<p>The basic rule of thumb these days for all of the top schools in the country is 4-5 years of language, english, science, math and social studies. Language is just as important to the admission committees as math, science, english and social studies. Also they want to see you take one language for all those years, not two years of spanish, followed by two years of french. The idea being that you need to get to the advanced levels of the language, not just the intro levels</p>