monstergagaholic asked:
Hi! Thank you so much for your kind words; you just made my day.
Before you look seriously at the list of schools I found, you should make a list of 20 colleges or universities which you think are good fits. And then look at their Classics departments and narrow it down from there. While you will be there to get an education, you should also make sure that you attend a school where you feel comfortable growing as a person. In addition, if you want personalized attention from the faculty, I’d recommend focusing your search on Small Liberal Arts Colleges.
As a quick world of advice: academia, especially at the doctoral level, can be a very disillusioning experience. I don’t want to be a total fun vampire, so I’ll just link you to PhD Comics. (It follows students in the sciences, but it seems to portray fairly universal experiences.) Because of the current state of hiring in the Humanities, you will need to attend a top doctoral program to have a good shot at a tenure track position. To get into one of those programs, you will need to have excellent marks, and work already published. In addition, most departments want applicants to have an MA in their field before they are accepted for doctoral study. Generally speaking, you will probably not be able to think about having a stable career until you are at least 30.
You have a fantastic goal, and I’m not trying to dissuade you. I am merely saying that if you truly want to become a professor of Ancient History those are all things you should keep in mind over the next couple of years.
Okay so, all of that said, I poked around some of the academic message boards I occasionally frequent and found a pretty comprehensive looking list of schools with good undergraduate Classics programs (if you’re currently in a Classics program not listed here, drop me a note and I’ll add your school):
Agnes Scott, Amherst, Barnard, Bowdoin, Brown, Bryn Mawr, SUNY Buffalo, UC Berkeley, Carleton, Case Western, Centre, U Chicago, Colgate, Columbia, Connecticut College, UT Dallas, Dartmouth, Drew, Duke, Emory, Franklin and Marshall, Georgetown, Grinnell, Harvard, Haverford, Holy Cross, Johns Hopkins, Kalamazoo, Kenyon, Macalester, U Maryland, U Michigan, U of Richmond, Middlebury, NYU, UNC Chapel Hill, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Oberlin, Penn, U of Pittsburgh, Princeton, Skidmore, Stanford, Swarthmore, UT Austin, Tufts, Vanderbilt, Vassar, U of Virginia, Wabash, Whitman, Willamette, William and Mary, Williams, U of Wisconsin, and Yale.
Many people on those message boards are academic snobs—which is why there are so many name schools on this list—so you may also want to do some research into less well known programs; I don’t really think prestige matters until the graduate level, honestly.
I hope this was helpful!
