High School Jr. Prospective Classics Major

College Majors Foreign Language & Culture Majors
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<p>I'm currently a junior in high school and I'm looking for schools with very strong classics programs, particularly Latin. I am mostly looking at LACs and some Ivies, though I've heard Berkeley has an outstanding program. Preferably small class sizes and a challenging curriculum. </p>

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<p>You might start with the colleges that have classics departments that are members of the Society for Classical Studies: <a href=“| Society for Classical Studies”>| Society for Classical Studies. I would also look at Catholic colleges, as a lot of them offer Latin studies: <a href=“http://www.catholiccollegesonline.org/”>http://www.catholiccollegesonline.org/&lt;/a&gt;. Also check out where national Latin exam winners are going to college here: <a href=“http://nle.org/pdf/newsletter/NLE-Fall-2014Newsletter.pdf”>http://nle.org/pdf/newsletter/NLE-Fall-2014Newsletter.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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Definitely check out the University of Kentucky. I’m a freshman classics major at UK, and I turned down a full-tuition scholarship at USC to take advantage of UK’s amazing program. What’s unique about it is that there are 500-level Latin classes taught entirely in Latin, as well as outside-of-class conversational Latin sessions that are open to anyone, regardless of level. The Greek professors want to start a similar program in Ancient Greek. This year, a grad student started some informal conversational Ancient Greek sessions, which I have been attending. The classics program homepage is http://mcl.as.uky.edu/classics and the page on conversational Latin opportunities specifically is http://mcl.as.uky.edu/latin-institute. The Classics professors here are also some of the kindest people I know. They love ancient languages, and they love their students. I can’t recommend UK’s classics program enough.

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Holy Cross is the best LAC for Classics (they even have scholarships dedicated to classics majors).
Reed, Bryn Mawr… are other good choices.
If you want small classes UCB isnt what you want - save it for grade school, where it’ll really help - although even at universities known for their large undergrad classes, classics (especially Ancient Greek and post-intermediate Latin) tend to be quite small.
Check that the college offers both Greek and Latin, as well as Ancient History. Check out the study abroad programs and how good the career center is so that you can convert your intellectual skills into a job (unless your main goal is a PHD, in which case you need to look at PHD production.)
Learning a modern language (French comes to mind) or Old English may come in handy, and everyone can benefit from one cours in statistics and an initiation to CS (check that there’s a gen ed section for non-science students).

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