Yep, students at Reed get course grades, and have GPAs and transcripts, as at other schools. The difference is that Reed doesn’t tell students their grades, unless (1) a student specifically asks, or (2) a student is failing. In the same vein, Reed doesn’t reward students for high GPAs; there is no “Dean’s List” at the end of the semester, and there are no “Latin Honors” at graduation.
Well, there’s the difference between BMC and Reed in a nutshell: BMC’s classical patron is Athena, and Reed’s is Hippocleides. They are both featured on merchandise in the respective college bookstores.
People have different reasons for pursuing PhDs, which may or may not include aspirations to work in academia. However, it’s true that the academic job market is indeed abysmal, particularly in Humanities, and this is something that should be considered as part of an informed decision. The Classics Dept. at Washington University in St. Louis puts it like this:
https://classics.artsci.wustl.edu/thinking-graduate-school-classics
Thanks for the reality reminder and the wustl link. I’m going to send it her way.
Yes, I know there’s at best little money to be made in classics. The way I see it, though,
- My daughter still has a lot of ground to cover, and she'll correct course as she finds out more about herself and her true passions. She is blessed to be also very good at math and the sciences, so I'm confident she will find her way.
- The classics job market may be a gazillion times "worse" than, say, CS, but I doubt the rat race is any different. I have seen countless miserable CS people with a job, always afraid they're going to get the ax. What's the point? How is a "forever junior programmer in a sweatshop" any better than a "high school Latin teacher?"
- The happiest people I know have a lot less money than I have. What is common between them is that they do, for little money, things they absolutely love to do, and that the are always around people that share their passions. I can list artists, farmers, musicians. They have found their vocation; what the world thinks about it is of little relevance.
So… If her passion now is the classics, and in four years it still is, then it is what it is. If not, I’m sure the colleges we’ve been discussing will have plenty of good options for her.
Thanks for the help so far. I’m glad I asked for it, you have all been extremely supportive!
Is your D interested in BMC for both the undergraduate and graduate program in classics? If she did change her mind about classics and ended up in a different field, she wouldn’t be disadvantaged by a BMC degree when applying to grad school. If you check the charts here, you’ll see that BMC is one of the top feeder schools for doctoral programs in a variety of areas. http://www.thecollegesolution.com/the-colleges-where-phds-get-their-start/
“Small classes, frequent discussions led by experienced faculty, faculty-graded writing assignments, mentored exposure to primary source materials, thesis requirements, etc., would seem to be managed more easily in small liberal arts colleges than in large research universities.”
tk, I am not sure I agree with that statement, and even if it were so, you seem to be confusing Michigan and other large research universities that are resource-rich for a large research university with insufficient faculty and funding to ensure that undergraduate students benefit from faculty involvement. At wealthy large research universities, beyond intro-level classes, most classes are small, particularly in unpopular humanities majors, and virtually all contact students have in their classes, from discussions to the grading of assignments and papers, is with faculty.
But forget Michigan for a minute. Let us focus instead on schools that you cannot deny have smaller, discussion based classes and 100% faculty involvement in the humanities, like Claremont McKenna, Colby, Colgate, Middlebury, Notre Dame. How come their PhD production rates are no higher than Cal, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern or Penn, all of which are large research universities with large classes and graduate student instructors?
Good question. Short answer: I don’t know.
I suspect it’s because student-faculty engagement isn’t the only factor influencing PhD production. Or, even if it is a very significant factor, it may not be consistently stronger in all departments at all LACs than it is in corresponding departments at all RUs.
To the extent many LACs do have high PhD production rates, I don’t think the reasons are completely understood. The point of my last post above is that we don’t know enough to attribute them primarily to selection effects (as you did in post #30). It may well be some combination of factors.
Consider some of the NSSE findings for doctoral (D) v. baccalaureate (B) institutions (that is, for RUs v. LACs).
http://nsse.indiana.edu/2016_institutional_report/pdf/Frequencies/Freq%20-%20SR%20by%20Carn.pdf
Example senior year responses:
During the current school year, about how often have you done the following?
D … B
34% 53% “Very often” asked questions or contributed to course discussions in other ways
15% 27% “Very often” talked about career plans with a faculty member
11% 18% “Very often” worked with a faculty member on activities other than coursework
10% 20% “Very often” discussed course topics, ideas, or concepts with a faculty member outside of class
8% 16% “Very often” discussed your academic performance with a faculty member
During the current school year, to what extent have your instructors done the following?
D … B
22% 35% “Very much” provided feedback on a draft or work in progress
22% 32% “Very much” provided prompt and detailed feedback on tests or completed assignments
Which of the following have you done or do you plan to do before you graduate?
D … B
26% 46% “Done or in progress” work with a faculty member on a research project
45% 74% “Done or in progress” complete a culminating senior experience (capstone course, senior project or thesis, comprehensive exam, portfolio, etc.)
These are aggregate statistics for surveyed institutions. YMMV for the specific schools that interest you.
One reason may be that undergraduate LAC students do not work with graduate students or postdocs and thus develop a romanticized view of the process of getting a PhD. One semester of working in a lab from 10:00 AM to 10:00PM six days a week for a lousy stipend was enough convince my kids not to take that route. LAC students don’t have that opportunity, and by the time they find out it is too late.
@Zinhead That is an interesting thought – I wonder whether, as LAC students have the experience, almost exclusively, of small class settings and direct relationships with faculty – as opposed to lecture classes and discussion sections led by TAs (usually) at research institutions – that there is a certain amount of “romanticization” of the life of the professor, with the notion that being a professor means talking about Plato, walking your golden retriever on campus, and having students babysit your kids. A student at a research institution may see more of the juggling of multiple roles that goes on – the conferences, the research, the supervising of those TAs in their dissertation work, as well as teaching undergrads – and therefore, the “rose colored glasses” are off, not just about what the life of the grad student is like, but also the life of the professor.
Hard to know, but interesting to speculate about.
It depends on so many things, it is hard to generalize. I had a great PhD experience, and so have most of the people I know who did it. All of them went on to have good careers. By the end of my PhD, I had decided not to pursue the academic career any longer - it was clear to me that the whole grant application stuff, etc, etc, was not very appealing to me, and that there were good chances outside.
My wife spent tons of time in the lab in her graduate school, and she loved it.
Again, you have to find your vocation and follow it. To me, that’s one of the things colleges are for: if you can’t find something you want to work hard for, even if for little money, then you have to look for something else to do. Whether a small LAC or a big U is the right place for you to find the right path, that depends on too many personal things.
Back to the original question, it looks to me like Reed and BMC are the best colleges amongst those four for my daughter to find out what her thing is, and if it is really classics, to succeed in it. In the end, it will be up to her. We’re visiting all four this month, armed with tons of information from this thread and our own research in order to hopefully pick the right one.
@MrKamaji I’m glad you narrowed it down to those two anyways in the end. Both are excellent and seem to have a lot to offer her. I wish her the best of luck.
Coming out of retirement to respond to this…
A lot depends on your daughter’s interests, personality, and academic background. Things I would consider:
(1) How strong is her background in Greek and/or Latin? If she’s starting from scratch, any of these should be adequate. If she’s already operating at a relatively high level in at least one of the languages, you’ll have to examine language offerings more carefully – especially in a small department like Reed’s. How many upper-level courses are offered each semester in Greek? In Latin? Keep in mind that a time conflict with another course or a professor being on sabbatical can play havoc with one’s course options in a small department.
(2) Are her interests more philological or archaeological? Michigan and Bryn Mawr are far and away the best options for archaeology here. Again, all of these are sufficiently strong for philological training.
(3) Does she have interests outside the Greco-Roman world? Classicists are increasingly looking outside of their traditionally narrow disciplines at the wider Mediterranean world – to study Greek and Phoenician interactions in Cyprus, for example, or to study how Babylonian and Greek scholarship influenced one another. Additionally, training in other disciplines, such as sociology, gender studies, geography, linguistics, etc., can prove quite helpful. Unsurprisingly in this day and age, computing and digital humanities are all the rage!
As others have noted, Bryn Mawr has a fantastic program. I’m surprised to see you haven’t come across any BMC or Haverford grads in your searches, as I personally know several in classics and archaeology graduate programs. In addition to a strong program on campus, Bryn Mawr offers cross-registration with Penn, which has superb offerings in classics and archaeology as well as a world-class archaeology museum.
Michigan has an all-around great classics program, and the faculty list reads like a veritable who’s who of classical studies. Sue Alcock (lured back from Brown) is a rock star archaeologist, Ben Fortson wrote the textbook that every comparative Indo-European linguistics class in the US uses, Richard Janko has done great work on Linear B and archaic Greek epic, Christopher Ratté has directed major excavations in Turkey, Nic Terrenato has worked on the Etruscans and early Roman history…to name only a few. Additionally, Michigan has a fantastic archaeology museum (newly renovated!) and has a massive papyrology collection, something only a few other universities can boast (Berkeley, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Duke). There’s nothing cooler than being able to hold and read actual ancient texts!
https://lsa.umich.edu/kelsey/
https://www.lib.umich.edu/papyrology-collection
Boston U has weaker but still solid offerings in classics and archaeology. I personally would not consider it a peer of either of the above programs (only Harvard is, in the Boston area), but it’s certainly not a bad option if the university really suits her.
I know relatively little about the classics programs of Reed or Fordham. As others have said, Reed has a very intense, academically demanding environment. She should know pretty quickly whether that suits her.
If she has related interests outside the classical world, I’d again emphasize Bryn Mawr and Michigan. (For example, an interest in Ptolemaic Egypt or Greco-Persian interactions.) Bryn Mawr offers some classes covering the ancient Near East, and Penn offers a multitude of classes in Egyptology, Assyriology, Maya archaeology, and so on. Michigan has thriving programs in anthropology and Near Eastern studies; some of its faculty are getting a bit long in the tooth, but the departments have started to make excellent new hires, such as a Sumerian expert hired last year.
As for universities vs. LACs…all of these, however large, will have small classics courses, and language courses will be particularly small. Course sizes in other departments will vary wildly from one college to another, however, and certainly the social scenes of large and small schools are very different. You’re more likely to find a student group that meets your interest at a large university (Michigan has groups like a Chinese acoustic guitar club!), but small colleges tend to have more inclusive social scenes. It’s really a matter of personal preference.
It is unfortunately true that the job market for the humanities is bad and will likely only get worse. That said, people do still get jobs. Students who attend a top-notch PhD program, produce an interesting dissertation, and embrace the trend toward interdisciplinary studies (e.g. digital humanities) will fare the best, but of course there are no guarantees. There are other career routes for classicists who don’t break into academia, such as academic publishing or teaching high school Latin. I even know one Latinist who wound up teaching high school math and doesn’t regret her classics background in the slightest.
Wow. Thanks for chiming in, @warblersrule. I didn’t expect you to answer, given your last activity was in 2015. I am honored :). For the record, I found Bryn Mawr through some of your posts here. I am glad I did, what a nice school - thanks for those!
The other posters in this thread convinced be to give a very serious look at Reed. It does look very strong; one of my worries is that the campus is close to, well, nothing of relevance as far as classics are concerned. On the other hand, it is a very well rounded college, strong in both humanities and sciences - good news for a classics major looking for interdisciplinary studies. Given their success in producing PhDs, they must be doing something right!
Due to academic & non-academic factors, Reed seems like the perfect place for a tiny % of students. Be sure your kid is exactly that type before turning down all these other superb options.
Fordham has traditionally had an excellent philosophy dept, & often there is overlap between Classics & philosophy, so if the student likes the whole NYC thing, I’d consider Fordham.
If she thinks she’d like the single-sex focus & intimacy of BMC , that would be fine.
If she’s eager to embrace the tried-and-true Boston collegiate experience, then BU.
And considering it’s one of those few schools that has something for just about everybody, there is WIDJGTMA (When in doubt just go to Michigan already).
@warblersrule Thank you so much for your thorough (and very helpful!) response! I’m the aforementioned daughter!
(1) My background in Greek/Latin is shallow and self-taught. I’ve gone through the first few chapters of Wheelock’s, but only the first few and without much attention to vocabulary.
(2) At this point I’m not really sure where my interests lie- my main attraction to UPenn was the archaeology museum and the Academic Year Internship/student research opportunities. From what I can see, though, those are only available to Penn students. Bryn Mawr does have a leg up on Reed on this point, though, considering that Portland isn’t (from what I can see) the home of many archaeological institutions.
Thanks so much again!
Here’s a report from our visit to Fordham, for posterity: we could not visit on the main day, because it conflicted with BU. We had to do a “normal” visit instead. Take this with a grain of salt then.
The campus (the Bronx one) is surprisingly nice. Good looking buildings, green spaces, and so on. I was very impressed. What turned be off was the neighborhood. We took the subway back and forth, and had to walk around. It is definitely not a “welcoming” place. We went to the little Italy region to eat, and had excellent food, so there’s that. The library was impressive, and the little Roman/Greek museum is nice.
The “welcome” presentation before the tour was pretty canned. “Look at this video” and “look at this other video,” none of which added anything, except - if you’re into sports - for showing people doing sports. Pretty artificial. I hope the official event was better.
Our tour guide was a Senior, with a major in Philosophy, and double minors in Classics and Political Science. I talked to her for about five minutes after the tour, and the impression I got was that, if you have an attraction for service-oriented education, Fordham is likely to be a pretty good place to be.
All in all, I wish I could have gone to the main admitted student event. Fordham did positively surprise me, and I wanted to be able to spend some time with the classics department professors and students for a closer look.
Here’s a report to our visit to BU, for posterity: we went to one of the main admitted student events, a day-long affair.
The campus, not surprisingly, is completely nondescript. It was raining, and nobody was any worse for it. There is nothing to look at. I nosed around in the theology/philosophy/classics department, and the building had a “I don’t want to spend time here” feeling. On the bright side, “not here” is Boston, and what’s there to complain about? While in the building, I browsed the fliers in both the classics and philosophy departments. The classics ones were mostly “come to graduate school at X university” or “pay Y to study abroad in Greece,” plus course descriptions. That’s fine, I guess. The philosophy fliers were that, plus (a) a lot of “gender and race” talks, and (b) semi-motivational “why study philosophy” fliers. Not very encouraging.
The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) gave us a somewhat canned speech, with strong emphasis on (a) how many majors there were, and (b) how strongly research-oriented CAS was. The canned part was forgettable, but “research-oriented” was encouraging. The next speaker, Steve Jarvi, was much better, and reminded me of Reed’s president when talking about the philosophy of the school, the (un)importance of double-majoring, and so on. Still, heavy emphasis on how many majors you have to choose from.
Getting our hopes up, we went to the open house to talk to the Classics professors… none of which showed up. There was a single Junior student fielding the booth. He was, by all accounts, a bright and nice young man, and we talked for a good while. The summary, though, was not good: there were zero research opportunities in classics, zero internships available, and that is considering the department has a bunch of graduate students, and publishes Arion; can’t they use some undergrads for doing something there? If not, they’re in Boston, for crying out loud: how about some deals with the MFA or the ISGM, even if it is for tour guiding? Oh well. Hopes dashed.
Beginning Latin and Greek are taught by grad students sometimes. Great… Classes are not that small, going from 50+ for popular courses, to about 15 for advanced languages.
All in all, the Classical Studies department really did not put its best face forward, to say the least. It feels like they barely tried. I’m sure one can get a very good education in classics there, but it looks like one must be prepared to insert oneself into the field without much help from the school, and be pretty driven about it.