This is extremely impressive! Congrats on this accomplishment. You say that you don’t have a lot of ECs but I imagine you must have spent a lot of time outside of school building your fluency in languages. If so, even if it was self-study, you can definitely let colleges know about your passion for languages and the amount of time you have devoted this passion and count it as an EC. This really sets you apart from other applicants and will make you stand out in the admissions process. Keep this in mind when crafting your essays.
Are these really your interests or are you trying to pick something typical and standard? You did a summer camp in Linguistics, you are fluent in six languages, you volunteered at a library, you say writing is your strong suit and you enjoy foreign travel… you are amazing!!! Why not list your intended majors as Linguistics and International Studies? You would be building a really unique, interesting, and cohesive profile. Of course, if you’re passionate about Econ, that’s fine. But I don’t really see a passion for Econ jumping out. Your profile is pointing to something far more unique. Lean into your passions and let your college applications reflect that.
Hmm. I’m not sure how much time I’ve spent outside of school on learning languages: Urdu and Telugu and English were a result of my upbringing, and I studied French and German in school. Do you think that those are technically label-able as ECs?
On the other hand, I do understand your points about Linguistics and International Studies, as well as the fact that I can’t convincingly display passion for Econ. Unfortunately, linguistics isn’t really something I’m that interested in anymore, though my life would be much easier if it was. I’ve been reading through the seminal books/articles of all the Economics-Nobel-winners, and have found their work so interesting, but I’m not certain how to frame that in an essay.
We’ll see! I appreciate your advice, particularly, “lean into your passions and let your college applications reflect that.”
Also, I have to ask: Do you have any additional suggestions for college-matches?
I would make sure you can document your fluency in the languages other than home languages with the DALF, the DELE, and the Test DaF. This will make your application stronger.
Why is that ? I have classmates who tout fluency in languages that they are not close to proficient in on their LinkedIn pages, so it would seem to me that fudging is common. Why not eliminate any doubt on the part of admissions officers so they’ll realize it’s the real deal ?
Okay, so you have 4-5 affordable possible likelies and it means meet-need or a combination of merit and need work financially (ie., you don’t have to “hunt for merit”). Join their mailing lists l?(if you don’t have one create a college email like firstname.lastname.college46@… )
Check your email once a week, open all emails, click on whatever interests you - this is tracked&logged (they can use it to send you more stories or updates of interest… or see that you say you want to major in French&Spanish but keep clicking on CS info.)
AP scores in 3 languages+TEF are plenty. Don’t forget to list them+scores on CommonApp since tou have them.
In terms of college admission specifically, this recalls an applicant to Harvard who included fraudulent claims of proficiency in languages such as Classical Armenian and Old Persian among his accomplishments. He was admitted.
Yes, eventually. The case is well documented. Perhaps the strangest aspect of the story is that he applied as a transfer student from neighboring MIT, for which he fabricated a transcript, but asked that his Harvard admission interview take place in Maine, where he was, undisclosed, a student at Bowdoin College. I’ll add that the fabricated MIT transcript included A grades for a school that, by policy, evaluated all first-year students on a pass or fail basis.
Oooh, I remember reading about this not long ago (although it happened a long time ago). IIRC, he finally got caught because he plagiarized a professor while applying for a Fulbright. Stories like that are what make me think that covering all the bases cannot be a bad idea. I don’t see the downside, besides in expenditure of time and money, in providing proof of claims of fluency.
A. Language proficiency is just not a big factor in admissions. And AOs don’t want certificates of accomplishments. The applicant certifies that the information is accurate and any inaccuracies discovered will have consequences.
B. Many applicants (wrongly) claim proficiency simply based on passing the AP exam, so many AO’s are just going to skip over that claim. And if the applicant really does have proficiency, see A above.
As an aside, it is my fervent hope that applicants I interview don’t ever tell me they are fluent in a language. Because if it’s a language I know, I’ll briefly speak to them in that language and invariably, unless the language is Spanish, they look at me like a deer in the headlights.
How do you think I figured out my classmates weren’t fluent in any of my languages ? (I swear it wasn’t a test, but if you say you speak my language, I’m going to use it to converse.)
(I swear it wasn’t a test, but if you say you speak my language, I’m going to use it to converse.)