AP Latin
Stage III
By the time a student reaches this stage, the stakes are real and I do not pretend otherwise. For some students, years of formation lead here; for others, meeting once a week throughout the school year is enough to arrive at this stage in a single year. Either way, this is where that formation meets a single exam day in May, and I understand why the questions I get about this course are more specific than the ones about any other.
How the Two Courses Work
AP Latin runs as two concurrent courses, AP Latin Prose on Saturdays and AP Latin Poetry on Sundays, from the fall term through exam day in May. A student takes both together. Each meets once weekly for two hours, thirty-five sessions per course across the Fall, Winter, Spring, and Trinity terms. Both courses have been reviewed and authorized through the College Board's own AP Course Audit: a college-level Latin course that the College Board itself has certified as such, not merely one that borrows the name. AP Latin is also offered during the summer intensive, and a shorter catch-up track exists for students joining after the fall term has already begun, more on both soon.
What Is Covered
AP Latin Prose is built around the letters of Pliny the Younger. AP Latin Poetry is built around Vergil's Aeneid. This is the College Board's own required core for the current exam, not a choice either of us makes. Every required passage is covered in full, in both courses, with no exceptions and nothing skipped for time. Beyond that requirement, each course also works through supplementary readings selected to broaden a student's exposure past the required list, since the exam draws on unfamiliar passages as readily as familiar ones, and both courses exceed the College Board's own minimum for that supplementary reading, not merely meet it.
How a Session Runs
All three of the College Board's tested skills (reading and comprehending the Latin, describing its style and context, and analyzing it) are built into every one of the thirty-five sessions, not saved for a review unit near the end. Real AP-style questions, in every format the exam actually uses, appear in every class period from the first session onward; the poetry course also practices scansion regularly, since that skill decays fastest without repetition. Three sessions each spring are set aside for the AP Course Project. Trinity term, for this course, is shorter than for any other: five sessions in total, every one of them devoted to final review of every required passage, prose and poetry alike, ending at the exam itself in May. There is no second half of Trinity to return to afterward.
Between sessions, if a passage is not landing, a student is not simply left to wait for the next class. I record a short video made for that specific question, walking through the point directly, the same way I have for years now, and it consistently makes the difference between independent review that feels uncertain and independent review that does not.
Where This Leads
A student who finishes the exam and wants to keep going moves into Stage IV: Advanced Latin Literature. It begins that summer, for anyone who wants to continue past AP and take part in the most prestigious international contests at the most advanced level. Separate contest-prep courses run in the weeks before each competition, building directly on what is learned here.
On Credit and Standing
Emerson Latin operates on the Carnegie Unit standard used across American secondary education, and is a registered chapter sponsor of the National Latin Honor Society through the American Classical League. I am also pursuing accreditation with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). To date, every student who has needed to transfer high school credit for a course taken here has received it, based on our syllabus and transcript, at international schools across the Pacific.
One Honest Note
What I can tell you plainly: every required passage will already have been read, and every question type will already have been practiced, many times over, well before May.