Match a rising junior majoring in Classics [3.975 GPA, no need-based financial aid]

People who study something inherently interdisciplinary like Classics tend to develop excellent reading and writing skills, usually also good oral communication skills, an understanding and appreciation for various different cultures, usually quite a bit of historical knowledge, and usually a broad familiarity with the application of a variety of social sciences.

As a result, Classics is considered among the best majors for people interested in something like law school, as there is a very high degree of overlap in important skills and attributes. It is also the sort of major where a lot of people end up going into business, again because of all the overlap in desired skills and attributes.

Yes, it is a bit unfortunate to me a lot of kids I encounter these days seem to think college must be about acquiring specific technical knowledge in preparation for a specific job. It can be, but there are still many professions, and employers within those professions, who do not think college is really a good place to learn such specific knowledge. Maybe postgraduate degrees, maybe employer-specific training, and often most importantly, through actually working experience. But not so much college.

So what they do like to see in college students is people who really develop their fundamental skills and basic background understandings. And a wide variety of majors can be suitable for that, but it certainly includes core humanities majors like Classics.

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That graph was created by a an organization called Tableau Public. Are you sufficiently familar with this source to recommmend it over the National Center for Education Statistics, which is maintained by the U.S. Department of Education?

Those data, visualized by Jon Boeckenstedt in Tableau, are from IPEDs (which is NCES data)

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Yes, same underlying data source. I note I believe this is the same Jon Boeckenstedt who is a Vice Provost for Enrollment Management at Oregon State, who blogs on admissions topics and is very interested in such data visualizations.

In this case, I wonder if the discrepancy is just a difference in data year. Boeckenstedt is reporting for 2022, and I believe College Navigator may be reporting for 2023 at this point.

In fact I just looked Macalester up directly in IPEDS, and in that source they are still reporting for 2021-22 and not 2022-23 like College Navigator. And in that source, they do in fact have Macalester with 9 primary degrees in Classics, 5 secondary degrees:

https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/FacsimileView.aspx?surveyNumber=3&unitId=173902&year=2022

I guess this just shows the number of majors in a given year may vary quite a lot for a major like Classics! Probably what would be ideal would be something like a rolling four-year average.

And since I have it open, for Macalester through 2022 that would look like (primary/secondary/total)

2022 9/5/14
2021 4/1/5
2020 4/2/6
2019 3/1/4

Averages: 5/2.25/7.25

OK, so 2022 was an unusually big year for Classics at Macalester! And maybe 2023 was an unusually small year (with apparently 2 primary majors and an unknown as yet number of secondary). But actually that sorta cancels out, so it seems to me like a normalish class would be 4 or so primary and 1-2 secondary, which is still quite good for an LAC but not as anomalous as 9/5/14.

And since I am at it, let’s look at Holy Cross:

2022: 14/4/18
2021: 14/1/15
2020: 12/3/15
2019: 10/3/13

Average: 12.5/2.75/15.25

OK, so yes, Holy Cross consistently has a lot more Classics majors than Macalester, which is not a particular surprise to those who know about their Classics program. Again, no shade to Macalester, it has quite solid enrollment for a normal LAC, but Holy Cross has a truly different program.

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I don’t doubt that this is the case in principle. However, the information from Tableu Public does not comport with the current information from IPEDS.

Looks like the years don’t match as @niceunparticularman explained above. Generally best to look at the average over a few years when dealing with small sample sizes that can vary widely from year to year.

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I had. I’m encouraging the OP to consider the most recent information available. I’d also support the advice to consider the number of majors over several years.

I think OP is looking for schools to meet their criteria and there is many above for them to research.

They don’t need to be pushed into just one or two.

The tables from @AustenNut - regardless of the year - shows various schools of varying size and admission specificity - that OP can research to make the best decision for themselves on where they might decide to apply.

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Yeah, I find the number of majors (particularly averaged over a period of years and normed to the overall number of majors at the college) to be one useful data point, because I think people tend to vote with their feet in the sense of graduating with majors that worked for them.

But it is only one data point. A lot of the fun in fact is digging into departmental websites, seeing what the faculty looks like, what sorts of specific majors, minors, and courses they offer, what departmental programs and activities they offer, whether there is an integrated study abroad option, and on and on.

So I think these sorts of lists are good for generating possible leads, but I would advise not using them on their own to either rule in, or indeed rule out, any given college.

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The Tableau site is one tool that can be used in a search. It is not the be-all, end-all, but many people find Tableau easier to navigate than IPEDS. It’s a picture of one point in time.

A rolling four-year average would be fabulous. If anyone knows of a resource that has done that for all majors at all schools, please let me know. I would definitely bookmark it! Perhaps an idea for how to make CC more useful, @CC_Sorin?

One question that we still haven’t gotten an answer to is the budget. OP indicated that the family won’t receive financial aid, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the family is willing/able to pay upwards of $100k/year by the time this student gets to college.

@fluctuatnecmergitur hasn’t been back since the original post, so we don’t know the budget, whether flexibility would be to go larger or smaller, or the reactions to various suggestions, etc. Until such time as we hear back from OP, I don’t plan to continue the discussion parsing the value of data from 2 years ago.

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@blossom

Fair enough, but the salary differences speak for themselves… Students are voting with their wallets (see data on sharp decline in humanities majors).

Your stats made me smile – my daughter was so much like you in high school. NLE book award, multivariable calc, etc – although her tiny school didn’t have a JCL chapter, so she missed out on a lot.

Incidentally, she’s minoring in classics at Rice (majoring in linguistics), but I wouldn’t recommend Rice for classics even though she’s had some really solid professors and has enjoyed the experience. There are so few classes offered through the department that if it’s your main focus, I’d look elsewhere. You’ve gotten some great suggestions here!

(I’m still laughing because she took a 300-level Ovid class her first semester freshman year, thinking it would be no problem because she was really a strong Latin student. HAHA, the amount of translation was something else!)

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FWIW, the COO of Blackrock said this in a recent interview, "BlackRock wants to hire grads whose major had ā€œnothing to do with finance or technology.ā€

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Talk is cheap, actions speak louder. Let’s see…

High salaries are not everything. When I went to college, no amount of money in the world would have convinced me to be a STEM or pre-professional major. It all worked out. I will never make as much money as a computer scientist or engineer, but that’s okay. We need people in fields other than tech, engineering, and medicine. Gaps in salary tend to narrow over time (which is not the same as catching up, but in what world does everyone earn exactly the same salary?). And many humanities majors end up in careers that require grad school (which delays full earning potential but also results in a salary boost).

I believe that the drift away from humanities majors has more to do with the negative PR surrounding these fields of study as ā€œuselessā€ than it does with actual career paths for these graduates – and of course there is political capital to be earned by politicians who attack these disciplines. They’re a popular punching bag. Employers themselves say they look for employees with the ā€œsoft skillsā€ that humanities majors tend to learn (outside of specific jobs that do require specific training that can’t simply be done on the job). And at the same time, there are a lot of questions about whether AI could threaten jobs in tech fields, and fields like CS may be reaching a point of saturation, so the future remains uncertain.

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I did discuss budget with my parents–they said that they could pay for anything, although merit scholarships would be nice (but not necessary, we do have a decent amount of money saved)

Thank you for all the advice! One thing I wanted to mention is that I’m hoping to double major because I know that Classics is not the most employable. If anyone has ideas for other majors, please let me know!

Thanks again for your help!

I think you should major in whatever you want to major in :slight_smile: that said, think about pursuing internships that may result in a job after school.

My best friend from high school has a PHD in Classics, he’s a history teacher at a boarding school. He had hoped to become a Professor but the field is very competitive for few jobs. He’s happy though!

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So one of the problems with something like median or mean salary statistics by major is that they tend to be covering an enormous range of different scenarios. Like, as mentioned, some humanities majors go on to law schools, and indeed are particularly well-represented at ā€œtopā€ law schools.

Similarly if you look at the humanities graduates from a very well-regard liberal arts and sciences college, either at a university or stand alone LAC, in additional to law schools you will see many going into highly valued business and finance firms. Indeed, someone over at Reddit a while back shared where Harvard’s Art History graduating seniors were heading next (apparently the Art History department does that). Some of the people were going on to academic or institutional positions related to art, but a lot were going on into things like consulting and law school and such.

And so on.

But this of course is not the same thing as getting a humanities degree and then going into K-12 teaching. Which can be extremely rewarding in its own way, but will probably not do a lot for the major’s comparative salary statistics.

Conversely, a lot of kids start off thinking a certain major or track will be $$$, and then it doesn’t work out in practice. Like, a lot of kids eventually switch out of engineering and pre-med, for a variety of reasons including because they find they don’t actually have the interests and/or aptitudes to make it work. And then the survivors are often going to do well, but that is then more about them than the major per se.

That being said, it is not like I think the kids intending to do STEM and pre-professional majors are all making a mistake. Many are following their actual interests and aptitudes, and that is all fine.

But I do think going beyond the basic statistics and developing a more nuanced understanding of the many different paths available from various majors is useful. Because that means as you are discovering more about what you really like, and are really good at, in college, you will be able to understand more of your actual options for paths forward.

Sort of consistent with the above, I would suggest you be open to some exploration and discovery in college about what really interests you, and what you are really good at. It is extremely hard in HS to explore much, if anything, at a college level, and lots of people surprise themselves with how much their academic self-conception changes in college.

The good thing is there are not going to be a lot of colleges good for Classics that are not also good for a wide variety of other things. But some colleges are a little better than others when it comes to making it easy to explore and then pivot to whatever is really working best for you. And that may involve two majors, it may involve a major and a minor, or maybe just one major you find you really love, or so on.

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There are better majors on paper but it doesn’t mean they are better for you.

Accounting, as an example, is a great major. But I’m guessing you’re not meant to be an accountant.

In the end, you have to study what interests you because you have to get through four years.

So find your jam.

Hopefully a fulfilling life will follow and if you get stuck, anyone can do an MBA or law later on. :).

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