Hi, what are top colleges/universities for a Spanish major these days? If you can also share what criteria you use to evaluate that, I appreciate it!
You might start with colleges with established study abroad programs in Spain, such as those of Middlebury or Hamilton, here listed in a Swarthmore website:
https://swarthmore.studioabroad.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=34309
https://swarthmore.studioabroad.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=10515
Beyond Middlebury and Hamilton, Swarthmore itself would be a solid choice, as would schools such as Williams, Amherst and the Claremonts.
If you are female, you could also consider Wellesley, Mt. Holyoke and Smith. The coeducational Vassar would be open to you regardless. All of these schools offer excellent programs related to the Spanish language, though emphases will vary across the areas of Latin American and Spanish studies.
There’s plenty of good options for studying Spanish. Begin with the basic factors:
[ul][]What are your stats? (GPA, test scores, etc.)
[]What can you afford? How much merit/financial aid will you need?
[]What size college would you like? (1500 students? 6000? 20,000?)
[]What region(s) of the country are you interested in?
[li]Do you have a preference for urban, suburban, or rural colleges?[/ul][/li]Are you interested in combining Spanish with a second major (e.g. public health or business)? If so, your secondary interest may be harder to find than a good Spanish program.
Also consider whether you’re interested in learning other languages in use in Central America like Nahuatl and Yucatec Maya; those are much harder to find than Spanish, but speakers are often highly in demand. For example, see the article “Ancient Mayan languages are creating problems for today’s immigration courts.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-mayan-indigenous-languages-20160725-snap-story.html
Excerpt:
*Mam, a Mayan language spoken by more than 500,000 people in Guatemala, ranked ninth in the top 10 languages spoken in U.S. immigration court last fiscal year. Quiché ranked 11th. Both surpassed French, according to the Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review.
Five years ago, Quiché and Mam didn’t even break the top 25 languages spoken in immigration court.
The shortage of interpreters is leading to a host of issues. Often, judges delay immigration hearings until one is found. At times, asylum seekers are deported even if they have a strong case because a qualified interpreter cannot be found in time. And unlike in immigration court, interpreters aren’t provided for free during asylum hearings.*
Spain is the third most popular study abroad destination after the UK and Italy; about 30,000 Americans study abroad in Spain each year. Since so many colleges offer programs in Spain, it’s not a useful starting point.
However, relatively few programs earn approval by peer institutions. With respect to study in Madrid, the aforementioned Swarthmore, for example, recognizes only the programs of Hamilton, Middlebury, NYU and Tufts-Skidmore.
For Spanish (or any other language for that matter), there is something to be said for larger universities. The UCs, Michigan, UPenn, UT-Austin etc…They have far greater resources and venues for learning. The Spanish department at the University of Michigan has over 20 full time faculty and an additional 46 lecturers dedicated to teaching 700 undergraduate students. Classes seldom enroll more than 20 students. Most LACs will have 5-8 faculty and 2-4 lecturers on hand and cannot cover nearly as much breadth or depth.
The faculty at those larger universities is ample enough that it can focus on literature, culture, linguistics and art and offers dozens of classes every single semester. With over 1,000 native speakers, the Spanish club, which meets weekly, consistently provides Spanish majors with opportunities to speak the language. Those types of resources can only exist at large universities.
Also, look at the department’s focus: is it literature, and if so what period? Is it culture and if so how is it incorporated into the classes?
For instance, Dickinson (a LAC that is very “international-minded”) focuses on culture; it has study abroad centers in many countries. Gettysburg (a similarly-ranked LAC) requires several classes in Linguistics and has a stronger traditional language/literature focus. At both, intro classes will be limited to 15-16 students and upper level classes will be seminars with 8-10.
For study abroad: can you spend a year there? Can you take classes in a local university? Are all your classes related to the Spanish major or can you take gen eds and classes that count for other majors (business, science…)? Does your financial aid cover everything beside the plane ticket?
Double majoring: is there a way for you to complement your major with something else, such as business? Spanish+premed is a great choice, how easy is it to do? If interested in a PHD, what’s the support for undergraduate research, undergraduate conferences, publishing papers?
In another example, Reed limits their approved Spain programs through U.S. colleges to only those of Hamilton and Middlebury:
https://www.reed.edu/spanish/study-abroad.html
Which departments are strongest can depend on the OP’s goals, including whether Spain or Latin America is the main emphasis for literature, culture, etc.
Additional programs approved by Swarthmore are:
Brown -Barcelona - CASA Program.
Brown and Bucknell - Granada.
Arcadia University - Toledo
N.B.
Yes, I properly should have considered the entirety of Spain for reply #4, which would have added Brown and Bucknell in terms of specifically approved programs of U.S. origin.