Pre-Seminary Track: The goal of the Pre-Seminary Track is to prepare students spiritually, morally, and intellectually for enrollment at a confessional Lutheran theological seminary in preparation for ordination into the pastoral office.

Teacher Certification Track: The goal of the Teacher Certification Track is to prepare students to teach in classical Lutheran schools through pursuit of the certification requirements of the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education.

Parish Music Track: The goal of the Parish Music Track is to prepare students to support the church musically with instrumental accompaniment, conducting, composition, arrangement, and the fostering of congregational part-singing.

General Track*: The goal of the General Track is to provide students with a two-year curriculum in Lutheran theology and the classical liberal arts, especially appropriate for the vocation of Christian motherhood and for careers requiring neither a bachelor’s degree nor specific trade skills.

Trade Partnership Track**: The goal of the Trade Partnership Track is to prepare students for a variety of vocations and includes training in a skilled trade through relationships with other colleges and businesses.

Luther Classical College will open in the Fall of 2025. Meanwhile, you may pre-apply (at no cost or obligation) by completing a brief survey at lutherclassical.org/pre-admission. Starting in 2024, a formal application procedure will be available, incorporating the following admissions requirements.

1. Theological Confession: The applicant ordinarily must be a communicant member in good standing with a Lutheran congregation that holds and teaches the Bible to be the verbally inspired and inerrant Word of God. This ordinarily includes congregations of the LCMS, ELS, and WELS, but may also include other conservative Lutheran congregations. The applicant’s pastor will give reference regarding the congregation and membership, attendance and participation, and piety of life of the applicant. The applicant will also submit a 500-word essay confessing his or her adherence to the biblical faith and Lutheran confession.
2. Academic Aptitude: The applicant will submit a transcript or its equivalent from the applicant’s homeschool, parochial high school, government high school, or a G.E.D. Luther Classical College strongly encourages students to take the Classical Learning Test (CLT) but accepts ACT and SAT scores as alternatives, recognizing that the student’s high school or homeschool cooperative may have already arranged for one of those alternative exams. Scores are evaluated holistically in relation to other admissions criteria. Therefore, there is no fixed minimum score for admission. However, priority consideration will be granted to students who score among the upper 25% of test takers, generally corresponding to 78+ on the CLT, 25+ on the ACT, or 1200+ on the SAT.
3. Latin Proficiency: Students enrolled in the A.A. General Track or any B.A. program are expected to be proficient in Wheelock’s Latin or an equivalent curriculum when they begin their first semester at Luther Classical College. A summer “bridge” course will be available for students who are not already at that level. LCC will administer a Latin proficiency test to all incoming students in order to place them in the proper level of Latin courses. The applicant may additionally provide a National Latin Exam score. Latin is encouraged, but not required, for students applying for the A.A. Trade Partnership Track.
4. Liberal Arts Aspiration: The applicant will submit an essay of about 500 words expressing appreciation for the classical, liberal arts tradition and explaining his or her desire to attend Luther Classical College.
5. Personal Interview: An interview (via video conference if not possible in person) will be conducted as a part of the application process.

We want to help you prepare for your son or daughter’s application and admission to LCC. More importantly, we wish to provide encouragement and help to you parents as you seek to raise pious and virtuous children, prepared to take their place as Lutheran men and women in marriage, congregation, and civic community.

Where do I start? What’s the most important thing?

Faith in Christ: faith in His Holy Word! Christ came to atone for our sin, to justify us before God, to impart His sanctifying Spirit to us through the Gospel. Christ and His saving work are at the heart of our faith and life. We love the Holy Scriptures because they are Christ’s Word to us, through which we are saved and by which we live.

Therefore, it is of first importance to attend a confessional, liturgically conservative church, where the divinely inspired and inerrant Bible rules and its doctrine is faithfully and joyfully preached and taught. Be involved members of a church that teaches Luther’s Small Catechism in depth. Embrace a church that sings the beautiful liturgy and rich hymns of the Lutheran tradition.

Give careful attention also to Christian virtues and Lutheran piety. Many people today have rejected the goodness of God’s law in marriage, society, and even in the church. The law of God is good because it flows from God’s own being. The forgiven sinner loves the goodness and virtue embodied by Jesus and taught in His Word. We seek to imitate and honor Him by the piety of our own lives. To this end, let your home be the nursery and model of all good works, of Christian virtues, of Lutheran piety and sensibilities.

How does the home best teach this faith and piety?

Let the Word of Christ dwell in your midst richly. Let God’s Word shape all that you do and say in your home. God’s Word should inform your priorities, your moral behavior, your love and service to one another. Here are goals that we have for LCC alumni: The family reads, teaches, and discusses God’s Word together daily. The Bible’s teaching—doctrine!—is loved. The family memorizes and recites Luther’s Small Catechism, especially the Six Chief Parts. They sing Lutheran hymns together and with others in their homes. They memorize Scripture passages and hymns as a part of their daily discipline. They pray together, using the simple liturgical forms found in their catechism and hymnal, and naming particular needs and requests as circumstances arise. We encourage you to make these activities the normal life of your Christian household.

The education of both children and adults is the duty of the home. Homeschooled families realize this truth directly. Parochial school families delegate the teaching of doctrine and piety in part to their church school. Government school families face the most daunting challenge, since their children receive an education that includes secularist religious dogma and the influence of anti-Christian moral perversions. Special care must be taken to identify, contradict, and condemn these impieties, while also supplying the model of godliness that accords with God’s Word.

How are good habits of heart and mind best passed on to our children?

Example and imitation. You as parents are their living example. You worship together, eat together, work together, play together, read together. Other family and church members may also serve as patterns of faith and virtue. Holy Scripture supplies the best examples of Christian faith and godliness, of the evil worked by sin and rebellion, of repentance and forgiveness. Your lives imitate these forgiven saints of old. Good histories and literature expand and deepen the training in these great truths. These sources are the foundation and content of LCC’s education, building on and furthering the education begun in your homes.

The Bible teaches us to aspire to virtue in every part of our lives. The teaching and imitation of Biblical virtues is a central purpose of the culture and life of LCC. Christians have traditionally identified the Biblical trio of faith, hope, and love as the theological virtues, which are taught by the Holy Spirit through Scripture in the school of experience. Only a heart renewed and shaped by the Word of God can learn and live by these fruits of the Spirit. To these virtues are often added the classical virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude. Each virtue deserves an explanation and various models which demonstrate the virtue and its corresponding vice. The Scriptures also have lists of virtues (for example 1 Corinthians 13; Philippians 4:4, 8, 11; 2 Peter 1:5–11). We urge you to teach your children self-control, without which all training in godliness will come to nothing. And pray that God grant your children humility, which preserves all the virtues and offers them for the glory of God and the good of their neighbors.

Should we consider sending our child to LCC if his desire is to enter a trade such as mechanics, plumbing, electrical, farming, or ranching?

Yes! A good education is good for all, regardless of the intended kind of work. By His Word, God has ennobled and honored every trade and work which gives Him glory and serves the neighbor. LCC is seeking partnership with the local community college to provide trade skills and certification along with apprenticeships. LCC is also exploring a partnership with the Lutheran Institute of Regenerative Agriculture for classes, apprenticeships, and summer work.

We recognize that for some students of the trades, the concentration on languages and the upper curriculum may not be desirable. We believe, however, that all Lutheran adults should have a basic foundation of instruction in Scripture, Western history, literature, philosophy, and Lutheran music, culture, and piety. We intend to provide this foundation to all our students, including our trade students.

The A.A. Trade Partnership Track is designed specifically for students intending to pursue a trade certification. Latin is encouraged, but optional, for this track.

Should we consider LCC for our child if he intends to enter the field of law, medicine, science, architecture, engineering, or the like?

Again, yes! These fields are best served, like all vocations, by Christians who are grounded in the broad and deep wisdom of God’s Word and Western civilization. They will be well prepared for the specialization to be gained elsewhere in these fields. They will know the place of their endeavors in the service of their fellow man, appreciate the history of their field, and have the tools to learn and apply their learning at their next school.

Furthermore, LCC alumni will be able to embark on graduate studies within the often godless world of the modern university with eyes open, minds fortified against evil, and hearts trained by God’s Word. They will be well-defended by their classical, Lutheran education against the relentless assault of progressivism, wokism, Marxist doctrine, and similar ideologies hostile to Christianity.

Even more, a soundly Christian, classical education is designed to impart to its students humane character, historical wisdom and perspective, informed creativity, and divinely inspired purpose in all their endeavors. Such students not only understand their subject and learn their task, but they can speak about it clearly and persuasively. They understand and apply its place and purpose in the service of their fellow man. Their education will make them eminently more employable than their colleagues who suffered through the stultifying regimes of progressive and wokist education, screen-dominated socialization, and purposeless atheism. Classical Lutheran education forms a complete man or woman, ready to take up every vocation God gives him or her.

The B.A. General Track is designed to serve as a flexible foundation for careers outside of the congregation, whether the LCC graduate enters the workforce directly or first pursues additional education in law school or a graduate program. Students desiring a bachelor’s degree that emphasizes particular technical skills may consider combining LCC’s A.A. General Track (a two-year program) with upper-division coursework at a transfer college or university to complete a B.A. in a specified field at that second institution.

What if our daughter chiefly aspires to become a godly wife and mother in a solidly Lutheran household?

Yes, send your daughter to LCC! God be praised that He still provides godly young women who aspire to these highest of vocations! The vocations of Christian wife and mother, together with husband and father, are the greatest needs of our day, and LCC intends to give full support and strength to our Lutheran households. Martin Luther, first among us, advocated the education of girls and young women so that they could educate their children and be strengthened in the service of their Christian households. Homeschooling mothers in particular know the value of all the classical, Lutheran education they have received. And perhaps God will supply your daughter or son with a husband or wife from LCC!

The wellbeing of our households, congregations, and communities is completely dependent upon raising virtuous and competent men and women to serve in the many vocations God provides in these three estates. Such spiritual and personal competence requires training in God’s Word, in a sound and faithful knowledge of the world and its history, in the best wisdom of our ancestors, and in the daily training in truth, godliness, virtues, and every good work. Your household has the first command to provide such education and instruction (Ephesians 6:4). LCC intends to serve you in this task, for the good of all three estates.

The A.A. General Track (a two-year program) is designed with an eye toward the possibility that marriage and motherhood may come before a woman completes a four-year degree. This A.A. program seamlessly transitions into the B.A. General Track for those who continue their studies after receiving the A.A. diploma.

What should we plan for tuition at LCC?

Tuition is projected to be $8,500 per year. Families should also plan for room and board in addition. New books could cost about $1,000 to $1,500 per year, significantly less if used books in good condition are found.

What will the housing for LCC students be?

Students will live in rental housing, with host families, or in on-campus housing. Their living arrangements will reflect the fact that they have entered into adulthood. We encourage you to teach your sons and daughters the household skills needed for adult living: cooking, cleaning, budget and finance, etc. Further information will be available in 2024 as LCC hires a Dean of Students to coordinate housing.

No one masters the Western tradition overnight. We provide the following list of suggestions in the hope that it will give you ideas and encouragement as you prepare for college. Your high school curriculum should be broad enough to introduce many great works, but modest enough not to burden the student or teacher. A few things well read is much better than too many things read quickly under duress. We suggest you choose from among the following lists for both growth and enjoyment. Consider the high school years as merely the beginning of an adventure in learning that will progress through college and last a lifetime.

• Bible
• Hymnal
• Catechism

LCC is first and foremost a Lutheran college serving Lutheran students. We hope our incoming students have already read the entire Bible and are familiar with Bible history. We also seek students who love to chant the liturgy and sing hymns. Catechesis is a life-long activity, so rather than put the Small Catechism aside after confirmation, be sure to return to it regularly in home devotions or for ongoing memory work.

• Homer, Iliad and Odyssey
• Virgil, Aeneid
• Dante, Divine Comedy (esp. the first volume, Inferno)
• Shakespeare, assorted sonnets and plays
• Milton, Paradise Lost

Students will read these works at LCC. As foundational works of the “great books” tradition, they deserve to be read and re-read. We encourage high school students to read them to the extent they are able, or at least to become familiar with them through summaries and abridgments. If your curriculum does not cover all five, but instead includes other great authors, such as John Donne or Jane Austen or Victor Hugo, then we trust that you will be well-prepared to fill in any remaining gaps as you learn and grow alongside your classmates in college.

• Herodotus, Histories (excerpts)
• Thucydides, Peloponnesian War (excerpts)

• Augustine, Confessions
• Aquinas, selections from Summa Theologica (such as I Q. 2 concerning the Existence of God, or I-II QQ. 90–97 concerning Divine Law, Natural Law, and Human Law)
• Martin Luther, Large Catechism, perhaps selected sermons or his three great treatises of 1520

• Selections from the Book of Concord
• The Apocrypha (CPH edition)
• Athanasius, On the Incarnation (including the preface by C. S. Lewis)
• Augustine, The City of God
• Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will, etc.
• Martin Chemnitz, Enchiridion
• Bo Giertz, The Hammer of God

• Aesop, Fables
• Greek tragedies: Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy; Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy; Euripides, The Bacchae
• Ovid, Metamorphoses (select carefully; consider Book I, as well as the following stories: Phaëthon & Phoebus, Cadmus & the Earthborn People, Echo & Narcissus, Pyramus & Thisbe, Perseus & Andromeda, Jason & Medea, Minos & the Minotaur, Daedalus & Icarus, Philemon & Baucis, Orpheus & Eurydice, Midas, The Death of Achilles, The Contest for Achilles’ Arms)
• Medieval classics: Beowulf, The Song of Roland, El Cid
• Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (select carefully; consider Knight’s Tale, Man of Law’s Tale, Nun’s Priest’s Tale)
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (“The Death of Arthur”)
• William Shakespeare (esp. The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth)
• John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, etc.
• Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Fairy Tales (Children’s and Household Tales)
• Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, etc.
• Herman Melville, Moby Dick
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, etc.
• Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, etc.
• J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, etc.
• C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy

• Plato, The Republic
• Aristotle, Rhetoric
• Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (selections)
• Livy, History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita; selections)
• Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
• Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks
• Two Lives of Charlemagne (Einhard, Notker)
• Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People
• Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
• Thomas More, Utopia

Poets to Consider: Geoffrey Chaucer, William Dunbar, Edmund Spenser (Faerie Queene, Epithalamion, sonnets), William Shakespeare (esp. Sonnets 18, 29, 30, 55, 106, 116, and 146), John Donne, Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, George Herbert, John Milton (Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, sonnets), Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, and Anne Bradstreet.

• Demosthenes, “On the Crown”
• Cicero, On Duties, On Friendship, On Invention, etc.
• Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address”
• Winston Churchill, e.g. “This was their finest hour,” “Blood, toil, tears and sweat,” “We shall never surrender,” etc.
• C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, numerous essays

• Code of Justinian
• Magna Carta
• William Bradford, “Mayflower Compact,” Of Plymouth Plantation
• The Declaration of Independence
• The United States Constitution and Bill of Rights
• Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers
• Frederick Bastiat, The Law

• Renaissance and Reformation Artists (such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Dürer, and Cranach)
• Architecture of the Classical, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance eras

The following recommendations apply to homeschool parents, to teachers at classical Lutheran schools, and to families seeking to develop a customized summer enrichment program that compensates for the lack of classical, Lutheran material in government high schools. Consider these recommendations as a rough framework that can be adjusted according to local resources, student interests, and other factors.

(See “Pre-College Reading Suggestions,” above.)

Learning the structure of language is essential to a good education. Many options for the study of grammar are available, but the simplest and most effective is learning Latin. The LCC student will need to have a good understanding of both English and Latin grammar and vocabulary. (See “Latin,” below.)

The student should be aware of common fallacies, both material and formal, and receive an introduction to formal logic. Consider Traditional Logic (Memoria Press) or Introductory Logic and Intermediate Logic (Canon Press), plus The Amazing Dr. Ransom’s Bestiary of Adorable Fallacies.

The student should be able to write a paper or essay well: gather facts and ideas on a given theme or subject; arrange and express them in a clear and logical way; use a lively and concise style; employ good grammar, spelling, and punctuation; select appropriate vocabulary, and the like.

At a minimum, the student should complete Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II. It is highly desirable that the student also complete Pre-Calculus (Trigonometry and Analysis), and when possible, a year of Calculus. Consider the Saxon Math series, or Morris Kline’s Mathematics for the Nonmathematician and Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach. Consider also Mitch Stokes’ Calculus for Everybody, which provides a guided tour through the history and philosophy of mathematics, readily accessible to high school students and culminating with the fundamental theorem of calculus.

The student is expected to have completed three years of science, typically encompassing Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. Ideally, the student’s high school science education includes attention to the creation/evolution debate and equips the student for creation apologetics. To counterbalance secular curricula to which a student may have been subjected, we recommend that families consider the wealth of resources provided by Answers in Genesis.

As noted in the Admissions Requirements (above), the student must have mastered the 40 chapters of Wheelock’s Latin. It would be good for the student to gain experience translating and reading in such works as Caesar’s Gallic Wars, the Vulgate, and even the Latin parts of The Book of Concord. For our Trade Partnership students, Latin is certainly encouraged, but not required.

Music is a beloved art in the culture of LCC. All students will attend chapel and find other occasions for congregational and household singing of hymns and liturgy. Every student will receive some experience singing in choir. Student instrumentalists will have opportunities to contribute their talents to chapel services and public concerts. Future LCC students are encouraged to gain experience singing in a choir and to learn an instrument (organ, piano, strings, band instrument). Regardless of musical performance abilities, all students should become familiar with great musical composers, such as Bach, Handel, and Beethoven.

Essential to education is a good memory. The student’s mind can be trained and disciplined in many ways, but few can outdo simple memorization. Prayers, liturgy and hymns, nursery rhymes, poems, math facts, history timelines, U.S. states and presidents, geography, and the like are all subject matter for memorization.

Memory is included as one of the five Canons of Rhetoric, by which public speakers have been trained for thousands of years. Men and women will use this mental faculty in their various vocations throughout life, as mothers teaching their children in the home, fathers speaking for family and others in congregation and community, or even as friends in conversation.

The following list will give a starting point. The idea is not only to improve the memory, but also to provide the memory with texts of great value. The student should not only memorize them, but also be given occasions to recite formally before an audience of family, friends, or the like. (See CCLE.org for its annual competition.)

• Scriptures: select Psalms, portions of Proverbs, beloved texts such as John 1:1–18, Luke 2:1–20, Romans 3:21ff, 8:28–39; 2 Corinthians 5:14–21.
• Liturgy and Canticles (especially DS 3, Matins, Vespers in LSB).
• Hymns such as “A Mighty Fortress” (or any of Luther’s hymns), “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth” and other Paul Gerhardt hymns, “Lord, Thee I Love with All My Heart,” great doctrinal hymns like “Salvation unto Us Has Come,” and so on.
• Poems: see the suggested poets above. Many classical schools and homeschools provide for the public recitation of poetry.
• Speeches: consider especially Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” Churchill’s speeches, or Shakespeare (Henry’s speech to his army in Henry V; Mark Antony’s funeral oration in Julius Caesar, Hamlet’s soliloquy in Hamlet; “The quality of mercy” in The Merchant of Venice).
• Prose: consider a favorite passage in literature (for example, Sam’s speech on the edge of Mordor in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings).

We desire our LCC students to be well-rounded, with a wide range of experiences and knowledge about the creation, local history and culture, and the like. The student should have habits of body and soul that enable him to thrive in his various vocations. We encourage good bodily habits of food, exercise, and sleep. We value the traditional etiquette that enables and reinforces good relationships, proper distinctions between men and women, and honor to those in authority. This “curriculum of life” should strengthen the student’s ability to build sound friendships, to prepare for marriage and family, to take an active part in his congregation, and to serve well in workplace and community.