The Latin program offers some distinct advantages for students seeking to strengthen college applications and improve test scores.
First, for students who are seeking to stand out from their peers and differentiate their college applications with honors, awards and extra-curricula events, the Latin program provides many opportunities for joining clubs, attending competitions and taking nationally-recognized exams.
Secondly, there is evidence (discussed below) that foreign-language learning, particularly the learning of Latin, has a positive impact on standardized test scores.
1. Among the opportunities for gaining recognition and honors are the National Latin Exam (gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded) and the AP Latin exam.
Students can also represent the school at various events and competitions, including the Fall Festivus, the University of Memphis Language Fair and the Junior Classical League State Convention. To help better compete, the Latin program offers (again, dependent on interest) a fun after-school "knowledge-bowl" type club called Certamen.
2. The correlation between taking Latin and achieving high scores on the SAT exam is very well established. The fact is, Latin students are more likely than students of other languages to do well on the SAT. See "Efficacy of Latin Studies for the Information Age" (1997) (available here or file below) and tables below.
This table, provided by California State University (see here) provides average SAT Reasoning Test scores by test-takers in other SAT Subject Test categories.
While these results might partially reflect selection bias (i.e. Latin tends to attract higher-achieving students), DeVane (see link above) notes studies in which comparable students were separated between those who went on to study Latin and those who did not. In these studies, the students who took Latin significantly outperformed the others in a broad spectrum of categories, suggesting that Latin does have some causative role in improving learning and thereby producing higher SAT scores.
GRE (Graduate Record Examinations)
The GRE is taken by undergraduates for admission to graduate school.
Again, the correlations between high scores and classics students is high.
Note that even for high math skills, classical languages ranks in the low end of the sciences, above the high end of the humanities.