AP Latin
AP Latin Examination: 2022, William Kim
3 August 2022
The AP Latin examination is administered by the College Board and is the only Advanced Placement examination in a classical language. It demands sustained reading of Caesar’s Gallic War and Vergil’s Aeneid in the original Latin: not in translation, not in excerpt, but in the language as it was written. Students are expected to translate with accuracy, analyze with precision, and write about literature in English at a level that colleges will accept as equivalent to university coursework. A score of 5 is the highest the College Board awards. Fewer than twelve percent of students who sat the examination received one in 2022.
William Kim sat the AP Latin examination this past May and received a 5. He will enroll at Princeton University in the autumn: his first choice. The record of how he arrived there is set down below.
Competition Record
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NLENational Latin ExamGold Medal
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NLVENational Latin Vocabulary ExamWorld Champion: 1st among Top 5Gold: 1st in World
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NCEENational Classical Etymology ExamGold Medal
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SCRIBOSCRIBO Latin Writing ContestShort Story category: Run.Magna Cum Laude
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NJCLNational Junior Classical League ConventionFour first-place finishes at a single national convention
- Latin Reading
- Latin Vocabulary
- Greek Derivatives
- Academic Heptathlon: 1st (Mythology, Roman History & Life, Grammar, Vocabulary, Latin Derivatives, Greek Derivatives, Reading Comprehension)
4× 1st Place
The AP Latin examination is the measure toward which everything in a classical Latin education points. It asks a student to sit with Vergil and Caesar in the original and to give an account of what they find there: not what a translation says, not what a commentary suggests, but what the Latin itself yields to a prepared mind. A score of 5 means that the College Board’s examiners judged that mind to be well prepared indeed.
What makes William’s record worth reading as a whole rather than entry by entry is the breadth of it. The NLVE tests vocabulary. The NCEE tests etymology. The NJCL Convention tests reading, vocabulary, mythology, grammar, history, and derivatives: in the same week, across four separate competitions, all of which he won. SCRIBO asked him to write original Latin prose, which he had never attempted before. And the AP examination asked him to read Vergil and Caesar with the precision of a scholar. He was equal to all of it. Princeton will receive a student who already knows what Latin is for.
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