Koine and other Ancient languages

TTG
Sun, 10 Jun 2018 12:06:38 +0000

It’s great if you love ancient languages and want to study that. Go for it. And, I’d also add that there’s no need to feel limited to those because of a math learning disability. There are lots of majors/jobs that don’t require math skills.

Approximately, how much aid, if any, will you require? Lots of schools might be a great fit for a student and completely unaffordable. It’s all very complicated. You might be a great candidate for aid or merit scholarship at one school and not at all at another. Also, what is your home state? If money is an issue, looking there will certainly be a place to start.

If you math LD affected your test scores, then googling “test-optional colleges” is a great start. Many terrific schools don’t even require test results and will evaluate your application without test results. I agree Holy Cross would be great school to research. You indicate you have a religious affiliation where clergy are not paid. HC is a Catholic school, and, to my mind, a non-Catholic student really has no reason to have any apprehension about attending, many non-Catholics do attend. I think this is generally true at other Catholic colleges/universities and ones affiliated with other faiths as well, although this is obviously a personal decision for you.

I know very little about your areas of interest. Here are a few I would suggest you research. If female, then maybe Mount Holyoke, which is part of the Five College Consortium with Smith, Hampshire, Amherst, and U Mass Amherst. Students can take classes and take advantage of other opportunities at the member schools, so I’d think you could also take classes at Amherst and/or UMA. You’d have to see how this works. You could also apply to those other schools; I just put MH because the others require test results, and Amherst is extremely competitive. But you could look into those as well. And you’d have to see how many and what classes you could take at the other schools.

https://www.fivecolleges.edu

Other schools that pop into my mind for you to explore: Brandeis, GWU, Reed College, NYU, St. John’s University (NY). Reed is a very intellectual school (note that it has a very political student body, if that is a plus or minus for you). We visited a handful of years ago, and I believe that students could satisfy the math requirement with language classes. But you’d have to double-check that. Unfortunately, these schools are very expensive, and for the most part offer little aid. I know that is the case at NYU.

University of Pennsylvania actually told us that if a student wants to study a language it does not teach, it will find someone to teach them. So, of course, that’s great. But Penn is an Ivy League school and very, very competitive, especially in RD. If that’s not a realistic possibility, I wonder if you could explore another likely school in the Philadelphia area and cross registering for some classes at Penn. I have no idea if that would work.

Middlebury is also a terrific languages school, but also very competitive. And here is a list of top classics schools:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124716

If money is an issue, you can also google “colleges that meet full financial need.” Holy Cross is on that list as well, and maybe you could look for schools that are there and are also test optional. Note that schools that claim to meet full financial need might also be “need aware” and might not, in the end, offer sufficient aid for you. But it’s a good place to start.

Good luck!