Faculty of Classics - University of Cambridge

Text only version

Where am I? »

Summer Schools

Hecuba manuscriptThe Classics Faculty has connections with two summer schools run by JACT (The Joint Association of Classical Teachers). One of these is for Latin and takes place in Wells, the other is for Greek and is at Bryanston School in Dorset . Both are residential. We strongly encourage students without Greek or Latin A-level who are holding Cambridge offers to attend one of these summer schools in the summer before they come up. Students who will be coming to do the 4-year degree normally go to Wells, and students who are coming to do the 3-year degree but have not done Greek A level (or equivalent) normally go to Bryanston. Both courses usually run roughly in the last week of July and first week of August.

Full details and costs are available from the JACT website here. Costs are around £550 for accommodation, full board and tuition at the two-week Greek summer school at Bryanston and £500 for the Latin summer school at Wells. The summer schools run a bursary scheme for Cambridge offer-holders to help with costs and some colleges may also offer financial support. (We also expect students who are moving from the first to the second year of the 4-year degree to go to Bryanston that summer. This is fully funded by the Faculty.)

These courses are very important and also very good fun. As well as introducing or consolidating the basics of the language, or taking you further if you have already done some of the languages, they are a great place to meet other students who will be in the same year at Cambridge or indeed at other universities.

If for some unavoidable reason it is really impossible to attend the relevant course, it is possible to make alternative arrangements, by either going to another summer school or organising roughly 30 hours of private tuition, but these arrangements must be agreed by the Director of Studies in the relevant college and the Senior Language Teaching Officer in the Classics Faculty.

Illustration: Euripides Hecabe 1-4, CCC MS 403 f. 1 R (15th century).  By kind permission of the Master and Fellows, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.