Personally vetted instructors
Latin for High School tutors, lessons & classes
Salvete discipuli Salvete discipuli, the standard plural greeting a Latin teacher uses to open a classroom session.
Personally vetted Latin tutors who work with high-school students preparing for the National Latin Exam, AP Latin, and CLEP credit. Lessons paced to school grammar tracks and to the Vergil and Caesar canon.
Your instructors
Latin for High School tutors for private lessons & classes
The tutors below have the deepest classical-languages background on our roster for the high-school track specifically. Several hold graduate degrees in Classics or Latin literature, a number have taught the AP Latin and Cambridge Latin Course curricula in school classrooms for years, and a few have served as readers or graders for the AP exam itself. Every one was met and vetted by Strommen directly before being listed.
Filter by location, age, or price, read the bios, then book a 30-minute free trial.
Below are the Strommen tutors who work with high-school Latin students. Photos, ratings, and rates are real. Click any card to read the tutor's background and book a free 30-minute trial.
Serge. Yvv. R
★★★★★
Français, Italiano, Español & Deutsch expert & native speaker. Join my helpful, engaging lessons !
- San Diego •
- Online •
- Groups Enrolling
Specialties: European Portuguese, Castellano (Spain), Parisian French, French for Kids, German for Kids, Italian for Kids, Hochdeutsch - Standard German, Belgian French, Business Italian, Abruzzese, Italian Literature, Italian Academic Writing, Business Spanish, Spanish for Travel, Spanish Dialect Coaching, Spanish Interpreting and Translating, Spanish for VIPs, Spanish for Kids, Québécois French - Canadian French, Meridional French, American Accent, Italian Dialect coach, French Dialect coach, German Dialect coach, Spanish Dialect coach, Italian Dialect Coaching for Actors, Catalan, Flemish, Dutch for Business, Dutch for Beginners, Dutch for Travel, Dutch for Kids, Conversational Dutch, Intensive Dutch, Wallon, American Accent Training, British Accent Training, Pronunciation Coaching, Accent Modification, Latin for Beginners, Latin for High School, Conversational Ukrainian, Ukrainian for Kids, Basque for Beginners, Conversational Catalan, Catalan for Beginners, Galician for Beginners, AP History Tutor, Document Translation, Legal Translation, Academic Writing Help, Business Writing, Argentinian Spanish (Castellano), Brazilian Portuguese, Intensive Spanish, DELE test, Medical Spanish, Marseille French, French for Canadian Citizenship TEF TCF, French for Opera Singers, CILS B1 Cittadinanza (citizenship), Conversational Portuguese, Portuguese for Business, Portuguese for Kids
Offers 30 min free-trial
As low as $39.00/hr Online
Serge. Yvv. R. Offers free-trial
Français, Italiano, Español & Deutsch expert & native speaker. Join my helpful, engaging lessons !Salut, ça va ou quoi, ça roule ? (French)— ¡Hola!; ¿Cómo va el vibe hoy? (Spanish)— Ciao raga, tutto top? (Italian)— Hallo, hallo Leute, was geht?...
Mihaela R
★★★★★
Cura ut valeas
- Santa Clarita •
- In-Person, Online
Specialties: Latin for Beginners, Latin for High School, Conversational Romanian, Romanian for Beginners
Salve! (Hello!) My name is Mihaela, I am a writer and a passionate, career-oriented teacher, having PhD in Philology. My expertise is to teach Latin Language and Literature for all levels and purposes ( from beginners to high proficiency, from just...
As low as $79.00/hr Online
Offers In-Person
Mihaela R.
Cura ut valeasSalve! (Hello!) My name is Mihaela, I am a writer and a passionate, career-oriented teacher, having PhD in Philology. My expertise is to teach Latin Language...
Lingua Latina — exams & canon
5 things every high-school Latin student should know
These are the structural anchors that organize the high-school Latin track: the exams, the canon, the textbook tradition, and the college-credit options. Save the list and book a tutor to build a plan around them.
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01
National Latin Exam
The annual one-hour multiple-choice exam administered every February or March across nine levels, taken by roughly 150,000 students nationwide. It tests grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, derivatives, mythology, and Roman culture. Gold, silver, and certificate awards recognize top scores. A gold medal documents sustained achievement on a notoriously rigorous subject and is a real signal on a college application.
e.g. A motivated Latin II student aims for a silver or gold at the Latin II level, depending on prep.
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02
AP Latin
The College Board's exam covering selections from Vergil's Aeneid (Books 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12) and Caesar's Gallic Wars (Books 1, 4, 5, 6), with both prescribed-text translation and unseen-passage sight reading. The exam runs three hours: multiple-choice plus free-response essays. A score of 4 or 5 typically earns six to ten college credits at universities that grant them.
e.g. The Aeneid Book 4 underworld scene and the Caesar Book 1 ambush narrative are perennial exam favorites.
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03
CLEP credit
The College-Level Examination Program Latin test, a 90-minute computer-based exam available year-round at testing centers. A passing score (50 or above) typically earns three to twelve college credits depending on the institution. CLEP is the backup path for students whose high school does not offer AP Latin and the supplement path for students wanting additional credit beyond AP.
e.g. A student who finishes Latin III in high school is usually well prepared to take CLEP for college credit.
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04
Wheelock and Cambridge
The two dominant high-school textbook tracks. Wheelock's Latin is grammar-forward with paradigm tables and reading passages from real authors, common in honors and AP-track classes. The Cambridge Latin Course is narrative-forward with a continuous story about the Pompeian family of Caecilius, common in public schools and many independent schools. Both work; tutors run whichever the student's school uses.
e.g. Wheelock chapter 30 (the subjunctive) lands at roughly the same place in the curriculum as Cambridge Unit 3 (the imperfect subjunctive in narrative context).
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05
Honors-track college applications
Four years of high-school Latin, a strong AP Latin score, a National Latin Exam gold medal, and a summer Latin institute together build a profile that signals sustained intellectual seriousness at selective colleges, especially those with strong classics or liberal-arts traditions. Latin documents commitment in a way few transcript subjects do, and admissions officers at these institutions know it.
e.g. A senior with four years of Latin, NLE gold, and AP Latin 5 is a strong applicant for classics-friendly liberal-arts colleges.
About Latin for High School
From Caecilius to the AP exam
High-school Latin sits at a specific intersection: the language of Rome taught inside a US college-preparatory curriculum, with the National Latin Exam every March, the AP Latin exam every May, and the CLEP exam available year-round as a path to college credit. Most students who take Latin in high school do so for four years, working through one of two dominant textbook tracks (Wheelock or the Cambridge Latin Course), and the strong ones end up reading unadapted Vergil and Caesar by senior year. The students who place into AP Latin in eleventh or twelfth grade are reading the same Aeneid passages and Gallic Wars selections their college peers will read a year later, and a strong AP Latin score (4 or 5) routinely earns six to ten college credits at universities that grant them.
The families who come to Strommen for high-school Latin tutoring tend to fall into a few clear groups, and naming which one shapes the right first lesson. Some students are in the middle of a school-paced Latin sequence and are struggling with a specific unit (the subjunctive, the ablative absolute, the gerundive, the sequence of tenses), and a tutor catches them up and sends them back into the classroom with the rest of the curve. Some are preparing for the National Latin Exam in February or March, often pushing for a gold medal at their level, and need a tutor who knows the exam's specific format and the topical sections (mottoes, derivatives, mythology, Roman history) that get students who knew only grammar. Some are preparing for AP Latin and need a tutor who has actually taught the AP Vergil-and-Caesar canon, with the prescribed reading list, the sight-reading skill development, and the essay technique the exam scores on. Some are working toward CLEP credit because their high school does not offer AP Latin, and they want the college credit anyway. And some are advanced students preparing applications for Latin honors programs or summer Latin institutes, where the entrance bar is reading fluency rather than coursework. Each track gets a different opening lesson.
The National Latin Exam is the most widely taken Latin exam in the United States, with roughly 150,000 students taking it annually across nine levels (Introduction, Latin I, Latin II, Latin III Prose, Latin III-IV Poetry, Latin V-VI, plus four levels for younger students). It is a one-hour, 40-question multiple-choice exam testing grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, derivatives, mythology, and Roman culture. Gold medals are awarded for top scores; silver and certificate awards recognize good performance at lower thresholds. The exam is meaningful on a college application not because admissions officers know what it is, but because it documents sustained achievement in a notoriously rigorous subject. Tutors who prep for the NLE know the exam's quirks: the topical sections that catch grammar-only students, the vocabulary list per level, the recurring Roman-history factoids, and the timing pressure on the reading comprehension passages.
AP Latin is a different beast. The exam covers a fixed canon: selections from Vergil's Aeneid (Books 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12) and selections from Caesar's Gallic Wars (Books 1, 4, 5, 6), read in Latin, plus a broader required reading in English translation. The exam has two sections: multiple-choice (sight reading of unseen passages from the same authors and translation questions on the prescribed text) and free-response (two reading comprehension essays plus a longer analytical essay). The hardest single skill is sight reading: a student who can translate the prescribed passages well from memory but cannot parse an unseen Vergil passage at speed will not score well. Tutors prep this deliberately, with weekly sight-reading practice on related passages outside the prescribed canon. The Aeneid sections lean on epic conventions, on the meter (dactylic hexameter), and on a working knowledge of the Aeneas-Dido-underworld-Italian-wars narrative arc. The Caesar sections are more straightforward prose but require fluency with military terminology, Gallic geography, and Caesar's distinctive third-person narrative voice.
The CLEP Latin exam is the path many students use when their high school does not offer AP Latin or when they want backup credit. CLEP Latin is offered at a single level and tests grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in a 90-minute computer-based format. A passing score (50 or above on the standard scale) typically earns three to twelve college credits depending on the institution, with the highest credit counts at state university systems that grant credit for both semesters of college Latin. Tutors who prep for CLEP run a focused four-to-six-month course covering the grammar systematically and building sight-reading skill on Caesar-level prose. Many students take CLEP after completing Latin III in high school and earn credits that let them skip introductory college Latin entirely.
The textbook question matters at the high-school level because the school has usually already chosen for you. Wheelock's Latin remains the most common adult-style textbook used in honors and AP-track high-school classes, with paradigm tables and reading passages from real authors. The Cambridge Latin Course (with its continuous narrative about the Pompeian family of Caecilius across five units) is the dominant choice in most public-school programs and many independent schools, with grammar introduced inductively through reading. A few schools use Ecce Romani, which sits stylistically between the two. Tutors are comfortable with all three and will run the textbook your school uses rather than switching you over. The exception is when a student is supplementing for an exam (NLE, AP, or CLEP) where the exam itself is the curriculum and the textbook becomes a study aid rather than the primary text.
The honors-track college application angle is worth naming. Four years of high-school Latin, an AP Latin score of 4 or 5, a National Latin Exam gold medal, and a summer institute at the American Classical League or the Paideia Institute together build a profile that lands well at selective colleges, especially at institutions with strong classics or liberal-arts traditions. Latin signals sustained intellectual seriousness in a way few other subjects on a transcript do, and admissions officers at these institutions know it. For students aiming at this profile, the work compounds: a strong NLE result sophomore year sets up a strong AP Latin junior year, which sets up either an extended Latin sequence senior year or a pivot into Greek.
Strommen has been teaching languages in Los Angeles since 2006, and the high-school Latin track is among our most credentialed. Every tutor below was met and vetted by us in person. Lessons run online for students worldwide and in person for those in the LA area. Most students begin with a free 30-minute trial so the tutor can see where you sit in your school sequence and which exam, if any, you are targeting. If you are just starting Latin and want the general adult-beginner track, see our Latin for Beginners page.
What you'll cover
Lessons & classes tailored to Latin for High School
School-paced support across the four-year sequence
Tutors match the pace and the textbook of the student's school program, whether Wheelock, Cambridge, or Ecce Romani. Lessons focus on the specific units giving trouble (the subjunctive, the ablative absolute, indirect statement, the gerundive, the sequence of tenses) and on the upcoming material so the student returns to class ahead of the curve rather than catching up. Homework support and quiz prep are part of the work.
National Latin Exam preparation
Focused prep across all nine NLE levels. Tutors run mock exams, drill the topical sections (mottoes, derivatives, mythology, Roman history) that catch grammar-only students, and build the timing pressure students need for the reading comprehension passages. Most NLE prep runs as a six-to-twelve-week intensive ahead of the February or March exam date, layered onto the regular school curriculum.
AP Latin: Vergil, Caesar, and sight reading
Systematic work through the prescribed Vergil and Caesar selections, with attention to the dactylic hexameter of the Aeneid and the military and geographic vocabulary of the Gallic Wars. Weekly sight-reading practice on unseen passages from the same authors is non-negotiable, because the AP exam's hardest single skill is parsing an unseen Vergil or Caesar passage at speed. Essay technique gets its own block of work in the final months.
CLEP exam preparation
A focused four-to-six-month course covering grammar systematically and building sight-reading skill on Caesar-level prose, aimed at the CLEP Latin exam available year-round. CLEP is the right path for students whose high school does not offer AP Latin or who want additional college credit beyond AP. Tutors who prep for CLEP know which colleges grant credit at which thresholds, which helps families plan the credit strategy.
FAQ
About Latin for High School lessons & classes
Which is better for college applications, AP Latin or the National Latin Exam?
Both, and they signal different things. AP Latin shows performance on a single high-stakes exam covering a specific literary canon, and a 4 or 5 earns college credit at most institutions. The NLE documents sustained achievement across a level-appropriate range of grammar, vocabulary, and cultural knowledge, and a gold medal across multiple years tells admissions officers the student stuck with Latin and got better at it. The strongest profiles do both: NLE consistently across the four years, AP Latin junior or senior year.
My school uses the Cambridge Latin Course but I want to prep for the National Latin Exam. Can a tutor help?
Yes, and this is one of the more common requests. The Cambridge Latin Course covers all the grammar the NLE tests, but it spreads it inductively across the narrative rather than naming the rules explicitly the way Wheelock does. A tutor takes the grammar Cambridge has introduced through the Caecilius story and pulls it into the explicit paradigm-table form the NLE expects students to know, then drills the topical sections (mottoes, derivatives, mythology, Roman history) that Cambridge does not emphasize as heavily.
How early should I start AP Latin prep?
Most students benefit from starting focused AP prep at least nine months before the exam, alongside their regular AP Latin class. The reason is sight reading: the exam's hardest single skill is parsing an unseen Vergil or Caesar passage at speed, and that skill takes consistent weekly practice across many months to build. Students who only translate the prescribed canon and skip the sight-reading work tend to score 3 or below; students who add the weekly unseen-passage practice tend to score 4 or 5.
Can I take AP Latin if my school doesn't offer it?
Yes, with caveats. You can register for the AP exam at most high schools that offer any AP exams, even if the specific course is not offered at your school, by contacting the school's AP coordinator. Self-study with a tutor across nine to twelve months can absolutely prepare a strong Latin III student for the AP exam, but it requires unusual discipline and a tutor who has actually taught the AP canon. The alternative path, especially for honors-track students whose schools do not offer AP Latin, is CLEP credit, which is easier to access independently.
What's the difference between AP Latin and CLEP Latin for college credit?
AP Latin is a longer, harder exam covering a specific literary canon (Vergil and Caesar) and tests both prescribed-text translation and sight reading. A 4 or 5 typically earns six to ten college credits. CLEP Latin is shorter and broader, covering grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension without a specific literary canon. A passing score earns three to twelve credits depending on the institution. Selective colleges are more likely to grant credit for AP than for CLEP; state university systems are often more generous with CLEP. Check the specific schools on your list.
My student is struggling with the Latin subjunctive. How long does it take to catch up?
The subjunctive is the single hardest unit in most school Latin curricula, and it is the most common reason families call us mid-semester. The good news is that once a student understands the four basic uses (purpose, result, indirect command, indirect question) and the sequence-of-tenses rule, the rest of the subjunctive uses follow patterns that compound quickly. Most students who come to us behind on the subjunctive catch up within three to six weeks of weekly tutoring with consistent homework practice in between.
Are summer Latin institutes worth the time and money?
For honors-track students aiming at selective colleges, yes. The American Classical League's institutes, the Paideia Institute's Living Latin programs, and the various academic summer programs hosted at colleges (Sewanee, the University of Dallas, Catholic University) all deepen Latin skill rapidly because they pack what a school year covers into two to six intensive weeks. They also signal serious commitment on a college application. The cost is real; not every family can or should do this. A student doing strong year-round work with a regular tutor is also a strong applicant.
Can I take Latin lessons online or only in person?
Both. Most of our high-school Latin tutors teach online via Zoom or Jitsi and work with families nationwide. Several also teach in person around Los Angeles. Reading-focused lessons work very well online because most of the lesson is spent on a shared text. The booking widget on each tutor's profile shows their available formats.
Ready for Latin for High School lessons or classes?
Book a free 30-minute trial with one of our personally vetted tutors. Private lessons or small-group classes — your choice.