Undergraduate Classics Programs

College Search & Selection
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<p>Re: Post #15: “We purchased the Rugg’s Recommendations …The section on Classics consists of 74 most selective schools and 71 very selective schools.
These schools provided by another poster are NOT listed. They may have a Classics program, but not a strong or highly rated one:
Programs to consider: Cornell, Johns Hopkins,
Still some others to consider: Arizona, Iowa, USC,”</p>

<p>So, those programs are not strong or highly rated simply because they are not listed in Rugg’s?
NRC rankings place Cornell at #10 and USC, Iowa, and JHU at #19. Granted, these are graduate rankings so they might not tell you much about the quality of undergrad teaching, but they do indicate something about the strength of the department.
Arizona has a fairly rigorous master’s and MAT program.</p>

<p>Some of the programs listed by Rugg’s seem rather limited in numbers of faculty. Most of the faculty in Nebraska’s Dept. of Classics & Religious Studies are affiliated with the religious studies component. Hendrix, Long Beach, and Lawrence have limited faculty positions in Classics. What happens if you go to one of those schools to major in classics and you just don’t click with their faculty? Iowa State (not U of Iowa) only offers an interdisciplinary major in classics in its Dept. of World Literatures, again with only limited faculty positions in classics.</p>

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<p>“Notice that Bryn Mawr College is included in the NRC Classics ranking (cited above). This is the only case I’ve noticed of a LAC appearing in an NRC ranking (with very good numbers to boot).”</p>

<p>Bryn Mawr has had a top grad program in Classics since its earliest days. It also publishes a major journal in the field. Hey, would you expect any less from a college whose school song is sung in ancient Greek?: <a href=“Sophias Sing-Along - YouTube”>Sophias Sing-Along - YouTube;

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<p>I will throw Xavier University on this list. Not only is Xavier Catholic, it is Jesuit. (And we are not Catholic)
Xavier has an honors program especially for Classics students called HAB. These students graduate with an Honors Bachelor of Arts degree. You have to apply to get into the program. This is a small group of students (usually between 10-15), most of which have had some Latin and/or Greek in high school. The program is pretty demanding and not for everyone. Students are required to attend lectures, conferences and give speeches at them also.
I don’t know the number, but many receive one quarter off their tuition in addition to any other merit scholarships offered. So in some cases, this covers almost all tuition. </p>

<p>My son is in his first year in the program. He does get some other perks for being in the program, which he enjoys: study abroad, early scheduling, preferential housing, and other honors opportunities.</p>

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<p>Like BrownParent, I recommend you do a search of the forums. I have written about this topic extensively, as have other classics students over the years.

I would be cautious using the NRC rankings. Several of us on CC have agreed that the rankings for our respective fields look quite odd. Perhaps this is because the new ranking includes so many extraneous factors; of the ~20 factors, only 4 are directly related to faculty quality and undergraduate education. </p>

<p>More importantly, the ranking is already out of date. With departments as small as your typical classics department, the loss or gain or even 2-3 notable faculty can have a massive impact on the prestige and quality of the program. The NRC data is from 2005 – some departments (e.g. NYU and Brown) have gained quite a few good scholars, while others have had a net loss (e.g. Harvard and Columbia). Admittedly, no top program has completely collapsed since then, and relatively few departments have improved significantly.</p>

<p>

Perhaps the most pertinent question is what you plan to do with your degree. It is far more important to focus on department quality if you’re interested in a PhD in classics (which, like lud, I really would not recommend). If you are interested in something else, like law school, focus on the same factors we tell everyone else to consider:
[ul][<em>]Size
[</em>]Location (urban/rural? which region of the country?)
[<em>]Affordability
[</em>]Selectivity
[<em>]“Feel”/atmosphere
[</em>]Other requests (e.g. LD support, LGBT friendly, etc.)[/ul]</p>

<p>My rule of thumb for a strong classics program:
[ul][<em>]Beginning Greek and Latin offered every year
[</em>]Intermediate Greek and Latin offered every year
[<em>]At least one advanced seminar in Greek and Latin every semester
[</em>]Decent civilization courses[/ul]
Other things like a good classics library, collections of papyri, squeezes, and/or numismatics, and a good classical art collection are nice to have but definitely not essential for undergraduates.</p>

<p>If you are interested in late Latin, I highly recommend looking for colleges with Medieval Studies departments and courses in Late Antiquity. </p>

<p>Liberal Arts Colleges
Very few liberal arts colleges (LACs) have sufficient faculty to have diverse offerings in classics. If you have an extensive Latin background, you may be bored at a typical LAC.
[ul][<em>]If you’re female, Barnard is a good option - in addition to a decent classics program of its own, cross-enrollment with Columbia makes its classics offerings superb.
[</em>]As bclintonk mentioned, Bryn Mawr (and by proxy Haverford) is another excellent option. In addition to the strong program at Bryn Mawr, both offer cross-registration with Penn and Swarthmore. Swarthmore is less conveniently located than Haverford in terms of the consortium arrangement, but it would also be a good choice for classics.
[<em>]Oberlin has a fairly strong program and, unlike many LACs, also a strong tradition in archaeology.
[</em>]Reed has a small but strong classics program and a humanities sequence the freshman year that might appeal to you.[/ul]
Other good programs: Wellesley, Davidson, Franklin & Marshall, Wesleyan, Holy Cross. Decent programs include Colgate, Grinnell, Carleton, Skidmore, Kenyon, Middlebury, and a few others. </p>

<p>The following LACs had more than 5 graduating classics majors in 2010. This is a hit or miss measurement most of the time and varies from year to year, but it includes most of the pretty good LAC programs I’m familiar with.</p>

<p>19 Davidson
12 Reed
11 Oberlin
9 Bryn Mawr / Franklin & Marshall / Macalester / Wesleyan
8 Bucknell / Holy Cross
7 Union
6 Kenyon / Middlebury / Skidmore / Smith / UNC Asheville / Washington & Lee / Williams</p>

<p>Private Universities
Ranking university programs is very difficult and arguably pointless, as it changes a lot depending on your interests. For example, Cornell is one of the best for archaeology and top 2-3 for Indo-European linguistics, but it’s weaker in classical philology. Harvard and Chicago, on the other hand, are excellent for ancient history and classical philology but embarrassingly weak in classical art & archaeology. </p>

<p>That said, I’d sort them into tiers as follows. Of course, all of the following colleges are sufficient for an undergraduate’s needs.</p>

<p>TIER 1
Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Penn, Stanford, Yale</p>

<p>TIER 2
Boston U, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Tufts, Tulane, USC, Vanderbilt, WUStL</p>

<p>TIER 3
Dartmouth, Georgetown, Rice. There are probably others that could go here, such as BC or Fordham, but I don’t know enough about them to be able to say. </p>

<p>Public Universities
Given that you have such a good in-state option in Wisconsin, I don’t think it’s worth paying extra for an out-of-state public university, especially since so few offer good financial aid. </p>

<p>For the sake of being relatively comprehensive, however, Berkeley, UT Austin, UNC Chapel Hill, UCLA, and Michigan are the top 5. There are many other strong programs, however, including Cincinnati, Penn State, Ohio State, Illinois, Washington, UVA, Minnesota, and Arizona. Even some of the less selective flagships like CU Boulder, UGA, and Kansas have quite good classics programs.</p>

<p>If you decide you want to apply to OOS publics, both of the public universities that meet the financial need of all US students (UNC and UVA) have good classics programs, particularly UNC.</p>

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<p>My son is a Classics Major at Bard College and it’s been a fantastic experience - in both Greek and Latin. A small department, but with passionate students and fascinating inspiring professors, many of whom are world renowned in the field. [Bard</a> College | Classical Studies Program](<a href=“http://classicalstudies.bard.edu%5DBard”>http://classicalstudies.bard.edu)</p>

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<p>Are you a young woman? If so, Bryn Mawr College.</p>

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<p>Warblersrule, do you have any insight into the Classics program at U. of Kentucky? My D is interested in classics and linguistics and is also a National Merit SF. UK’s NMF scholarship is very tempting but I don’t want her to end up at a bad program just because we were following the money.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

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<p>UKY is an excellent program, but it’s very focused on late antique, medieval and renaissance Latin. If your daughter is or could be okay with that, it would be a great option.</p>

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<p>Mdcmom…</p>

<p>If you’re interested in NMF money and The Classics, then look into Alabama’s program. I don’t know a lot about it, except that there’s a mom here on CC whose NMF son is in his 3rd year with the program and they love it. The parents are very impressed, and the dad has a Classics background (I think from Harvard). </p>

<p>I think there are three majors within The Classics…one with a Latin emphasis, one with a Greek emphasis, and one with Classical Civilization emphasis. There are also two minors. </p>

<p>[Department</a> of Modern Languages & Classics | University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences](<a href=“http://mlc.ua.edu/]Department”>http://mlc.ua.edu/)</p>

<p>Many of The Classics majors participate in the faculty-led summer abroad in Greece which includes 6 credits.</p>

<p>This is the intinery for last summer’s Alabama in Greece program:
<a href=“Education Abroad – International | The University of Alabama”>Education Abroad – International | The University of Alabama;

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<p>Thank you, NavalTradition and mom2collegekids! My D is interested in Greek rather than Latin b/c she wants to translate the Bible for obscure languages, so perhaps we’d better check out the Alabama program. Thank you for pointing us in that direction.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>No they aren’t, not at the undergraduate level anyway. At the graduate level, perhaps, but the best researchers and scholars aren’t always the best teachers. Plus, different departments teach different things. For example, my psychology department is top 20 but wouldn’t be a great place for an student interested in social or developmental or educational psychology, or who just wants a broad overall education in psychology without necessarily wanting to go to grad school.</p>

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<p>

As NavalTradition mentioned, Kentucky focuses on the Roman era and later. It may or may not be a good option; you’d have to check course listings carefully. </p>

<p>Alabama has a decent program, but if you want a strong program coupled with a great NM scholarship, Arizona is really the obvious choice ($30,000 per year + other perks and an outstanding classics program). It’s also quite good for linguistics. Geographically it might be out of her range…I’m not sure where in the US you’ve been looking.</p>

<p>

Be aware that different dialects of Greek exist. Classics departments typically teach Attic Greek, with upper-level students usually learning Homeric (a subset of Ionic) Greek as well. The Bible, on the other hand, is written in the later Koin</p>

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<p>Yes, DD has studied a little bit of both Attic and Koine Greek on her own and we’re also looking at Christian colleges that focus more strictly on Koine Greek. But since her ultimate career goal will not come with any pay, we’re trying to explore anything that will keep her from taking out loans (especially with grad school probably also in the picture). Sadly, there aren’t too many scholarships at the Christian colleges. But there are a few! We’ll see. THANK YOU so much for your insight. Arizona is very far away but keeping away from loans may make it worth it.</p>

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<p>If your DD is interested in NT studies then UKY would be a really good option. They have a NT specialist on the faculty - not just someone who can teach koine in a pinch, but she’s published scholarly commentaries on gospels. And the late emphasis on the Latin side, which I would be concerned about for someone with more…pagan?..leanings, could be an asset - there’s a faculty member who specializes in the Latin church fathers, and another who specializes in Renaissance Latin, which would be useful for reading biblical scholarship in the original. KY could be a very good choice for your D’s interests.</p>