Classics at Oxbridge

[twistyizzy]

DD is only 13 but has loved Classics since Yr 3/4. She is pretty set on doing it at GCSE, A-Level + uni. She already does Latin + classics at school, top of each class plus reads for her leisure and has just finished the Pat Barket + Natalie Haynes series. She is about to start The Odyssey. Zero pressure from us, this is all driven by her.
My dad went to Cambridge to study Classics and she is obsessed with doing the same. Again, zero pressure from us as DH and I went to RG but not Oxbridge.
So my question is, bearing in mind she could change her mind but is unlikely to, what can we do to support her in terms of supra curricular? I know Oxbridge do outreach, taster days etc but they seem to be aimed at Yr 12 + 13 only.
I'm not thinking of now but maybe Yr 10 + 11 to help her make decisions about A level options etc.

The Greek ab initio is way older than that, even. I went in 1983 and Mods B was pretty established then (and quite female dominated, surprise)

They did phone me at one point to donate to the both an initio scheme. I'm afraid that I chuckled and said that I couldn't as doing the degree hadn't (from choice) landed me in a position to do so, and that I genuinely couldn't see how people could pick up both languages from scratch to the right level by part one exams. I can only assume the exams must be easier or they are working them far too hard.

That's interesting. I assumed the ab initio course was introduced in response to the phasing out of classical languages in the state sector. That would only just have bitten for those applying in 1983 (perhaps I have my sums wrong - counting on my fingers).

It's a legendarily tough course. You really have to be resilient to get through it well. You also can't wing it on the language front - if you don't have a real aptitude for learning new languages but nevertheless want to study the classical world, do CAAH.

The course is changing any moment - it's caused quite a lot of controversy. I think possibly it is being dumbed down, or that's the assertion. Not sure of the detail.

It has to be dumbed down. I just can't see how you can pick both up from scratch and deal with what we had in part one . I started Greek at 14, a friend at another college , ex Eton, had started at 6. There was a bit of a gulf between us. And then the ab initio had to do the same paper.

No I mean I think the assertion is that the entire degree is being dumbed down from this year, for both streams. I could be wrong. foxglovetree will know.

DD4 is clear that she was judged on equal terms with the Course I applicants and that it's unsurprising that it's the Course I applicants who tend to take a much greater share of firsts both at Mods and Finals.

Thats a shame re the dumbing down, but I get they need students and the qualified pool is shrinking.

For what it's worth, my ex, who didn't have Greek, is a professor these days, as is one of my college cohort. But the exams were rigorous and they worked their arses off to level up for part one.

I have a feeling I might be sat on for having said that, hence my caveat. I just know that DD4 chatted about people in the faculty quarrelling about which way to go and it seems to have caused a lot of raised hackles.

Certainly some of her texts seemed to be in translation, but perhaps that was for Mods only. So that must be a difference. But it all looked fairly forbidding to me when I saw her books and what she was doing. Unfortunately all her grammar notes were stolen (they were in her suitcase) on her way back to Oxford for the start of the Hilary Term before Mods. She had reams of them. Not helpful.

Ouch re the theft, poor Dd. That's a lot of work gone. I hope she's ok. Hopefully her friends will rally round. I was hospitalised in my third year, and a friend from another college walked me through his notes from what I'd missed, we're still friends now.

Thanks. She was massively rattled by it at the time but survived Mods after a prolonged cry. Everyone was great: porters, tutors and friends.

Tough for you too, coming back from hospitalisation is impressive.

Nothing especially helpful except to say you sound like a great mum OP. I read classics at a Russell Group, but completely flunked an Oxford interview because I was woefully underprepared to demonstrate breadth of knowledge and, as a PP mentions, philosophy! I'd have really benefitted from an engaged parent to help me prepare but was first to go to uni in a family with little knowledge of classics degrees!

With the effort you are making to support her interest and broaden her knowledge she will do brilliantly wherever she goes.

In fact a major shout out to Mary Beard too who incredibly kindly responded immediately to an email and put out a tweet asking people to get in touch if they saw an abandoned suitcase full of Classics notes in the vicinity of the stations along the train line.

Thank you, that means a lot. I acknowledge she is privileged to be our only child so we have all our time and energy to put into her. Obviously being 3rd generation heading towards uni is also a big benefit and I acknowledge that too. However we would support her just as much if she said she wanted to be something not academic.

She was my DoS, and was and is a legend.

She even paid me to babysit her kids, and didn't mind when I drank her wine. Her son roundly beat me at Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 when I was supposed to be revising Appolonius that evening.

She's also a very astute judge of character. I'm a procrastinator by nature and a brilliant short term crammer. We had to take 3 exam topics and a dissertation for part two, except, as I found out, we didn't. And I had 4 subjects I really wanted to do. I went to see her to suggest it and her response was ' hmm, I was wondering how long it would take you to suggest that'.

You struck gold there for sure murasaki - lucky you!

“Dumbed down” is a strong claim and I think unfair. What they are doing is abolishing the Course I/Course II division and having a single course but with different language pathways depending on experience, including a new intermediate one (eg for someone who has a GCSE in Latin so they don’t have to restart the language along with complete beginners.) The level of the language that students are meant to attain will be the same at the end of the course (AFAIK the quantity of texts they have to read for Finals is not changing). Beginner students have always had to read less in Latin or Greek in the first two years compared to those with A Level but are expected to be able to read as well as them by Finals - that isn’t changing.

To me “dumbing down” would be if the end level students were expected to reach at Finals was reduced. Changing the route by which students get to that level is not.

Curriculum reform is always controversial and causes tension in departments. That’s true in every academic institution I’ve worked in. It was just as controversial when Oxford’s English Faculty decided that it would no longer be compulsory to study Anglo Saxon and it was also billed as dumbing down the degree for the sake of popularity. I gather from people much older than me that when Classics allowed people to study classical literature for Finals (rather than having to do philosophy and history only) this was also considered dumbing down and some tutors objected very strongly.

Basically dumbing down is an easy charge to level at any reform to a degree programme, and it fits with a narrative that is age old (the youth of today aren’t what they were).

This isn’t to say that tutors or students were being unreasonable to object to specific changes, eg particular papers they enjoyed being taken off or reworked. But papers in university syllabuses are swapped out or reworked all the time - including at Oxford.

"Dumbed down” is a strong claim and I think unfair.

You'll have noticed I stuck a caveat in front and centre foxglovetree!

Very interesting to read about the reform of the degree.

It sounds to me as though you're also saying that a Course II degree is equal in merit to a Course I degree. I recall a poster jumping on a couple of us with DC doing Course II to inform us in quite strong terms that Course I was significantly more challenging and that a first from Course I was worth more than a first from Course II. I didn't know quite what the issues were around reading from the original but repeated what I had understood from DD4: that the Course II students were examined on equal terms in finals to those on Course I. At best it all seemed a bit petty. DD4 hadn't achieved her Noddy double first at that stage and was having a bit of difficulty dealing with the volume of work, so it wasn't anything I was going to get too invested in.

Nowhere near as clever as your 13 year old sadly but as someone has previously said I think considering this when you travel would also be a good idea. We went to Pompeii when we were on honeymoon and found it very profound and thought provoking, we wish we’d had time to also see Herculaneum but didn’t have time before we moved on to next destination. It’s somewhere we want to take our children when they are older, more into teens and can understand the history the place holds. Wherever you travel maybe take some time to check out museums and local attractions (if you don’t already). It’s so lovely that she knows what she wants to do at 13, all I knew at 13 was that I wanted to run my own business one day and/or be part time when I had kids!
Good luck and well done for being so supportive - I was told I wasn’t ‘academic enough’ by my mother so did an arts degree, finally returned to uni at 26 and completed a law degree while working full time in the city. Let her know she can do it all and more if she wants to 💪🏻💪🏻

Thank you. We did Pompeii + Herculaneum 5 years ago but I definitely think we need to go back!

@twistyizzy your DD sounds great and I've loved reading this thread. I hope you've found it as useful as I have.

I'm here with a question, rather than advice, as there are obviously loads of very knowledgeable people here. I hope that's OK.

My DD is in Y11. She is very keen on the idea of Classics at Oxbridge too. She has had a passionate interest in Greek mythology for some years and this has expanded to other classical civilisations. She sat a Class Civ GCSE last year in her own time (online course, not offered at her state school).

She is a very able all rounder and likely to achieve mostly/all 9s (got a 9 in Class Civ too). She is currently struggling to decide between A Levels and the IB (both offered at the state 6th form she'll attend).
A levels would likely be Class Civ, History, English Lit and Psychology. (Maths, French, Politics also contenders.)
IB would be HL Eng, History, Psychology, SL French, Biology, Maths.
Any thoughts/advice? How much does it matter that her A Levels don't include a language?

@thewalrus it doesn’t matter she isn’t taking a language in that they won’t mind either way looking at her UCAS, but if she applies to O she will be tested on her language aptitude so she will need to do well in that test. That is meant to assess if someone has the linguistic ability to do well, and doesn’t assume knowledge of any foreign language, but having a good understanding of grammatical and syntactic structures is bound to help.

Also the degree is extremely linguistic so she will need to be sure she will enjoy that (if she doesn’t want to carry on with French, is she sure she wants to do a degree involving language classes every day rather than say History or English?) No one would ask her that at interview - it’s more a question for you to think about with her. If the answer is “I’d love to do French, I just can’t fit it in, and the idea of getting up and going to a Latin class every day excites me” then great.

Some students at Oxbridge underestimate how linguistic a degree Classics is and if they don’t love language learning they may not enjoy the degree that much.

Speaking as a mum, not an academic, if I had the option for my kid to do IB I’d definitely take it - I think not being forced to specialise at 16 is so much better for them.

And if the answer is, "I like languages but it's not a passion/strength" then perhaps she might like to look at the classical archaeology and ancient history degree instead. Considerable overlap of subject matter and like classics, suited to an all rounder.

thewalrus that language aptitude test comes in written form as the first filter and then orally at interview. The interview test was seriously tough. DD4 wanted to give me a debrief when she came out of the interview; in fact I think she tried out the questions on me. I also can't recall how I did, just that one of the questions was about a sandwich.

She took Latin for the first four terms and had a 9am class every weekday (maybe Saturday too?). She took Greek after Mods and that was the same - it's quite an ask. The other components of the course, the history, philosophy and literature, come on top.

It really is very intense. You have to properly love the technicalities of language to manage this course, because it would be easy to sink. As TenSheds has said, CAAH is a very good alternative for those who think the language isn't for them. It's very possible that CAAH has more applicants than Classics though, precisely because of the language requirement and the state of MFL teaching across much of the maintained sector. But that's just a guess.

Bear in mind that if you apply for CAAH they expect real passion and aptitude for dealing with visual sources and material culture. And that it also involves no literature. It is quite a different degree with a different skill set, not just Classics without the language.