GRADUATE STUDY IN CLASSICS

The Graduate School of Cornell University was founded in 1909, and graduate study in Classics dates from that time.

The Field of Classics

Every discipline taught and administered in the Cornell Graduate School is organized into a Graduate Field, coordinated and administered by a Director of Graduate Studies (DGS). The Graduate Field of Classics includes not only the faculty in the Department of Classics, but also professors from other departments whose research and teaching involve them substantially in teaching and research relevant to the Classics.
The departments currently represented in the Field are: Asian Studies, Classics, Comparative Literature, English, History, History of Art and Archaeology, Landscape Architecture, Linguistics, Near Eastern Studies and Philosophy. (Several members of the Field of Classics are also members of Interdisciplinary and Special Programs, such as Archaeology, Medieval Studies, and Religious Studies.) This wide representation means that instruction is available over an unusually wide range of subject matters.

Financial Aid

All Cornell graduate students in Classics are admitted with five years of guaranteed support, including tuition, health insurance, as well as an annual stipend, and summer stipend after the first through fourth years. Two years of this support (ordinarily the first and the fifth) take the form of fellowships provided by the Graduate School. The other three years are derived from fellowships controlled by the Department and from teaching assistantships.
The Classics Department, with the support of the Graduate School, makes available from the Townsend Endowment financial support for a sixth year. This sixth year funding is awarded at the discretion of the Classics Department to students demonstrating excellent progress.

The Townsend Fund also enables the department to offer travel grants to graduate students. We encourage students to spend some time at other universities in North America and Europe in order to study with scholars whose work would complement and enrich their individual research interests.

Degree Requirements

The Graduate Field of Classics is a PhD program. Since we do not offer an independent MA program, students whose final goal is a MA should not apply. During the week preceding the first week of classes of the Fall term, all entering students take a diagnostic test designed and evaluated by the First-Year Committee. It serves to guide the Committee in advising entering students on their curriculum for the first year. By the end of the second semester a student should have chosen his or her own Special Committee, a group of at least three members (a Special Committee chair and two minor members) chosen by the individual student to guide him or her through the various stages of the chosen concentration. Two or more of these members should be in the Graduate Field of Classics as required by the individual concentration.

There are five concentrations: Ancient History, Ancient Philosophy, Classical Archaeology, Classical Literature and Philology, and Greek and Latin Languages and Linguistics.

The following requirements are common to the five concentrations:

1. At least three years of residence.
2. Satisfactory performance on the First Year Examination, at the end of their second semester (i.e. by the end of May). This examination is administered by the Field and designed to ensure the basic competences required by the individual concentration.
3. Satisfactory performance on the “Q” Examination, by the end of their fourth semester (i.e. by the end of May). This examination is administered by the Field and is designed to demonstrate the level of proficiency in the language(s) required by the individual concentration and/or test progress on the reading list.
4. Satisfactory completion of course work required by the individual concentration.
5. Completion of 2 research papers (i.e. original contributions that could be presented to conferences or eventually submitted for publication) by the time of their A-exam.
6. Satisfactory completion of the “A” Examination, before the beginning of the seventh term of residence (i.e. by the end of August). This examination is administered by the student’s Special Committee. The “A” Examination is a comprehensive general examination covering the authors, fields, and subjects chosen by the student and his or her committee. These usually comprise three areas distributed between major and minor areas as required by the individual concentration.
7. Presentation of a dissertation prospectus to the Field at the beginning of the second term of the fourth year. The student’s Special Committee will select the format of the prospectus and determine its adequacy. It will usually take the form of a preliminary description of the proposed dissertation that delineates what topic and area the dissertation will explore, what approach will be taken to the topic, and why this topic and area merit such exploration.
8. Satisfactory performance on two Modern Language Examinations. These are written examinations administered by the Field. All students must demonstrate reading knowledge of (a) German and (b) French or Italian. One of these modern language examinations must have been passed by the end of the student’s third year, and the second by the end of the fourth year.
9. Presentation and public oral defense (“B” Examination) of a doctoral thesis.
10. Submission of the approved doctoral thesis to the Graduate School.

Application Procedure

Application forms, as well as Graduate School catalogues and additional financial aid information, can be obtained by writing to the Graduate Field Assistant, Department of Classics, 120 Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-3201, or contacting us via e-mail at: kn59@cornell.edu.

You may also apply for graduate study at Cornell on the web at:  http://www.gradschool.cornell.edu/?p=1

Completed applications for fall admission are officially due at the Graduate School no later than January 5. But we encourage applicants to submit their forms as early as possible, preferably by mid-December, so that the Field can alert them to missing letters or documents. GRE scores are required as part of every application, and a ten to twenty page sample of written work should also be submitted.

We strongly recommend that you choose as a writing sample work that shows your ability to work closely with ancient texts in the original language. Ideally your writing sample should also demonstrate research abilities and critical use of secondary sources. If you are writing an undergraduate Honors Thesis a chapter from it would be a good choice.   If you are applying for the concentrations in Ancient History, Ancient Philosophy, Classical Archaeology, or Indo-European Linguistics it is particularly important that you submit a sample that will enable us to evaluate your work in that area.   Students from overseas whose native language is not English are required to take the TOEFL examination.

Applications are evaluated in February and March, and applicants are usually notified of their status no later than April 1st. For further information about graduate study in Classics at Cornell, write or call the Director of Graduate Studies, or Katrina Neff, the Graduate Field Assistant, at: Department of Classics, 120 Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-3201. Tel: (607)-255-3354 Email: kn59@cornell.edu