<p>My 16yo homeschooled son has informed me that he wants to study linguistics and/or Latin or classics in college. I have NO idea what schools to start with. How do we know what is good? We are in the Midwest and don’t really know where to look except at the big state universities around us like Iowa, Illinois, Missouri-Columbia and Kansas. Based on his test scores so far, my guess is that a medium-high selectivity school would be possible for him, but probably not the Harvard-Yale-Stanford type school.</p>
<p>Take a look at Truman State University in Kirksville, MO.</p>
<p>You have lots of great options in the Midwest for Classics, ranging in size from LACs like Oberlin to small universities like Chicago to large universities like Minnesota. </p>
<p>At this stage of the process, it’s probably best to simply visit several colleges in your area so he can get a good idea of what he’s looking for in a college. Urban or rural? Large or small? Public or private? Big athletic scene or not? These are all factors that should go into making a list.</p>
<p>Here are two fairly complete lists of Classics departments in the US. As a warning, not all of the links may work.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tlg.uci.edu/index/departments.html[/url]”>http://www.tlg.uci.edu/index/departments.html</a>
<a href=“http://users.drew.edu/jmuccigr/ug.html[/url]”>http://users.drew.edu/jmuccigr/ug.html</a></p>
<p>One quick note to the above. </p>
<p>It is very possible to start Latin as an undergraduate and hundreds of students do so every year. However, if your son has graduate study in Classics in mind he should already be well along in Latin (or willing to dedicate a summer to intensive study) before starting college.</p>
<p>If he’s already started Latin (or is about to) he should be shooting for a 4 or 5 on the AP Latin Vergil test. That will get him advanced standing most places so he’ll have room for more upper level courses (plus Greek, and that modern research language if grad school is planned).</p>
<p>He’s been taking Latin, he’s almost done with his fourth year of study. He’s interested in taking the AP test, but we aren’t sure where or how to do it—we are homeschoolers. We could study for it ourselves, but need to find a place that offers the test and that would let him take it there–not so easy in a rural area. We’re still hunting. He has also taken a lot of modern languages, and plans on taking CLEP tests or subject SAT’s in at least French and Spanish (he’s also studied or studying Italian and Indonesian) He would like to add Greek now, but I don’t have any background of that and I’m already fairly overwhelmed trying to manage his Latin, French, Spanish and Italian work and help him with his conversational skills.<br>
Thanks for all the lists and ideas. Among other things, we had no idea that Truman State offered both majors, and it is only about an hour from us.</p>
<p>Classics? AND Linguistics? St. John’s College. It’s a rather small school, which may be nice for someone who’s been homeschooled. It’s got nice weather…a rowing team…Annapolis, MD…and everything your son wants to study. Check it out.</p>
<p>At St. John’s we actually don’t study formal linguistics, although something about the nature of language can absolutely be learned from spending four years translating greek and french texts into english (we don’t study latin). It’s a great school, but there are better programs if your son is strictly interested in linguistics/classics.</p>
<p>To hook up with an AP test location contact AP Services directly:</p>
<p>AP Services
P.O. Box 6671
Princeton, NJ 08541-6671
Phone: (609) 771-7300 or (888) 225-5427 (toll-free in the U.S. and Canada)
Email: <a href="mailto:apexams@info.collegeboard.org">apexams@info.collegeboard.org</a> </p>
<p>Greek at the introductory level may be easier than you think! One often overlooked resource - local churches. Many denominations provide at least an introduction to Koine as part of their seminary curricula. You can also take a look at Hansen and Quinn’s Greek: An Intensive Course. There are answer keys available online through Unit 5 and I have a few more of unverified accuracy (but pretty close)</p>
<p>I second the suggestion of St. John’s College. There are campuses in Annapolis and in Santa Fe. One advantage there is that everybody is studying classics; on most campuses, by contrast, classics departments are tiny and attract only a few undergraduate majors.</p>
<p>St. John’s could be a great option. In terms of big state schools, look at Iowa, Indiana, and maybe SUNY Binghamton if thats not too far away. For LACs, Lawrence and Carleton have good linguistics majors.</p>