My DD is having trouble deciding among the choices above where she has been accepted and we are currently revisiting these schools. She will likely double major in Classics and she is undecided on the other major which might be History or Biology. These schools are obviously very different in size and location, but we would appreciate any views on the relative academics and campus culture of these schools particularly for her likely majors. Thanks!
Unless she wants to become a latin teacher, it will be difficult to find a good job with a classics/history or classics/bio degree. Go to the least expensive and save the money for grad school.
A liberal arts education is good preparation for any career. You learn to think, reason, and write. At schools like the ones you are considering, you can major in classics or anything else and go on to be a successful business person in banking, finance, consulting, etc. or teach or go to law or Med school or anything.
She should pick the environment she likes best. The choices are very different.
Does she want Catholic affiliated or fully secular?
Does she want large or small?
Does she want a beautiful rural area or proximity to world class cities?
Does she want a southern ambience or northeastern?
I recently visited Middlebury and was impressed by the apparent culture. There was real diversity, with students of different races sitting together in the dining halls. Students were friendly and spoke about an intellectual and collaborative atmosphere and closeness with professors. It was a beautiful campus with amazing facilities and great food. It was also remote.
We plan to visit Tufts but have not done so yet. I know two people who went there and enjoyed it. The other schools are not in my son’s plans.
I can’t comment on relative strength in classics because I do not know. Take a look at the courses offered in the catalogs and which are actually scheduled in the 16-17 school year.
Good luck! She has wonderful options.
Thanks for the message. In response to your questions:
Does she want Catholic affiliated or fully secular?
- We are Catholic, but whether the school is Catholic is not very important
Does she want large or small?
- I think she would prefer midsized but she usually thrives wherever she is. I think that UVA may too big of a school but we were very impressed with its strong liberal arts programmes.
Does she want a beautiful rural area or proximity to world class cities?
- I think that she would be happier in a city, but if she felt that Midd or Davidson were better fits academically, she would go there.
Does she want a southern ambience or northeastern?
- I think a place that was "too Southern" (e.g. Wake Forest) would not work, but we like the areas around Davidson and UVA, particularly Charlottesville, which is a great town.
@Zinhead "Unless she wants to become a latin teacher, it will be difficult to find a good job with a classics/history or classics/bio degree. "
That is not true. @TheGreyKing sums it up nicely in the first paragraph of post #2. This issue came up in several of the meetings that we had with Classics professors. Unlike, say, Oxford, the professors know that the majority of Classics majors at Georgetown, Midd, etc will not become academics. Instead, the critical thinking, analytical and writing skills that you would gain as a Classics major (and Humanities in general from top schools) will put you in good stead for a variety of careers including mgt consulting and investment banking. In some ways, a Classics major applying to McKinsey or BCG would likely stand out from the many business and Econ majors applying for those roles.
@londondad - And you believed these Classics professors who are desperate to get anyone to rake their classes lest the department gets the axe? Instead of trusting professors with a vested interest in what major you kid chooses, do some independent research instead. Here are the results of an income study for college graduates. They don’t list classics majors as a separate category, but history majors are the nearest to classics and that major was ranked 155th out of 335 majors in terms of starting income.
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/majors-that-pay-you-back/bachelors?page=23
The following article summarizing the dataset produced by The Hamilton Project that reports on salaries by major over a longer period of time. The Hamilton data suggests that history majors make only average incomes.
Georgetown University, one of the schools mentioned by the OP, has a salary survey. Classics would fall under the “Area, Ethnic, and Civilization Studies” category which did not do so well in terms of average income levels. Look at page 132 to 143 for the data.
https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/whatsitworth-complete.pdf
Finally, UC Berkeley, which is comparable to the schools listed by the OP, produces a career destinations survey of recent graduates by major. The results for Classics majors are as follows:
https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Survey/2016Classics.pdf
https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Survey/2015Classics.pdf
The jobs taken by Classics majors include “administrative assistant”, “case assistant”, “support services intern” and “recreational sports leader”. I would be very disappointed if my kid went to a top 30 school for four years and took a job at the YMCA after graduating.
Compare that to the placement of economics majors from UC Berkeley.
https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Survey/2016Econ.pdf
I would encourage my kids to take classics or history courses or even minor in these fields if they had an interest in them. However, to major in classics or history would be, IMHO, a terrible waste of an opportunity for the vast majority of students.
@zinhead My daughter is currently Class President and one of the top students at one of the top 10 schools in England. She will end up a at a great US University. I have no doubt that she will be successful whatever she decides to pursue.
One thing to keep in mind is that UVa would have a lot more majors (including stuff like Batten and McIntire that you apply for) than the LACs. I haven’t looked at Georgetown, BC, and Tufts much, but they are probably closer to UVa in options.
Many if not most undergrads change majors and interests and being able to do so is a major positive of North American higher ed.
^^ Nicely said @londondad !!
I would do some digging into the Classics curriculums at BC and G’town. Generally, the Catholic colleges do a great job with the Classics.
@londondad - Best of luck to her.
@purpletitan Thanks. We were very impressed with the quality of the Humanities Depts at UVA yesterday that we explored and the students that we spoke to so she would be well covered at UVA if she decided to double major or change her mind from Classics. We still need to research Classics at UVA though, but it seems solid.
If I knew for certain that she would definitely major in Classics, then Midd might be the best choice, but I agree that she is more likely to double major or change majors entirely.
@wisteria100 We had met with Classics professors at both BC and GU. Both programs look solid but she preferred GU’s as it is larger and has more upper-level courses in Latin literature and poetry which is her favorite subsector of Classics.
Thanks for the help!
Honestly, I’d cut out UVA from the options. Being a state school with a limitation on how many out-of-state students it can take, it’s going to lack diversity as over 2/3 of the student body will be VA residents. I do think that is a limitation on the college experience although UVA is a fine institution academically. I also give it a knock for the social focus on frat/sorority life and secret clubs.
One more thing I would add is that paying for lectures is a really poor way to spend money (especially when you can find terrific lectures on any subject online now, these days). See what places would have more seminars and tutorials (and cases with cold calls, flipped classrooms, research opportunities, group work, presentations, and any sort of interactive learning).
(Assuming that money is not a question and my daughter genuinely liked all of the choices)
Based on your other posts, @londondad, and what I would suggest for my D, and considering that she is coming from the UK, I would plump for Georgetown as having the best combination of academic rigor, ease of getting to and from uni, range of students, and breadth of opportunities. But I would also try to encourage her to choose the one where she feels the most at home, b/c she can have a fantastic experience & get a super education at any of them.
(The fact that DC is a great city & my home town is completely incidental 
)
UVa may or may not be the right choice here in this particular case, but the fact that it is a “state school” really isn’t that relevant. Virginia is a large , diverse state. Many of the students are from Northern Virginia and many of those are children of government or military people and have lived in many places. There are over a 1,000 kids in every first year class that are NOT from Virginia and are from all over the US and other countries. Even most elite privates draw heavily from their own region. Good luck with the decision. These are all great schools!
Classics majors (includes Archeology) at Tufts had the following outcomes (2014,2015,2016):
Employment
Social Media Manager for the American School of Classical Studies (in Athens)
Software Engineer for a company at a local high tech incubator
Medical Scribe (stepping stone to med school)
Financial Advisor
Teacher at a charter school
Account Strategist for Google
RISE Fellow (paid training for a career in non-profits)
Paralegal (stepping stone to law school)
IT intern for IT services company
A Field Assistant/Field Technician for Boston University TVAR
Business Law Case Assistant
Marketing Analyst
Family Service Provider (Mental Health Services)
Research Assistant (U Chicago)
Grad School
Boston University
Tufts/Freidman School of Nutrition and Policy
Oxford
U Southern Maine
Tufts/Masters in Archeology
Harvard Law
History majors is a larger pool and include lots of financial analysts including BlackRock
https://students.tufts.edu/career-center/explore-careers-and-majors/outcomes-major
You really can’t narrow your list down from six colleges?
My educational background is in Computer Engineering , so I am probably biased, but for someone interested in the classics I would think that study in the area of “Digital Humanities” would be an interesting way to launch a 21st Century career.
Tufts is a pioneer in this area. Gregory Crane (a professor in the Classics Department) is one of the leading athorities (world wide) based on his work with the Perseus Project. Tufts just started offering a masters degree in “Digital Tools for PreModern Studies” which applies some of the hottest areas of CS/Artificial Intelligence to the area of Premodern Studies, but there is no reason why motivated undergrads can’t integrate it into their own curriculum.
I don’t think there is another classics department in the world teaching the application of natural language processing, visualization, and machine learning to the study of ancient texts. It is a great way to make computing relevant for someone who is more interested in another domain than pure computer science.
This is just another way for the devious engineering department at Tufts to lure unsuspecting liberal arts students into high tech careers with six-figure salaries - without them even knowing it. 
Here is a course description:
https://tuftsdaily.com/news/2013/10/23/spotlight-professor-gregory-crane/
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/about/who/gregoryCrane
Here is a resume of someone who is interested in Digital Humanities (employed by Google)
https://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~dsculley/
From what I’ve seen in life, most people outside the US envision their college/university years as a time of great adventure & exploration, so a small college in a small town (Davidson & Middlebury) is not what they are looking for…too few people, too few cultural offerings. Those are more like what they would expect at a plush residential high school.
Virginia as well might be a bit limiting due to its city being fairly small & quite isolated.
Tufts is apparently a fine university, but I would recommend Georgetown or BC. Both are vibrant places with big athletic events, a wide variety of majors, and easy access to wonderful cities. They are also easy to get to (major airports nearby).
Charlottesville is not “quite isolated.” It is no Boston or DC but it has it’s own charms and is not at all what I consider “isolated.” DC and Richmond are not that far away. The mountains, historical sites , are also nearby. All of these schools are good in their own ways. Good luck with the decision!