UG in Classics

My daughter is planning on majoring in Classics in UG with a pre-med track. Her stats-

  • Studying Latin since grade 6

  • SAT - 1560

  • South asian background

  • Weighted GPA - 4.7 (top 5% of her class )

  • Gold medalist in National Latin Exams

  • Participant in Certamen since middle school and award winner

  • Applied and selected to a highly selective summer humanities program for Latin last year

We are trying to develop a list of reach, safety and target schools for her. She is looking at Brown, Georgetown, Emory, WashU, Tufts …Does anyone have any idea about the competition to get in if she lists Classics as her major? I understand kids are admitted to the university rather than any specific field (unless it is engg or a capped major) as the schools recognize that kids can change their major later. So will she be compared with the STEM focussed kids who might go in undeclared? This is what is preventing her from even thinking about Stanford, Harvard, Yale etc even though they have a rich background and resources in Classics. Any suggestions are welcome!

With respect to your daughter’s interest in classics and her overall college list, these schools should be among those considered:

Amherst College
Barnard College
Bryn Mawr College
Carleton College
College of the Holy Cross
Davidson College
Hamilton College
Kenyon College
Macalester College
Oberlin College

Brandeis University
Brown University
Cornell University
Columbia University
Georgetown University
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Princeton University
Stanford University
Tufts University
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University

College of William and Mary
Ohio State University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Wisconsin – Madison

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The University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) has a well-regarded and broad Classics program. UMBC calls it Ancient Studies.

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With her strong background in Latin, it is unlikely she’ll be satisfied by the offerings of most liberal arts colleges. Notable exceptions include but are not limited to Haverford/Bryn Mawr and Barnard (cross-registration with Columbia).

Brown is excellent for classics, certainly the best of her choices. Emory is also fairly good and has exceptionally strong offerings in religious studies, if she’s at all interested in tackling Koine Greek or biblical studies. Wash U, Tufts, and Georgetown are all decent choices, though not exceptionally strong in classics.

What is she looking for in a college? Based on the colleges she’s interested in so far, I recommend taking a look at Penn, Michigan, Duke, Tulane, and possibly UVA as well as those she’s nervous about (i.e. Stanford and Yale).

Finding good safeties is always difficult for a strong classics student, but U Cincinnati is unusually strong in the field and may be worth a look. Merit aid is a possibility with her stats. Florida State is pretty solid as well.

Some of the Catholic schools like Villanova, BC, and Fordham are also worth looking into.

Applying as a classics major will probably help a bit, especially since she has the extracurricular experience to back it up, but I would not expect it to be a significant tip factor along the lines of, say, being a recruited athlete or legacy or from an underrepresented state like North Dakota.

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My daughter is a Classics major who started at Columbia and decided she needed to be closer to home in a smaller city, so she now attends University of Washington. While Columbia/Barnard has an excellent program, I was surprised by the course offerings in her main areas of interest at her flagship university. I would keep an open mind.

I believe admission to the extremely selective colleges has become even harder since she applied in 2018-2019. That said, Classics typically is not a capacity-constrained major, so it should be an easier admission than say computer science. If your daughter truly loves Classics, this love should show authentically in her applications. By credentials alone, she is a strong applicant. Wishing her the best!

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Thank you everyone for the great suggestions! She is interested in attending a college which has a hospital attached or close by as she wants to be on the pre-med track. Besides, she is also looking to do a year or semester abroad studying Latin/Roman history.

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Note that a variety of institutional types may be suitable for premed study:

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This represents one reason why your may want to research liberal arts colleges. Your daughter will be seeking sufficient depth and variety in Latin and Greek for only three years of study at her home campus. You can click on any of the schools listed in my first post for information on their classics programs, including specific course offerings.

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What is the highly selective summer humanities program for Latin, if you are willing to share it?

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Thanks!

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@Polybius this was the Stanford Summer Humanities last year.

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Most liberal arts colleges have limited offerings regardless. Taking Hamilton as an example, this fall it is offering intermediate Latin (which OP’s D would probably place out of) and a Latin literature class – one would have to have to hope that none of one’s other courses have a scheduling conflict with the latter! Additionally, only Greek II is offered in the fall, which is rather inconvenient for prospective classics majors who already have a background in Latin and are interested in starting Greek.

Contrast that with, say, Brown, which is offering 4 intermediate reading seminars in Latin (Latin literature, Tacitus, Apuleius, Lucretius), an advanced course on Republican Roman literature, and introductory courses in other ancient languages like Greek, Sanskrit, and ancient Egyptian.

Similarly, this fall Michigan is offering 3 intermediate courses in Latin (Roman Kings and Emperors, Aeneid, Intermediate Latin) and 5 upper level and graduate courses (Augustan Poetry, Livy, Latin Sight Reading, Later Latin Literature, and a topics class on Catullus) on top of introductory courses in Greek, Akkadian, Sumerian, ancient Egyptian, etc.

I am a big fan of LACs for popular majors like biology and political science which tend to be large and impersonal at universities, but most liberal arts colleges do not come close to matching the breadth and depth of course offerings and resources of the top universities in ancient studies.

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Wow! Thanks for the insight! We would have never thought of looking at the offerings in detail. Very much appreciate it as we have something to think about when researching schools.

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As another resource, you may want to consider IPEDS (examples below), which will show you the number of recent graduating “first majors” in classics. With respect to LACs, you will note that some appear to attract a disproportionate share of students interested in classics. While it’s true that, using the LAC example from above, Brown graduated more classics majors than Hamilton, Hamilton graduated more proportionate to its enrollment. In absolute terms, Hamilton graduated twice as many classics majors as Yale, and three times that of Duke. This should not be especially surprising, however, in that classics scholars will be aware that in the prestigious American Journal of Philology’s 141 year history, it was centered at a liberal arts college only once, when a Hamilton professor presided as editor.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Brown&s=all&id=217156#programs

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Hamilton&s=all&id=191515#programs

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Yale&s=all&id=130794#programs

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Duke&s=all&id=198419#programs

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This is comparing apples to oranges, to say nothing of the dubious statistical significance of such small numbers of graduates from a single year.

Colleges with small classics departments typically offer only a single major in Classics, so all of the students are counted as classical language majors for IPEDS. Larger departments often offer more majors, and typically only the classical language majors (a relatively small subset of the total number of classics majors) are counted for IPEDS.

Duke offers majors in classical languages and classical civilization, for instance, and graduated a total of 7 classics majors and 8 minors in 2019-2020 rather than only 2 as reported by IPEDS. Similarly, Brown’s total number of graduating classics majors in 2019-2020 was 20, not 11 as IPEDS reports.

Some universities offer an even greater variety of majors. For example, Michigan offers majors in classical archaeology, classical civilization, ancient Greek, Latin, modern Greek, and classical languages and literature as well as a teaching certificate program in Latin.

In any case, I think this only goes to show what a great option universities can be for classics. Even the largest universities typically have relatively small numbers of classics majors and consequently offer small classes and an unusual amount of faculty attention. A university that has the same number of classics majors as a LAC but two or three times as many tenure-track classics faculty seems like something well worth a look!

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In the comparisons in my post above, I searched for all related majors. However, in IPEDS data, Brown, for example, reported 0 “first majors” majors in ancient Greek, 0 in Latin, 0 in Sanskrit, 0 in ancient studies and 0 in classical archaeology.

My post relied on uniformly sourced and comprehensively interpreted data, with supporting links included, which would be regarded as a homogeneous (apples to apples) comparison.

As opinion, the OP’s daughter may benefit from researching both universities and LACs as she proceeds in her college search. At the appropriate stage, she could correspond with the department chairs at LACs of potential interest to determine the suitability of their programs for students at her level. The overall atmospheres of some LACs may be more oriented toward the study of classics than those of larger schools.

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On the undergraduate level, overall atmosphere may be as important as course offerings. The early part of this article, for example, contrasts the intellectual atmospheres of several LACs to that of a research university: Meet the New Faculty: Jason Cieply, Russian Studies - News - Hamilton College.

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