Admissions / Common Doubts / XI of XI

Will Latin really help with university, or is it just a hobby?

The short answer: Both, and the second is part of why the first is true. A rare subject, taken seriously and proven in contests, is noticed.

The honest answer begins with what admissions readers see. They see thousands of applications that look alike: the same courses, the same activities, the same essays. Latin is rare. In 2025, about 4,300 students in the world sat the AP Latin exam, out of more than six million AP exams.

A rare subject alone proves little. What proves something is a rare subject taken seriously over years and tested by others: a run of medals in the National Latin Exam, a place in the National Latin Honor Society, a 5 on the AP exam. That record says something an admissions reader cannot easily find elsewhere: that this student chose a difficult thing nobody required, and kept at it.

Our students have gone on to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Oxford, and many other universities and colleges. We do not claim the credit; they earned their places.

But we would add one thing. The students who do best are rarely the ones who studied Latin for admissions. They are the ones who grew to like it. A student who reads Vergil because she wants to know what happens next writes a better application than one who reads him for a line on a form. The pleasure is the reason. The admission is the alibi.

The rarest line on a transcript →

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