Classics people - Where are you going?

[Guest Selene]

Just wondering where the Classics majors who have posted to this site are going.

[dudgeonmaster]

top. anyone with news?

[enzee]

I'm considering going to Harvard, though for Medieval Latin. That was the only Classics department I applied to, but I have a soft spot for Classics proper, in which I did my first degree. What programmes are you looking at?

[dudgeonmaster]

well i applied to the following to focus on Hellenistic poetry and its reception in Roman poetry:

Berkeley- reject (told that i would probably have been accepted if it was not an international applicant)

Harvard- reject (just missed the cut apparently)

Boston College- admit+funding (i won't take it though)

Columbia- pending

UCLA- pending

Chicago- pending

i'm really gutted about harvard and berklee though- i was hoping an Oxford Classics degree would help me out, but you just never know i guess. i have only recently come to realise how competitive the Classics grad field is!

where have you got in so far?

[enzee]

It's definitely an uphill battle for international applicants to US departments. And yeah, top Classics programmes are really competitive to begin with - I don't know much about BC, but I'd say most of the other places you list accept only ~10-15% of their applicants (which is a *fraction* of the average admit rates of Oxbridge undergrad... and on top of that, the grad applicant field is already a very trimmed-down version of the undergrad cohort!). So yeah, it's a little insane.

Are you applying straight from your first degree? It's almost becoming the norm now (for top programmes, at least) for Americans to do master's degrees at Oxford or Cambridge after their B.A.s and then return to the US for their Ph.D.s (which is what I've done) - obviously this ups the ante a bit in the applicant pool and can make it more difficult for those without postgrad degrees to compete...

Anyway, here's my list for medieval studies (basically in order of preference):

Toronto - pending

Harvard (Classics) - in

Cornell - in

WUSTL- in

Yale - rejected

Best of luck with your other apps! Btw, Columbia is my alma mater and I know a bunch of the people in the department - feel free to contact me if you end up considering them and have any questions.

[dudgeonmaster]

Many thanks for your help and congrats on your admissions so far. You have some great places to choose from there! As for Columbia, I may well take you up on that offer if anything materialises.

My plan is very much like yours actually- I'm applying straight out of the B.A., so if I don't succeed this time around with American grad schools I will probably give the Cambridge Masters a shot in order to bolster my overall profile (and then reapply Stateside). I've done the Oxford thing, so it would be fun to check out 'the other side'- out of interest, did you did you do the Oxford M.St. or the Cambridge M.A.- how did you find it?

[enzee]

Thanks, and no problem! That's great you got into BC - no interest in going?

I am doing a Cambridge M.Phil., but not in Classics. I like Cambridge, though being a city person, I probably would have preferred Oxford. Cambridge is smaller, quainter, prettier, and (from my impression; I've been to Oxford to visit 4-5 times for short visits) a bit friendlier. The master's students in humanities don't seem to be that stressed out (we have spurts of massive stress right before deadlines and things, but they're *much* less frequent than for undergrads. I'm sure I'll be eating my words come time for serious dissertation work, but certainly for 2/3 of the year, the workload's not bad).

I know less about the relative strengths of Classics at Oxbridge, but it seems to me like Oxford is the place to be, *in general*. Cambridge may very well have better/more faculty doing Hellenistic poetry, but I haven't looked into it.