The National Latin Vocabulary Exam tests command of Latin vocabulary and inflected forms, organized into divisions by years of study. There is no passage to draw on, no context to narrow a guess: the words and their forms are either known or they are not. Every Emerson Latin student who sat the examination this year placed. Twenty-nine students entered; twenty-nine received medals. Twenty-two earned Gold. The full record is set down below.
- Esther Chae
- Charles Cho
- Andy Hong
- Gio Hyung
- Yeyoon Jang
- Yunyoung Keh
- Gloria Kim
- Grace Kim
- Seungmo Kim
- Chaeyoon Lee
- Evelyn Lee
- Hunjae Lee
- Jihan Lee
- Seungwoo Lee
- Seojun Lim
- Jiyun Lim
- Hyunmin Ryu
- Jonghyun Seo
- Jason Tae
- Gene Yang
- Min Yang
- Susie Yang
- Olivia Hwang
- Dana Kim
- Joanne Kim
- Elisa Min
- Jehyeong Suh
- Jaewon Yoon
- Aden Hwang
That every participating student placed merits a moment of consideration, because it is not a result that flatters the examination. The NLVE offers no passage, no context, no surrounding text from which an answer might be inferred. Latin vocabulary and inflected forms, tested directly, at each student’s own level, against a national field. A medal requires genuine command — not familiarity, not proximity, but the kind of knowledge that has been absorbed into the student’s working understanding of the language and remains there under examination conditions. When every student who sits the test places, the inference is not that the test was lenient. The inference is that the preparation was complete.
Twenty-two Gold Medals among twenty-nine students is a figure that would be notable in any year. What it reflects, more than the talent of any individual student, is the consistency of a method applied across levels ranging from upper elementary to high school — each division tested separately, each result independent of the others. The Latin is being learned, and learned well, at every stage the academy reaches. We congratulate all twenty-nine.