Your daughter being from in-state will prove advantageous for William & Mary, but as an ultimate safety I would definitely consider Mary Washington as well.
I went to a midwestern flagship university and enrolled in a T5 (maybe #3 at the time) PhD program directly thereafter, and in looking at other students in the program, I was not an exception. In fact, students who had attended elite institutions were in the minority. As mentioned elsewhere, it’s the coursework taken, research completed, etc. And should your daughter decide to do something besides a doctoral program, such as law school, the name of the undergrad matters little and the LSAT and class rank matters a great deal.
Essentially, I would not advocate for an elite school simply because it’s “elite.” If it has the fit, and programs, and is affordable for your family, great. But if there’s an institution that has the fit, programs, is affordable but is not elite, I wouldn’t eliminate it from consideration either.
In that case, yes, a LAC in a more urban area, like Swarthmore, makes a lot more sense. I don’t think that Carleton of Grinnell would be great choices either - they are both in rural, agricultural areas.
We actually visited St. Johns last summer. Super interesting place but a little to outside the norm for my kid. She loved the idea of it but it didn’t seem real practical.
@AustenNut I hear what you are saying and in general you may be right if you are comparing an Elite undergraduate school with a very good University. But…I don’t think you can compare a Flagship University to Mary Washington. Mary Washington is a regional university. I went to a regional university in VA that at the time was lightyears ahead of Mary Washington and when I applied to elite PhD programs in English I didn’t even get a sniff. That was with a 4.0 in my major with top drawer GREs. I understand that MW has a good Classics department but in general it is MAYBE the 5th or 6th or even 7th best public school in VA. From my experience, talking to a lot of friends who are Professors who take on grad students at an elite university (UVA), the quality of the undergraduate institution is quite important.
However, since she is looking at Classics, it depends on what she wants to do. If the OP’s daughter wants to end up in academia, attending a LAC or an “elite” institution provides a huge advantage. In the humanities, it is very very difficult to get a TT faculty positions without a PhD from an elite university, and, because academia, and especially the humanities, is so status-ridden, it is pretty difficult to be accepted to a top PhD program without having attended a prestigious undergraduate program.
Midwestern Flagships are mostly pretty prestigious, depending on the major. Not only Michigan, but Wisconsin, UIUC, UMN, and OSU are all Big Name colleges, and, depending on the field, are top colleges, despite the prevailing feeling in CC that Public Universities are all Second Tier at best. Plenty of the Ecology undergraduates that I knew at UIUC ended up in the very top ranked PhD programs, and these programs also hired people with PhDs from UIUC as TT faculty.
On the other hand, being accepted to top ranked PhD programs with undergraduate degrees from Northeastern Illinois, U Wisconsin Milwaukie, IUPUI, or even Kent State, SIUC, or UC Riverside can be challenging.
Getting a faculty position in the humanities with a PhD from a relatively low ranked PhD program is much more challenging than with a PhD from a higher ranked program.
Advantages that an undergraduate from a LAC have are, first, the tend to hit upwards - their acceptance rates to PhD programs which are more prestigious than the LAC is higher, second, it is easier to build the type of resume that is attractive to grad schools (personalized LoRs, presentations and publications, conferences, etc), and it is far easier for a graduate of a LAC to get a faculty position at a LAC.
All that being said, for many fields, especially Classics, large urban universities have clear advantages, especially those which have huge museum collections and faculty who work on those collections. While much of the material is available digitally and virtually, it really isn’t the same.
Smaller colleges with access to those collections are also great choices.
The vast majority of Classics majors don’t end up with PhD’s and do not end up as a faculty member at a university. I hate to beat a dead horse, but I don’t want that fact to get lost in the discussion. Classics is seen as arcane and weird by most people- but I was surprised by how many Classics majors there were at my top 5 MBA program, how many Classics majors I have worked with and for in my corporate career, how many Classics majors end up as doctors, lawyers, etc.
Yep good points and something dear to my heart…I thought I wanted to be an English PhD until I didn’t.
To me your point suggests that the strength of particular department is not paramount which I agree with I think. If my daughter wants to get a PhD, elite SLACs like Swarthmore seem to be the way to go (or one of the ways to go…Swarthmore produces more PhDs per capita than anyone else). If/when reality comes crashing down and she decides NOT to pursue a PhD an elite SLAC preps her for pretty much anything from Law School to an MBA to wandering around Europe. Right now I am most concerned about NOT closing off opportunities. The day I accepted JMU for myself was the day I closed off tons of future opportunities.
All of this (and this thread has been really helpful) has led me to believe that first and foremost, get her in a school where the fit is right. Assuming it is a school that allows some flexibility in crafting one’s curriculum, I think she would be able to cobble together a great set of courses in all kinds of areas related to language and antiquity, regardless of the strength of any one particular department.
We still need to think through the implications of ED applications, but I think her list of top six schools, her second tier list of SLACs should those not work out, and her relatively small list of National schools should give her something that works.
Again, appreciate all of your amazing comments and insight.
Just wanted to add that the concept of an “elite” LAC in the context of a Ph.D. in the humanities can be broadened beyond top 5 or 10. In my field (not classics but close, languages and literatures), graduates of schools like Oberlin, Kenyon, Mt. Holyoke (as well as good state schools mentioned earlier) have been accepted to Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Columbia Ph.D. programs. Of course, they were very strong students showing promise as future scholars (the school name alone wouldn’t get them there).
I’m not sure that what you’re saying is all that amazing. English majors have the same challenge. History majors have the same challenge. Like Classics majors, they will likely apply to an elite law school or an MBA program, if they don’t want to teach.
What did I say that claimed to be amazing? I’m pointing out that a HS kid who loves ancient languages and “thinks” she is going to get a PhD is statistically unlikely to get a PhD. And that there are many other paths besides teaching. What question are you directing to me?
While I agree with this in theory, elite colleges have a couple of things going for them. For one, good Classics programs are almost exclusively found at selective colleges. There are a few exceptions like Cincinnati and Florida State, but generally the Ivies and peer institutions have the best programs.
More importantly, elite colleges like the Ivies have an enormous amount of funding and can afford to not only keep but adequately support their Classics departments. It is no surprise that the only colleges actively expanding their ancient studies offerings in recent years are top schools like NYU and USC.
Although many seem blissfully unaware, humanities programs are under fire nearly everywhere, and that goes especially for niche and historically unpopular fields like Classics. Some Classics departments have been starved of new hires, merged with other departments (e.g. “Classical and Modern Languages”), or eliminated altogether.
The recent shuttering of the department at Howard and the battle to save Classics at UVM (which has long had a good MA program and been a top feeder school for PhD programs) are a couple of illustrative examples, or one could look to Ithaca, which announced a year ago that it would be laying off about 1/4 of its faculty and eliminating nearly two dozen majors. Why in the world would any Classics major want to attend a LAC like Ohio Wesleyan, where Classics has been slashed to such an extent that the “program” is carried entirely on the shoulders of a visiting lecturer?
Considering that the pandemic has only exacerbated the trend of closing or greatly reducing humanities programs, I find it very difficult indeed to recommend small programs at the less wealthy colleges.
SJC does not offer Classics, but rather “the classics,” which is something quite different. While students read a number of works of ancient literature in their first year or two, SJC does not offer Latin to any meaningful degree, nor does it offer classes in classical art, archaeology, history, etc.
I couldn’t agree more. PhD programs in the humanities at top schools like Brown and Yale are extremely selective and have the luxury of admitting only the big fish from the big ponds. They draw not only from American colleges but also many universities abroad, so it’s not difficult to find a half dozen or so extraordinarily competent students.
That said, the only people who should be pursuing PhDs in a field like Classics are those who can’t see themselves doing anything else. As I wrote above, Classics positions are being eliminated left and right, and they were never terribly numerous to begin with.
I would add – from my perspective as the spouse of a humanities professor at a top department in his field – that graduate school admissions depends very heavily on an applicant’s LORs and writing sample as well as potential alignment between the applicant’s area of interest and the expertise of the department. A big part of why elite schools may “place” well in Ph.D. admissions is that the LORs are coming from known peers and experts in the field. Graduate admissions teams look at the letters from X leading expert at another top institution and trust that recommender’s judgment. The LOR from the wonderful teacher who is not publishing at the top journals and not invited to present at top conferences, just won’t carry as much weight. As others have noted, though, “elite” programs are not necessarily the top 20 schools – Cincinnati is a top program in classical archaeology, which the average, informed CC parent would not know.
edited to add: But I would not let the possibility a student might want to consider graduate school down the road be a driver in the college process. If a kid knows they are not a big university kind of kid, then the remote possibility they may consider grad schools and would want LORs from known researchers is not a reason to switch the calculus and pursue big schools. The kinds of critical thinking, reading and writing skills that students develop in small liberal arts colleges, plus the ease of developing faculty relationships and pursuing opportunities, will serve a student well, no matter what their career goals.
I don’t disagree with you about programs and their possible elimination or reduction in the humanities, particularly with Classical Studies. But in the section you quoted from me, when I said “programs” I meant good programs, programs that are as extensive as desired/required. If the program doesn’t qualify in that respect, then it’s not a good fit (or a good program). It’s like a kid who turned in their homework, but with half of it incomplete. Yes, they turned in their homework, but it is in no way satisfactory.
As far as the difficulties related to pursuing graduate studies in the humanities that would lead to tenure-track jobs, I totally understand. It’s one of the reasons why I left my doctoral program (that and the professor in my particular area of interest who completely killed my love of the subject).
I agree with what you’re saying - but I’m also one who validated what @Bill_Marsh said about Ohio Wesleyan and Mary Baldwin - which in one pub, was rated #1. And yes, those types of things just give names to investigate further. No one said you should go here over Harvard - but it certainly something to review for other possibilities… OP actually said Mary Baldwin isn’t even a top half public school in VA and it may be true - but we all know certain schools punch above their overall weight in certain disciplines. I’m also glad OP is strongly looking at fit - as we all know, going to the highest ranked doesn’t make it best for the student.
I totally get what you’re saying about the elite take from the elite. So I went and did some digging - and actually I found this isn’t necessarily true. This is from Harvard’s website of PHD classics - those that show their undergrad in their profile and that went to a US school:
Top level schools - lots of them. But also some not top level schools. I will add - a ton of students who studied overseas.
Again, don’t disagree with what you’re saying - but I do think you can go anywhere and get into a PHD program. Will those get you one of the few tenured jobs? No clue - but it is interesting to me - looking at the actual students from 3 distinguished programs - and there’s a ton of other reputable ones out there as well. Also, the colleges the OP listed are all reaches - so is there even assurance they will get into one?
Harvard PHD candidates.
Bowdoin
Brown
Chicago
Columbia
Cornell
Dickinson
Haverford
Michigan
UCONN
U of Dallas
Rice
Yale
From Yale - PHD candidates
Gtown
U of Georgia
Harvard
Michigan
Penn
Princeton
Rice
Rutgers
NYU PHD candidates
Alabama
Cal
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
College of Charleston
Florida
Kansas
Loyola of Maryland
Marquette
UNC
Puget Sound
UVM