Best LAC for Foreign Language [east Asian and Slavic] / Linguistics

[nmknh]

Korean is still hard to find in almost any universities in the US (and anywhere outside of Korea.) UVA just hired their first TT Korean faculty last year (first for a while. They have had several non-TT instructors), and this is a school with substantial interests in languages and resources.

My S24 has 4 years of Latin and 2 years of Korean HS credits. Not sure if he will continue Korean in college, but access to the language was an important consideration. But it was hard to find! Fast-forward - he is committed to Macalester and will have access to Korean (if he chooses to take for credits) via University of Minnesota.

[DeadHeadDad]

Hi everyone. Sorry I was traveling and am just now catching up. More really great input. Appreciate it.

@NiceUnparticularMan

But then they have so many different people doing various languages (again particularly for an LAC). Including Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. No Korean, but you can do Norwegian! That’s pretty cool:

I really like St. Olaf. Two years ago my daughter and I drove around the campus while we waited to tour Carleton. I am officially adding it to the list. I love that they have the ability to build an individual major.

@BoroDad

Even if UDel won’t work for him, perhaps you can use it as a model for a self designed major elsewhere?

This is a great idea. My son’s interests really are in learning and speaking the languages, not in the culture/literature/history etc…I love the idea of building an individual major around just learning a bunch of different languages. I think this is a topic that I will encourage him to bring up with faculty as he is looking more closely at schools.

@AustenNut

Using this source , I looked up the number of majors (first and second) in the class of 2022 for the following majors, as these would probably be the majors that would represent the main languages of interest (and colleges will classify by different titles, so I thought it best to be as inclusive as possible:

This data is amazing. So much to go through here. Thank you.

@NiceUnparticularMan

If that is too much, what about targeting US colleges with really high international percentages? Like, Rochester is a great university to begin with, and then has really leaned into international recruiting.

My kid originally thought he would go the engineering route. We looked for small schools that had engineering and did NOT have a big Greek presence. URochester fit the bill. We were already planning to visit in August and I think we will stick to that plan as it looks great for language study.

@AustenNut

Because you were asking for a liberal arts college, I didn’t include Tufts, but it did make the list a number of times. BUT, your comments about your son make me think that Brandeis should definitely get a deeper look.

Tufts and Brandeis are on the list. I think he and we would prefer traditional LAC but we haven’t ruled out schools in the 5,000-7,000 size range.

@ucbalumnus

Does he have any idea of how he wants to use language knowledge?

He doesn’t yet but I think that is ok…his journey has had its ups and downs…we are just delighted he has decided to focus on something that he loves. He can figure out what he wants to do when he grows up later

@BoroDad

I would add Haverford to the lists.

My daughter is currently at Swat and she reports that there really isnt that much actual cross registering. I expect that may be different between Haverford and Bryn Mawr as they are a lot closer. I just don’t know he would feel about going to a school where he would have to go to another school a lot (BM for languages and Swat for Ling). I just think finding a place like Mac where it is all inclusive is a better fit for him personally.

@dfbdfb

Unfortunately, those all tend to be, um, less than generous with merit aid, if that is an issue for the OP’s family.

It isn’t. That is not to say we are rich (we aren’t!) but my experience with Swat with regard to aid has been amazing. We pay 16k less a year than if she went to William and Mary an in state public school. The need based aid at these schools tends to be great. Mac’s won’t be as good as Swat obviously but I think based on NetPrice that it would at least be as good as in state tuition for us.

@aquapt

Mac does seem like a great fit; I have a young relative there who is really loving it. Good luck with the process, and with the speed cubing endeavors! (If anyone reading hasn’t viewed the Speed Cubers documentary on Netflix, it’s worth a watch!)

Thank your for all of this. And YES! everyone should go watch Speed Cubers on Netflix. Short 45 minute documentary that is just heart warming. My son knows a number of the folks in the film. It i a pretty accurate depiction of the scene.

@worriedmomucb

Ah, now that you’ve gotten me to thinking about dialects, I wonder if your son is familiar with Harbin dialect and Chinese pidgin Russian. Might be of interest to him

He wasn’t but he is now!

@arcadia

Middlebury has an intensive summer immersion program in Korean. Might be something he can do regardless of where he ends up.

On our radar! My daughter is actually doing the program (Spanish) this summer so we will have a good sense of it value before too long.

Thanks again everyone!

DHD

[MYOS1634]

He’ll find it impossible to learn a language beyond the basics if he doesn’t know the history, the culture, and a little bit of the literature because words aren’t simply sounds. Bread, Brot, and pain aren’t just different sounds for the same thing - they refer to different realities, create different references and have semantic fields, etc.
To reach the post Intermediate/Advanced (B2) level in any language one must be able to understand what’s implied.
I don’t know whether it might be too difficult or right up his alley, but you may want to refer him to Edward T.Hall (proxemics, high context/low context cultures) and R.Barthes (signifier/signified, 20th century “mythologies”).
Congratulations to your daughter for the Middlebury program. I hope she enjoys it and her brother gets to try it too.

[worriedmomucb]

@MYOS1634

Bread, Brot, and pain aren’t just different sounds for the same thing

This also makes me think of something else. If he likes the more cerebral aspects of language learning…Proto-Indo-European can be really fun to work with as you can work with reconstructing roots and tracing sound changes through the daughter languages so that you understand common origins of various words, some clearly related, some less so. It also gives you a very wide variety of languages to examine.