<p>Is this dept. renowned nationally?
Is it underpopulated?</p>
<p>thank you</p>
<p>also curious...</p>
<p>wow! no one knows?
when I search their web there were many (over like 30)undergra names listed. this seemed alot compared to other schools like HYP. I was just wondering if their dept is renowned. anyone here majoring in classics at Stanford?</p>
<p>The Classics department is somewhat popular, but doesn't have nearly the number of students than other big name departments have. I would say it is underpopulated. As for renowned nationally, that is really tough to judge for Classics. Is there a specific barometer you are looking for?</p>
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<p>thanks for your reply. are you a classic major? I was thinking if it were less renowned ( compare to HP ) than an applicant majoring in classics might have a better chance of getting accepted to Stanford compared to HP. And I know that they do not look at the major when selecting an applicant but I was just wondering. If it is less renowned and underpopulated wouldnt the dept try to recruit few talented classic students during admission time?
thank you again for responding.</p>
<p>No, I am not a Classics major (I just got here this year!). Based on the information I could find, Stanford is a top program overall, but not terribly competitive. I do know for a fact that it is a relatively small major. If you coupled that with wanting to learn Ancient Greek or Latin, it might do something. But as you said yourself, they don't look at major choices (they look at your record).</p>
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<p>thank you knight for your information!!</p>
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<p>classics might be somewhat underpopulated at stanford, but that might be true of many of the humanities departments at stanford, especially in comparison to places like yale and brown. there are just more science and engineering people at stanford. the classics faculty are very good and the deparment is really on the rise, having made a number of significant hires away from places like princeton in the last ten years. the nrc rankings have stanford at #16 but those are based on surveys from 1993. a lot has changed since then, and i'm sure that stanford's classics department would be comfortably in the top ten. and, frankly, considering they've hired two of the top people away from princeton, stanford's now probably as good than that traditional classics powerhouse (though of course this completely depends on your particular interests, and unless you're applying for grad school, your interests shouldn't be too particular!)</p>
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<p>It doesn't matter if the program is nationally renowned; it matters if the classes are difficult and educational. Look at the syllabi for the "advanced" Latin and Greek classes. They have supposedly advanced undergrads (and I imagine some grads) reading less than 200 lines per week per course--about 35-40% of the material at HYP for comparable courses. Nor does the work seem any more in depth--there's about the same amount of secondary material for both. </p>
<p>OTOH, if someone was going to do one or both languages ab initio, Stanford might not be a bad choice. The Classical Civilization program looks reasonable and Josiah Ober does teach there now.</p>
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<p>thank you frank and phil</p>
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