightly different. After tenth grade I ran out of Latin classes, so I'm now doing independent study on AP Latin (both, with special permission from the College Board). I finished the Latin Lit material in five weeks and am on track to get Virgil done in six. I read about 900 lines a week right now Latin and Greek combined. I like Greek much better than Latin and read a lot more widely in it, so about 500 of those are Greek lines and 400 are Latin (going to quit reading Latin and do some prose comp when I finish the Virgil selections...my Latin is good but I would like to read faster).</p>
<p>Kyzan, are you in classics at Harvard? If not, where do you go to school? Did you have a lot of Latin/Greek before matriculating?</p>
<p>Philoglossia, that is very impressive. 900 lines a week? Haha, my teacher couldn't have forced that down my throat. Check your PM box :D</p>
<p>My Latin teacher told me that there was a prof at Harvard who specialized in finding the "dark side" of Aeneas. :)</p>
<p>philoglossia - "Special permission" usually just means a 5 minute conversation with the professor and a signature on your schedule. Professors are usually very understanding.</p>
<p>If you have specific questions about Latin at Harvard, Richard Tarrant Harvard</a> Classics Faculty: Tarrant might be a good person to email. He teaches a big Core class "Rome of Augustus" (which was great!) and is really devoted to undergraduate education.</p>
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