Hi there! I have two responses for you. One from Joe Hill, a 3rd year Classics student, and the other from India who has just finished her degree:
From Joe: LMH is really great for Classics. We’ve got a big classics student community, with usually 5 or 6 classicists a year who are a mix of the courses (I.e. those that have Latin and Greek, those that have one language, those that have none) and we have a lot of internal college events arranged by both the tutors and students so we all have quite a classics community. Also in terms of the teaching we’re really lucky, we have essentially 5 dedicated classics tutors and the main tutor Amin Benaissa is brilliant – very organised and really cares about his students. Also a massive plus of LMH is 2 of these tutors are archaeology tutors, which basically no other college has, and means we get a lot more support for the compulsory art and archaeology parts of what we have to study. We also have a dedicated language tutor who gives so much essential support when you first start for learning the languages from scratch – something which a lot of colleges don’t do.For general reading – obviously Classics is a massive field involving so many different areas they genuinely do not expect you to know bits of everything; almost everyone comes with no philosophy, and I knew literally nothing about ancient history before arriving. I would recommend find one author, or one genre or time period that you’re really interested in and get to know it in detail or read more that is similar. I.e. if you like Ovid, then read more Latin love poetry like Catullus. I’d also recommend looking at books about the topic, secondary literature and critical works, so you make sure you’re getting different opinions.
From India:
LMH has a really friendly classics community made up of Lit Hum, CAAH, AMH and Classics joint schools students - because it's a bigger college we have a wider variety of classicists and also college tutors who cover pretty much all core bases in terms of specialisms. They are incredibly supportive and involved in every aspect of your studies; I just finished my finals and found that I had more extra revision tutorials scheduled (including those which I'd requested myself!) than friends at other colleges. In terms of reading around, there is a finite number of extant classical texts which makes it much easier to narrow down! It's quite fun and easy to get into reading drama, and a background understanding of Greek tragedy etc will always be helpful if you plan to do classics anywhere. Oxford classicists come from all sorts of different backgrounds, however, and although it's great to show your interest through wider reading there is nothing you are expected to have read before you apply. If you want to read around then use it as an opportunity to learn about what you enjoy most!And yes - we're a big college and our boat club is very active. I'm not into rowing whatsoever but I do know they've just had a very successful Summer VIIIs campaign, and there always seems to be something going on whether social or sport!
For more on rowing at LMH, check out:
https://lmhboatclub.wordpress.com/Hope that helps!