Classics at Notre Dame

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Notre Dame
1

Salvete omnes! (Hello all, in Latin)
I’m twenty eight and decided to go back to school. My dream is to be a Classicist, as you have already probably guessed by my username. And my dream school, as you all have already guessed as well is Notre Dame. So what are my chances at getting accepted? I’m guessing you all will ask the usual question of what’s my gpa; to be honest, it’s very low but I’m at an open admissions college working on that and so far so good after which I will be transferring to the local university to get credible credits because I’m aware that Notre Dame doesn’t accept transfer credits from an open admissions college. And another question in particular to recent graduates of Classics from Notre Dame. What books did you all use to learn Latin and Ancient Greek at Notre Dame? You all didn’t use Orberg’s Lingua Latina by any chance to learn Latin did you all? Or Reading Greek to learn Ancient Greek? Thank you.

2

Hey Classics Dreamer,

I’m going to be 100% honest with you here. Your chances aren’t great, as your plan currently stands. Here’s why I can tell you this, and here’s what you should do.

I started my undergrad with an interest in pursuing academic philosophy. My second year of undergrad I added another major in Classical studies. I’m graduating a year early and I now realize I’m more interested in pursuing graduate education in classical studies. Upon realizing this, there were a few realities that I was struck with. (Some that personally effected my course of action, and some that did not)

  1. Classics programs do not care about your informal language training, or even high school Latin/Greek for that matter. They are specifically looking at how much experience you have in intermediate and advanced Latin and Greek within the academy. As a general rule 3 years of 1 language (including elementary Latin/Greek) and 2 of the other. Language is not something you can cut corners on in the institution. A committee member at U-Mich I worked with this summer told me that they are realistically looking for more than that 3-2 bare minimum.
  2. You will eventually have to learn German, then either French or Italian. If you don’t have at least one of these under your belt when applying, you will almost always be low priority. This is true for all PhD programs, and most prestigious MA programs like ND. Knowing ND specifically, they’d probably recommend you complete a Post-Bacc for your languages (both classical and modern) before applying.
  3. If your gpa is below a 3.0 your application will be tossed. If it’s below a 3.3 it will likely not get you in. You GRE scores don’t really matter so much. YOUR WRITING SAMPLE IS EVERYTHING. Your letters of recommendation are really important.

Good luck with everything. Hope it all works out for you. If you need any advice, I’m currently applying for this cycle!

Χαίρει