UC’s do not give an extra bump for taking above the recommended # of years for FL. However taking AP languages could garner an applicant extra honors points in the UC GPA calculation if taken by 11th grade or taking an AP FL Senior year, the extra rigor will be noted. For the top UC’s, the majority of applicants will many extra a-g courses well above the minimum and recommended levels. For UCLA/UCB, 3 years will be fine.
I don’t think you should ever trust the line that middle school counts. The majority of hs transcripts don’t include middle school. Even if you reach AP early (say, soph year,) it depends on other factors. Mostly, what replaced further FL. The kid taking super advanced math, with a schedule conflict, is easy. Most kids aren’t doing that. They want to fit in some elective or some course that sounds good, but is more vocational. Or that study period.
The colleges list course wants under “high school prep,” not “at some point” or “unless you test out” or “are a native speaker.” Anywhere there’s fierce competition, you don’t want to be the kid who stopped after soph year.
It’s the nature of the competition, all those kids who play it right. If you hit AP level in junior year, fine.
And it doesn’t matter if a college lets you opt out based on some score. First, you need to get admitted.
The number of years does not matter, as much as the highest level reached. e.g. if you took AP Spanish as a Junior, then there is no need to take AP Spanish Lit in Senior year, unless you really want to. Many students start during Middle school and complete Spanish IV by Soph year, which technically is 4 years of FL.
Also, it is nice to be able to waive FL requirement in college if you took AP.
This sounds like a truism to me. It has already been established in this thread that John Hopkins doesn’t care about the actual FL classes and that Brown does care. What I would like to know is how many top schools are more “Hopkins-like” and how many are more “Brown-like”.
Also the implied context is (or should be) a student trying to make room in their schedule for other demanding courses, not a student trying to slack off. I’m sure that trade-offs like this are extremely familiar to AOs. How much more do they appreciate the extra hard courses you did take versus how much do they miss the ones that you didn’t take.
My DD ran into a scheduling glitch in HS where it was basically her math class or continuing with Spanish. Math was required for graduation and non negotiable (not to mention she’s a STEM kid), so Spanish got the axe. I believe her GC talked about that in his LOR but we never read it so am not positive. She got through H Spanish III which was a DE college class at her school and had no issues with acceptances most places.
I agree that the context for the decision is important.
If it’s critical for some colleges and not critical for others, then a student needs to be sure they aren’t going to want to apply to those it was critical for before they opt out of continuing foreign language.
For many students, they may be making that decision in 10th or 11th grade, even though they won’t be applying to colleges until 12th grade. I would strongly caution students not to close doors on opportunities and options unless they really feel it is necessary.
No school is going to give a blanket statement. I suspect that more are Hopkins-like, bet then that really does not matter if applicant has one Brown-like college on their list.
The whole topic is similar to that regarding Subject Tests; “recommended” may mean “recommended,” but I’m at a loss as to why a student applying to colleges with single-digit acceptance rate would opt not to make their application as strong as possible.
Many do waive based on the AP exam results; the simple act of taking the class does not warrant a waiver, IMO.
They would generally still want to see some FL study in HS. Although the plural of anecdote is not data. when I was going through the process, I asked several colleges that have a 4 year recommendation, including Harvard and Brown, if my preparation at the time was sufficient (2 years HS Spanish through level 3) + 0 years HS Italian + 5 on the AP Italian exam as a non-native speaker) and they all said it was fine. In the end, though, I did end up taking a 3rd year of Spanish. As with many questions, the answer is basically “it depends.”
I think most colleges like to see kids who push themselves and take a demanding schedule and going beyond the minimum…
and which may not include more FL
@damon30 Sure, but so many posters point to what a college will do for its own lang requirements and forget the admissions gate. And the competition from kids who didn’t cut and paste, at will.
Nothing has truly been established here- if you mean one person’s discussions, that’s one recounting, one conversation with one adcom. It helped one family make decisions. Don’t assume about either JHU or B, based on that.
It’s not just “any” hard course. For a top holistic college, the whole app needs to make sense (per interests, possible major, and more. Including ECs.) The easy example is the top STEM kids, who often move into post-AP math, take DE, whatever, and it conflicts with FL. Not just “wanting” to take more AP for the rigor (and not all AP classes are rigorous.)
Don’t take any of this at face value. For most kids, it’s easy to take FL at least through junior year. Be done with it. Be competitive, at least in that respect. The trick to understanding what your college targets want, in toto, is more than that. The competition is rough. JHU takes 13% or less.
“No” means no, “required” means required, and “recommended” means …? It would be nice if there was a little bit more hard information, since logic and reason seem to be failing.
FWIW, the BigFuture foreign language requirements table shows the following:
John Hopkins: 4 years recommended
Brown: 3 years required, 4th recommended
John Hopkins doesn’t “require” anything. It would be very hard (really impossible) to deduce what @EllieMom said above from this information for either Hopkins or Brown.
Brown’s own wording is “at least 3 years, preferably 4 years of a single language.”
We’ve had many other threads about required vs recommended, in the past months. “Recommended” is vague, but neither a universal out nor a mandate. There are hs that don’t offer FL past two years. There are majors that can benefit from familiarity with another lang. And there is the top U desire for kids rounded academically. Advanced FL is exposure to more culture, lit and a higher level of writing. Not just a tick mark.
Never lose sight of the competition for a slot.
I disagree. I thought it was an excellent answer, and worth posting again.
The College Board BigFuture website has both schools listed as “recommending” a fourth FL year, but it turns out the one school (Brown) had “recommended” meaning “required” and another school (John Hopkins) where “recommended” meant “don’t care”/“she’s good”. We have established that “recommended” is non-informative. This type of information is gold, and the reason why a website like CC is worth the time spent. You are unlikely to learn this type of thing any other way.
My S attended Bowdoin. On their admissions site it states:
Due to his choice of language (German), he could not start in middle school, unlike Spanish or French in our school system. Also, due to scheduling conflicts, he could not take German his Junior year. So he was in his third year of German when he applied ED to Bowdoin. He was accepted, and later ended up doing a double-major in German, and studied abroad in Germany (with classes in German).
FYI All, I’ve just been warned by a mod in another thread about “debating”. (New member mistake.) So this is just to expand on my previous comments and not as a response to anyone in particular. …
… What I’m wondering is if the recommended/required FL classes might be treated differently than other recommendations/requirements. For example, my own FL experience was taking 4 years of German in Jr. High/High School and absolutely not being able to speak German (now, or at the time), whereas a combination of self-study plus a year of immersion has resulted in me getting a 630 on the SAT Spanish test. My earlier question about whether AOs will accept an SAT FL subject test score as a substitute for “recommended” has been buried, IMO, in this discussion about relative competitive schedules, but this answer seemed to confirm my hunch:
Going along with the discussion about strength of schedule, I also wonder whether a student who gets the AO notation “Many solid classes!” on their application for taking that extra class hasn’t given themselves a competitive advantage, even if another AO remarks “Where’s the Spanish IV?”. The odds if getting into the top schools is not great anyway, so who’s to say which strategy is the soundest? I do agree that talking the full four FL years is a must if you know, or if your student knows, they want to go to Brown.
On each college’s website you can find the necessary SAT subject test score to place out of further language study. The minimum required varies widely among top colleges, from the low 600s to 780 at one top school.
My younger son chose to stop with Latin 4 which he took as a junior. Latin 1 (taken over two years in middle school) did not appear on the transcript, though other middle school high school level courses that were only taken in 8th grade did. His reasoning was that the B he’d gotten was already a gift, and he would likely have worse grades as a senior. As a potential IR major he was going to have to start a new language anyway. And finally I don’t think any school required more than three years, though a reach or two may have recommended four - which he figured Latin 4 probably was. He ended up getting into some reachy schools. I think he got a bit of a boost because some AOs consider Latin to be extra difficult. He also had a pretty demanding senior year schedule. I got plenty of rejections, but there were many other more likely reasons for that - including his grades and his scores (near perfect verbal, 100 points less in math).
I would never recommend stopping with a language sophomore year even if you are in the 3rd level.
Reality check:
If your kid is a superstar in some meaningful way- the next Yo Yo Ma, a chess prodigy on the international circuit, composed a concerto which had its debut performed by the Cleveland Symphony, an Olympic diver who is also a math whiz, an acclaimed published novelist with 1600 SAT scores, then you should sleep well at night even if your kid has deviated from the “recommended” path. Is your kid guaranteed to get into Harvard? No. But I could craft your kid a list of 8 of the top 25 schools in the country which practice holistic admissions where your kid is very, very likely to get admitted to at least 6 of the 8. You’re welcome.
If your kid is not at this superstar level, than ignore the “recommended” list at your peril. It does NOT mean that your kid won’t go to college. It might mean that an Adcom sees the overall strength of the application, there are already numerous heritage speakers of various foreign languages in the admit pile, and for a brief moment in time decides that your kid is so special that no foreign language senior year doesn’t mean anything.
Or not. And maybe the things that make your kid special- collects Civil War ephemera and photographs Civil War memorials?-- just aren’t that compelling because the Adcom already admitted three kids just like your kid-- but with slightly higher scores, grades, and a tougher schedule. Remember that what is unique in the context of your town near Los Angeles (Civil War? So cool) may be commonplace in parts of Pennsylvania or Maryland or Virginia, i.e. parts of the country where there are frequent re-enactors, and where lots of people are armchair CW historians and where every town’s cemetery and historical society has TONS of CW memorials. And every HS in the region has a CW buffs club.
This is reality. There is a very small part of the population who can safely ignore the recommendations. They won’t get in everywhere, but someone at a top rated college is going to want them- and want them big time. For everyone else, proceed with caution.
The first part answers my question, thanks @skieurope. I also agree about the “Brown-like” advice.
Other priorities? AP Calculus BC vs Honors Spanish IV? (I’m making that up.)
And this answered my other question, thanks for that too. The fact this is your personal experience gives it weight. So both Harvard AND Brown told you two years Spanish plus a self-studied, non-native AP Italian 5 was good. Interesting. (And impressive!)
UCs are very explicit that level completed is what matters, and what alternative means of fulfilling the requirement (such as test scores) are accepted.
However, many other colleges are not so explicit about their requirements or expectations.