About

The NLE is administered each year during the last week of February through mid-March at registered schools worldwide, with results returned by late spring. Students take the exam at the level corresponding to their Latin study — eight levels span Introduction through Advanced Latin Prose, Advanced Latin Poetry, and Advanced Latin Reading Comprehension — and are evaluated against national cutoff scores rather than against each other directly; awards reflect absolute proficiency rather than ranked placement. Gold medal and summa cum laude distinction go to students scoring at the highest national tier; silver medal and maxima cum laude to the next tier; certificates through cum laude to students above the national average. Perfect papers — a score of 40 out of 40 — are recognized with a specially printed certificate, and the names of gold medal and perfect paper winners are published nationally in Torch U.S., the National Junior Classical League's publication. Gold medal winners on the three advanced exams are eligible to apply for annual $2,000 NLE scholarships, contingent on enrolling in at least one semester of Latin or classical Greek in their first year of college.

The NLE is the only nationally normed proficiency credential available to Latin students at the high school level, which gives gold medal performance at the advanced levels a specific and legible meaning for admissions offices and classics departments. Latin enrollment is rare enough that most colleges encounter few applicants with serious classical language preparation; an advanced NLE gold medal signals a level of linguistic and cultural competency that AP Latin alone does not fully capture, and that classics, history, and humanities programs at selective universities recognize as genuinely unusual. For a student pursuing Latin through the advanced levels, the NLE is not optional — it is the primary external validation the field offers.

The National Latin Exam is the right examination for any serious Latin student — the introductory and intermediate levels build the credential record, and the advanced exams are where gold medal performance becomes a meaningful and distinctive signal for classics-track college applicants.