More than 100,000 students sat the 2023 National Latin Exam, drawn from all fifty states and the District of Columbia as well as twenty-one countries — among them the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Greece, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and South Korea. It is worth pausing on that list. These are not countries where Latin is taught by accident or inertia; in each of them, someone has decided that the language is worth the effort, and students have sat down to be tested against one another across continents and time zones, in an examination administered in the same form to all of them. Eleven Emerson Latin students earned Gold Medals. The full record is set down below.
- Hyunchan Choi
- Jaye Choi
- Minchae Kang
- Ara Kim
- Cathy Kim
- Ariane Lee
- Olivia Lee
- Rachel Lee
- Victoria Park
- Jewon Shin
- Jeongho Woo
- Charles Cho
- Jian Hong
- Riwon Hwang
- Gio Hyung
- Chris Jeong
- Carey Kim
- Chloe Lee
- Sophia Park
- Jimin Son
- Jehyeong Suh
- Riley Yoo
- Antony Choi
- Lynn Kim
- Yejin Lee
- Hannah Oh
- Jenny Park
Eleven Gold Medals is the strongest single-tier result Emerson Latin has recorded in this examination. It is also the largest cohort to place in a single year across all tiers: twenty-seven students in all, from Gold through Bronze. What that number reflects is not a single strong class but a breadth of formation across levels and ages — students in different years of study, at different stages of the language, each tested against the portion of the examination appropriate to where they are. The NLE is structured this way by design, which means that placing at the Gold tier requires genuine command at one’s own level, not proximity to more advanced students who might carry a group result. Each of these twenty-seven names is there on their own account.
Victoria Park appears again this year, as does Jehyeong Suh, Rachel Lee, and several others who have placed in previous years. The record accumulates. We congratulate all twenty-seven, and we note with satisfaction that the list has grown.