If you are a junior interested in the classics, you are a pretty awesome student — and this certainly didn’t come out of nowhere. Building an interest in the classics while in high school typically means that you’ve been exploring ancient Greek and Latin language, philosophy, and history beyond the standard coursework available at school. Maybe you are taking an elective focused on the classics, or maybe you’ve taken online courses on your own, or perhaps you’ve been reading and studying independently. Whatever the course, you’ve had to build the path yourself, and that is exciting.
We love students who are confident, passionate, and who have had to forge something for themselves. This offers an amazing foundation to build from and, as a junior, you are at the prime time to make bold moves that have meaningful impacts on your college applications.
In this post, we’ll break down what top students passionate about the classics need to be doing outside of the classroom to position themselves for admission to a highly-selective college. Every top college has a top classics program — it is literally the foundation of the entire concept of a liberal arts education — and if you want to get in to one of those programs you need to do more than college strong grades and scores.
This is what else needs to be on your checklist for junior year.
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Below, we’ve broken down the broad strokes of the guidance that we give to our juniors interested in the classics. You don’t have to do all of these things, but it would be awesome if you could. So, take them piece-by-piece. Some you may already be doing, some may be easy to add, and some may be a bigger lift, but all are worth the effort.
QUIZ BOWL
We love it if our students interested in the classics are competing as part of a Quiz Bowl team. Quiz Bowl is collaborative, challenging, and competitive. It allows you to specialize, while also offering opportunities to explore and discover new things. If you are already part of a team, that’s awesome. The next step is aiming for leadership if you don’t have it already. Meet with the current club leaders and ask how you can best support them in reaching their goals.
If you are not part of the Quiz Bowl team at your school, join. It is probably too late to achieve a “club head” title for senior year, but it is not too late to make an impact.
And if your school doesn’t have a Quiz Bowl team, consider starting one. It’s a big time commitment, but if you are in the first half of your junior year it is still possible to start and build a club before senior year. It’s an added bonus that you are the de facto head of any club you start.
CLASSICS CLUB
Does your school have a classics club? If there is a classics club, we hope you are in it and on a route towards leadership. If you aren’t a member of the club, join today — literally. It’ll be an experience that broadens and deepens your interests.
If your school doesn’t have a classics club, the same rules apply as for Quiz Bowl. You have a chance, in this moment, to start something. Find a faculty advisor, recruit some friends, and have fun. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with this one. Read fun stuff, debate cool things, and explore a subject that you love alongside peers who share your interests. That sounds pretty good, right?
LANGUAGE
If you study the classics, you study ancient Greek, Latin, or both. Understanding these languages is foundational to engaging with classical texts. Colleges know that most high school students have limited access to ancient languages, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have access to other avenues for learning. In this day and age, there are a multitude of ways that you can begin studying ancient Greek or Latin, from phone-based apps to online courses.
We highly recommend that students interested in studying the classics pursue at least one classical language, ancient Greek, or Latin, before applying to colleges senior year. This isn’t required for admission to a college as a prospective classics major, but it certainly strengthens an application and helps it stand out, underlining genuine interest and a passion for scholarship.
RESEARCH
When we work with juniors, there is one thing that we are the most passionate about adding to their roster of extracurriculars if at all possible: research. Yes, research. We love when our students zoom in on a subject that they love, exploring a particular corner with the goal of an outcome that they can point to with pride. Sometimes this means publication, and other times it is presentation. Having that end goal in mind is a powerful motivating factor, as is the opportunity to dedicate time to a subject that you absolutely adore.
Deciding where to start with research can be overwhelming, so it helps to have help. We support our students through a research experience, but your favorite classics-minded teacher at school is also a great place to start.
SUMMER PROGRAMS
Summer programs can be a contentious subject for juniors. Most structured high school summer programs are geared towards younger students, and juniors in them risk looking like they are not pushing hard enough. Classics, though, is one of the few areas of study where there are, often, summer programs that can be hugely impactful.
The most meaningful summer programs for juniors interested in classics are proper college courses with college credit available. Learning from graduate students and college professors, and having access to texts that you probably haven’t encountered yet, is a fantastic experience that can also be capitalized into something truly meaningful for your college applications.
And this is truly the whole point, right? You want to have the best next chapter possible, and getting into a dream school with a killer classics program is a key part of this. So, you need to be getting the grades, you need to achieve the scores, and you need to build a list of extracurriculars that can’t be ignored. That’s where we can help.
As a junior, you have a window of opportunity to seriously amplify your applications. We can help. Learn more.