Classics Programs at SLACs

College Majors Humanities Majors
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I don’t know about “small college experience”, since the experience there is very different from any US college, large or small.

On the other hand, I do not think that there is a better place to learn Classics than Oxford. Moreover, for a high achieving USA student, it is actually easier to be admitted to Oxford than to any Ivy, as well as to a number of the colleges on that list up there.

So @DeadHeadDad - I also would recommend that your daughter take a look at some UK colleges, specifically the older ones (Oxbridge, St Andrews, etc).

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You are completely right. @MWolf, that is very different than the US experience! I was just thinking of the being part of a smallish college within the larger university and the direct prof interaction.

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I suggest your daughter take a close look at Hamilton. It’s the only liberal arts college to have served as the headquarters for the American Journal of Philology (founded 1880), when it was edited by a Hamilton professor (now emerita).

Seconding the suggestion of Kenyon as well. Its IPHS program integrates the study of classics and other humanities from at least the time of Aristophanes.

https://www.kenyon.edu/academics/departments-and-majors/integrated-program-in-humane-studies/

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OP, your d sounds very accomplished and I’m sure she’s going to thrive wherever she lands up.

Just to make an obvious point- if your D’s concerns about universities has to do with size- she can be very confident that her classes both inside the major and related will be small, she will likely know every single professor in the department. One of the fantastic things about the university setting though- grad students. I found them incredibly helpful “Don’t take this course in the Spring, take it in the Fall when it’s taught by XYZ; here’s a shortcut for you if you don’t want to learn Ugaritic but need one document translated for a research paper; if you are interested in field work this summer, here’s the woman who runs a fantastic program, if you call her, use my name”… etc. Grad students are the bonus at an already strong Classics department! (Plus a shoulder to cry on when you’re writing a paper which is going nowhere, and your roommate who is a bio major just can’t relate!)

Merc- Medieval and Renaissance- ooh, you’re bringing me back to my happy place.

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Good points.

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All are excellent options, but Haverford and Bryn Mawr are the best LACs for Classics by a country mile.

@Mwfan1921 listed some great suggestions, so be sure to check those out. Mary Bachvarova at Willamette is absolutely brilliant.

The College Transitions list linked above is decidedly hit-or-miss, as any classicist could tell you at a glance. While it does list a fair number of strong Classics programs, it also includes some good but not great programs while omitting some of the strongest programs in the world (e.g. Ohio State and Wisconsin but not Berkeley, Michigan, or UT Austin is utterly inexplicable).

I couldn’t agree more with @blossom about studying Classics at universities like Chicago and Penn. Such departments arguably offer the best of both worlds – extensive academic offerings and resources unmatched by any LAC as well as small classes and excellent faculty mentoring.

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@DeadHeadDad What does she want to do with her degree?

Midd is really good for modern languages and linguistics, probably less so for ancient languages and Classics. It is also a lot more outdoorsy/crunchy than preppy/jock these days.

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College Transitions uses IPEDS for key statistics. By this information, Berkeley recently graduated 3 “first majors” across ancient Greek, Latin and classics. Michigan graduated 0 students across these fields. In the exclusion of these schools, it appears that College Transitions simply has adhered to its methods.

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Is it possible Ohio State, Wisconsin, Berkeley, Michigan and UT-Austin are being judged by their graduate programs?

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For clarity, not contradiction, I believe @warblersrule characterized Ohio State and Wisconsin as “good but not great” schools for classics.

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Yes, exactly. I would throw a few others into this category as well like JHU, Brandeis, Georgetown, and Tufts (though JHU is outstanding for ancient Near Eastern and biblical studies).

They’re still more than good enough for most undergraduates, mind you – they’re just not on the same level as, say, Stanford or Brown.

In my opinion, one can’t really draw a neat dividing line between undergraduate and graduate programs in Classics at universities, as there is a great deal of overlap – certainly more so than in some STEM fields, where one sometimes sees separate teaching and research faculties. NYU is perhaps an exception, as its strongest graduate programs/institutes in ancient studies (the IFA and ISAW) are entirely separate from its undergraduate programs in art history and classics, but even that is debatable.

Virtually all professors teach both undergraduate and graduate seminars, advanced undergraduates often take graduate courses, the same resources on campus are available to undergraduates and grad students (research libraries, archaeology museums like the Penn Museum, etc.), most universities that run archaeological excavations in Greece and Italy take undergraduates (field school participants) as well as grad students (excavation staff), and so on.

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32

I don’t want to hijack this thread, but I just wanted to say @MWolf that your perspective on the vibe at Midd is really nice to hear. DS22 is starting there in the fall and it really had a lot of what he wanted but he leans much more heavily towards outdoorsy (crunchy not so much) than preppy/jock and I’m happy to hear he’ll have company.

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You guys are amazing! So many good suggestions here. I will try to respond to most of the questions all here…

What does she want to do with her degree: She is in 11th grade so it is still early…but she says she wants to go on and get a PhD in something related to languages and something old. Which does maybe change the equation some. My assumption is that since that is her goal, making sure she goes to the best Classics (or any major) department for undergrad is actually NOT that important. Rather a better overall education at an elite school might be a better path to an elite PhD program.

Most people would describe her as a language kid. I think that is just because that is what is available for HS kids (no philosophy classes etc…). She loves languages but doesn’t want to be a French or Spanish major. She wants to apply her language to something bigger. Those bigger things for her tend to be in the Literature/Religion/Philosophy area and specifically old stuff. So yeah… Middlebury may not be as an obvious choice as her transcript seemingly suggests.

Yes she loves medieval studies…there are just so few majors in that…With that said, I think the idea of doing a multidisciplinary approach centered around Languages and Antiquity/Medieval Period might be the best of all worlds and prepare her best for a PhD program.

She REALLY wants to go to a SLAC. She has had terrible anxiety issues most of her life. She is on top of it, but she is much more comfortable in smaller environments. She LOVES the idea of Grinnell’s location because she KNOWS that all the kids are going to be cloistered together on campus with nowhere to go. She wants to be in a place where everyone who goes there knows they are going to be together. So, Amherst where there are LOTS of other options is not appealing while Middlebury/Grinnell where you are stuck on campus is much more so.

We haven’t visited any National Universities. We will visit William and Mary next month because it is a State school and its size is acceptable. We live in Charlottesville and I have worked at UVA for the past 20 years, so she has a good idea of what a bigger University experience is like. She HATES the idea of UVa. She has decided to focus on the SLACs for ED1 and then if that doesn’t work look at some of the smaller National Universities. Chicago and Brown, I expect, would be a the very top of her list.

With that said, I found the the ED discussion interesting. I will have to think about the strategy a bit more. I didn’t think about the “schools competing for you” side of things. My understanding though is that with most of these Needs Blind schools they give you the financial aid that the calculator tells them to give you. That there is not much variation when you are dealing with the biggies. I understood that Grinnell may be an exception to that because they need to recruit to cornfields and because they got all that Buffett money. On our tours in the summer most schools indicated that they took around 50% of there incoming class as ED1. Those types of numbers suggest to me that if you have a preference you should do it as it is MUCH more likely to get in ED1. Again…definitely something to consider.

There was a William and Mary question somewhere…Yes the admission rate for in state students is much higher.

She is absolutely open to All Women. Though the idea of “Teaing” at Wellesley makes her want to barf. When we go visit Swarthmore and Haverford we plan to see Bryn Mawr as well. From what I know about that school, I expect she will like it.

I am curious about the statement that Haverford and Bryn Mawr have particularly good Classics programs. Is that because the two schools essentially share each others’ departments and thus have twice the firepower of the typical SLAC?

On Hamilton…we visited this summer. She didn’t really like it. She thought the intense focus on how happy everyone was was disturbing :slight_smile: I personally was very turned off by the segregated campus (Dark Side/Light Side)…with the alternative arts kids self segregating away from the preppy kids. I had read about it but didn’t really believe it till I saw it.

She would LOVE to go to the UK for college but my wife and I, for a number of reasons, just don’t think it is the right time yet for that. I expect that if she does indeed look at PhD programs she would definitely be looking at UK and Europe in general.

Thanks again all,

DHD

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To follow up on the Middlebury Vibe, yes I agree. There is a preppy/jock thing happening there (30% or so of the population is a varsity athlete) but the outdoorsy crowd is huge (crunchy or not). Your son will love it. Unfortunately my daughter is not at all interested in sports and more of the insidey crowd (particularly inside the library) and thus the interest in Swarthmore :slight_smile: :grinning:

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Bryn Mawr has long had a very distinguished Classics program (it is unique among LACs in having PhD programs in classics and archaeology), and it has some excellent Classics-related resources and programs like the Carpenter Library and the Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

But yes, cross-registration between Haverford and BMC helps a great deal, as does cross-registration with Swarthmore and (especially) Penn.

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[quote=“DeadHeadDad, post:33, topic:3599936, full:true”]

I am curious about the statement that Haverford and Bryn Mawr have particularly good Classics programs. Is that because the two schools essentially share each others’ departments and thus have twice the firepower of the typical SLAC?[/quote]

I don’t think that we can assume that Haverford + Bryan Mawr = twice the firepower of the typical SLAC. They are each about as small as an SLAC gets with a few rare exceptions. Their combined enrollment is comparable to Middlebury’s and smaller than Wesleyan’s.

But at any SLAC, departments will vary in size from one school to another as colleges have different strengths and have evolved differently from one to another. I think I’d look at the catalogues of the schools you’re most interested to see the size of the faculty in each department and the number of courses offered. This of course has its limits too because not all courses are offered annually, so at some point you’ll probably be best served by talking with a faculty member.

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For free-thinking students, this architectural and spatial range simply allows for desirable variety in places to live (29 residence halls), eat (7 places), study and socialize, even within the span of one day. There’s also a grey side.

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I have a couple of colleges to suggest. One of the schools that we don’t hear a lot about but I keep in my hidden gems file is Ohio Wesleyan. It’s small (1600), located in the small suburban city/town of Delaware, Ohio (pop: 40,000), has small classes (70% < 20), and accessible professors (10:1). Best of all is that costs are moderate as things go these days. It has separate majors in Classics, Ancient Studies, Medieval Studies, and Renaissance Studies. They have a Classics Club and a Classics Honor Society, and they encourage students to study abroad in Greece and/or Italy.

A second suggestion is Mary Washington as an instate alternative to William & Mary. As great as W&M is, MW provides a viable alternative, similar size, small city location, Classics major, study abroad, classics related extracurriculars. Very strong program that is worth a look.

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Here’s affirmation on U of Mary Washington …in this publication rated #1.

Edit. Ohio Wesleyan is on the list too

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Note that Ohio Wesleyan contains ancient, medieval and Renaissance Studies to a single major: Ancient, Medieval, & Renaissance Studies Program | Ohio Wesleyan University. In any case, it graduated 0 first majors in this field or classics in a recent year: College Navigator - Ohio Wesleyan University.

Mary Washington appears in somewhat better form, having produced 4 majors in classics: College Navigator - University of Mary Washington.

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