<p>Amesie, if this student is the kind of top history student who is a plausible applicant to PhD programs, by the time she gets to her junior/senior year she is not going to find herself in large lecture courses or taught by TAs even if she goes to a huge school. I attended a large, research-intensive university as an undergraduate and had no problems meeting professors; many of them attended my wedding. In fact my undergraduate thesis advisor, and my husband’s, got into a heated discussion at the reception, after a number of drinks, about which of the two of us had “married down” intellectually. </p>
<p>It was also an advantage to be able to accelerate into PhD coursework while an undergraduate, and to get to know PhD students who were only a few years ahead of me.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with you that any student headed for grad school hoping to make a career in academia should get as much mentoring as she possibly can. Many students do not exploit their faculty to the extent that they could.</p>
<p>As far as the language question goes: it’s not going to be the end of the world if you need to take a Spanish course in your freshman year. You have plenty of time. You can improve your language skills by self-study as well as through classes–either starting a new language or beefing up your Spanish beyond what you get in HS. If you become a professional historian you will eventually need more language background, but without knowing what you might specialize in, it’s hard to know which language(s) would be helpful.</p>
<p>When I’ve done two languages at the same time, I’ve had an easier time if they were not closely related. For instance, French and German or German and Latin was OK; Spanish and Italian was confusing. But YMMV.</p>