Learning a new language for grad school

[AkraticAgent]

I am a junior and a philosophy major at a liberal arts college, planning on applying to grad schools starting next fall. I am particularly looking at some of the master's programs abroad that have strengths in ancient philosophy (LMU, Oxford, Edinburgh, etc.). I reached out to some of these schools about their programs and they said that prior knowledge of Greek would be an asset in the application process. In light of this, I have started to audit courses in Greek at my current institution and by the time I apply, I would have reached intermediate proficiency. These courses, however, will be audited i.e. they will not appear on my transcript (or some of them might be, if I have space in the coming semesters to take them for credit, but not all). I can probably ask my language instructor to write me a recommendation attesting to my abilities. I can even take a placement test - although I am not familiar with any  - to substantiate my case. In this case, would not having taken the language for credit count against me or set me back in any manner?

*Note again that prior knowledge of Greek is not required but is recommended for a competitive application*

If it is of any help, I am already proficient in four languages, one of which is Sanskrit (the others are mostly South Asian languages).

 

 

[maxhgns]

Just make a note of the auditing in your letter of interest, and plug Greekinto your CV. That'll count, and should suffice. You could have a reference mention it, too.

[Duns Eith]

12 hours ago, maxhgns said:

Just make a note of the auditing in your letter of interest, and plug Greek into your CV. That'll count, and should suffice. You could have a reference mention it, too.

This. Or rather, these.

I should also say, good luck on learning Greek! We need more translators and more linguistically-competent philosophers. I hope that it serves you for years to come!

 

[Marcus_Aurelius]

Frankly, although I wish you much luck, I'd be surprised if you have much application success without well-documented intermediate-advanced Greek. As others noted, you should have recommenders mention it, but if you can take Greek courses for credit, I'd highly recommend it. (Latin too. Sadly other languages probably won't count for anything, except German, French, and Italian might a bit.)

[AkraticAgent]

@Marcus_Aurelius thanks for the reply! Would you mind elaborating why undocumented language skills would not suffice? If I have my language tutor write me a recommendation confirming that I am proficient in Greek, why does it matter whether or not I have actually taken the courses for credit? I'm just trying to get some sense of why having it on my transcript would make that big a difference. Thanks again!

[AkraticAgent]

And again, I might have the opportunity to take some courses for credit - Greek 102 and Intermediate Greek (perhaps). The class I'm currently auditing - Greek 101 - will not appear on my transcript as it is too late for me to register officially for it at this point in the semester. But is it really that important to have taken those classes for credit in the first place? Would taking additional advanced philosophy electives in their place not be more helpful?

[Marcus_Aurelius]

15 hours ago, AkraticAgent said:

@Marcus_Aurelius thanks for the reply! Would you mind elaborating why undocumented language skills would not suffice? If I have my language tutor write me a recommendation confirming that I am proficient in Greek, why does it matter whether or not I have actually taken the courses for credit? I'm just trying to get some sense of why having it on my transcript would make that big a difference. Thanks again!

I admittedly know little about European Master's programs, so maybe it doesn't make a big difference for those, but in general, a course on one's transcript is a clearer indication of a certain level of proficiency than a line in a letter is (though letters are, on the whole, more important than transcript). If I were on an adcom and I saw someone who wanted to do ancient but didn't have Greek on their transcript and didn't explain extenuating circumstances, I'd be very confused. If you're relatively sure you want to do ancient, it seems to me that, as long as you've taken a decent number of philosophy courses, nothing is more important than learning Greek (and Latin, or at least whichever is more important for your interests), at least if you hope to end up in a strong PhD program. 

[akraticfanatic]

I don't know about UK programs specifically either, but prima facie I don't see why it would make a difference whether it's for credit, since it's the proficiency that matters. 

Also hello fellow akratic

[lurkingfaculty]

For what it's worth, I'm a faculty member at a PhD program that is very strong in Ancient, and we wouldn't care whether you had formally taken the courses or not. However, we have a joint program in classics and philosophy that students can apply for once they are already in our PhD program (so you can demonstrate proficiency once you are here by passing an exam). I think for some PhD programs you need to be able to get into such a joint program right off the bat if you're going to get into it at all, and classics programs might care more about whether you had actually formally taken the courses. (I'm not sure about this! Just guessing.) My guess is that for almost any MA program it is fine to not have formally taken the courses.

[lurkingfaculty]

(PS I should say I'm in North America so I don't know if things are different in the places in Europe that you are applying.)

[Marcus_Aurelius]

On 9/25/2019 at 8:46 PM, lurkingfaculty said:

For what it's worth, I'm a faculty member at a PhD program that is very strong in Ancient, and we wouldn't care whether you had formally taken the courses or not. However, we have a joint program in classics and philosophy that students can apply for once they are already in our PhD program (so you can demonstrate proficiency once you are here by passing an exam). I think for some PhD programs you need to be able to get into such a joint program right off the bat if you're going to get into it at all, and classics programs might care more about whether you had actually formally taken the courses. (I'm not sure about this! Just guessing.) My guess is that for almost any MA program it is fine to not have formally taken the courses.

Yeah, this seems more plausible/clear than what I said before, that joint programs with Classics are more likely to care about hard evidence of Greek than Philosophy depts alone are (even those with strong Ancient programs). But OP also mentioned trying to pass an exam, and that does seem like it'd be sufficient to show profficiency. Ultimately it probably depends highly on the program (caveat again that I'm not so familiar with European programs).