Doubling up on foreign language in HS.

gadad
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:16:54 +0000

My D took four levels of both Spanish and Arabic in HS. She discussed her interest in Arabic in her college applications, and I have a sense that it helped her to definitively express why she had a legitimate interest in the schools to which she applied, some of which are very popular among applicants merely for prestige reasons. She even got a scholarship offer for Arabic study from a top school. I doubt that her applications would have been as distinctive had her second language been French instead of Arabic. That’s not a good reason to choose a language in which you aren’t genuinely interested, but perhaps something to consider if you’re intrigued by Mandarin.