OP here is the dilemma you will have. Colleges want to see credits on HS transcript. If credit for Greek will end up with 3 credits (like 3 years) on HS transcript, she maybe fine for graduation.
However, in our high school all classes are listed year by year and semester by semester on transcript. So if these classes will be listed as classes by examination college may not like it.
Most likely normal public big colleges (minus CA ones) would not care. You had foreign language-you are done, but you asked about elite and you got answersâŠ
1 Like
Completely agree with this! Whatever elective she wants in 8th grade is fine. She can delay the foreign language decision until 9th grade.
1 Like
Yes your reply makes sense. From my understanding this is a grey area and even by doing something to add the language in her transcript, there is a risk associated with this move. How much the risk actually is also unknown. Basically our decision might be about if âinvestingâ into another language is worth the time/effort to remove this risk from the equation.
Thanks for your reply - this is actually another thing our counselor suggested to do, i.e. reach out to some college admission offices and see what they say.
It offers Spanish and French up to AP level. It also offers others, like German, Latin, Chinese and Vietnamese. But no AP Latin. If my kid chose Latin, would this raise eyebrows (in a competitive college application) and get questions on why she didnât pick Spanish or French?
The idea proposed before was to skip the FL requirement altogether by dual enrollment. Instead of e.g. Latin, she would take an elective which is more interesting and more stimulating for her. As others said here, some kids just like to learn new languages. My kid however does not.
8th grade only offers Spanish/French. No Latin. And our counselor said that if she wants to reach AP level in high school, she would have to start one of those two languages at 8th grade.
see above -basically her decision on 8th grade affects if she will be able to reach AP in HS. Thatâs basically why I am looking into this that early.
Colleges donât require a student to get to AP level in HS. Itâs fine if she just takes language classes each year.
Latin is fine.
Edited to add: Latin happens to be what my kids take. The teachers are great at our school and itâs a wonderful program. By the way, we we also see a lot of nerdy engineer type of kids taking Latin, and my kids met some wonderful friends in that class.
3 Likes
I would think Latin would be quite acceptable, if taken as a standard HS course, even if not taken to the AP level.
I think in ~any case, I would consider some way to âstampâ your kidâs college application with the modern Greek fluency, if accurate and possible. i.e. Maybe a higher-than-101 level remote college class, maybe some other activity that she can show the Greek, in addition to whatever other language(s) she does. The fact that she has a modern language, in addition to Latin, would, I presume, further defray any admissions office issues with this. But realistically, I think Latin is ~ok in any case. Many HS kids are going for ASL, which is probably far more out-of-the-box than Latin (at least in the outside-school world, for those who donât have any close, deaf relatives/friends/connections).
I donât know how close modern Greek is to ancient Greek, and how close either of them are to Latin, but I suspect thereâs at least some crossover structural/vocabulary elements.
At one point we looked at an upscale prep school, ~7-12, in our area (mostly boarding kids, but ours would have been day, if weâd gone that route). IIRC, they started the kids with 2 years of ancient Greek, then 2 years of Latin, then branched them in to either French or modern Italian, at the kidsâ choice. Sometimes, the dead languages (Latin, Greek), can be, if anything, a signifier of unusually high academic interest.
1 Like
No.
Below is the list of colleges that care which foreign language is taken in HS:
- There are none
For some reason you are mistaken ly obsessing on AP, and it sounds like the counselor is not helping. So for your convenience, below is the list of schools that suggest or require AP foreign language
- There are none
1 Like
As others are pointing out, this is a non-issue if she would prefer Latin. I note our feederish HS offers few APs generally, but it does offer APs for modern languages, but it does not for Latin. My understanding is this is because our language department strongly believes teaching Latin to the AP curriculum would be way less educational than how we prefer to do it.
And some of our most competitive college applicants take Latin, and that is fine. Indeed, I donât think a lot of colleges assume a Latin kid is trying to avoid a serious challenge, although again I do think it is more fun and in some sense easier for some kids.
In any event, highly selective US colleges do not care about how many APs you take. If she goes as far as her HS offers in Latin over four years, that will be enough to satisfy them that she challenged herself appropriately when it came to the academic study of languages.
That said, she could try out French or Spanish in 8th grade, and see how it went. If, to her surprise, she was fine with it, she could continue. If not, she could switch to Latin in HS. Or if she really didnât want to do that, she could DE in Greek.
None of these are options that will not work for college admissions purposes, the question will be more what will make most sense for her in HS, and she has time to figure that out. And starting with French or Spanish in 8th grade seems to me like an opportunity to gather useful information with no stakes.
Right, but that means instead of N other HS classes plus a HS language class, she is taking N + 1 other HS classes plus a DE Greek class.
That is an additional class to manage, and one outside the normal HS schedule. And a DE Greek class may not be all that easy anyway.
How does she know that? What new languages has she tried so far, in what context?
1 Like
Another advantage to going the Latin route, for OPâs kid, is that if she does only take 2 (or 3) years, I think thatâs likely to be viewed more sympathetically (by admissions) than 2-3 years only of French or Spanish.
i.e. The goal of most French/Spanish-takers is at least moderate fluency (oral and to some extent, written). Thatâs hard to achieve in 2-3 years. But Latin is taken for other reasons - to read/translate famous/interesting classic texts, to improve vocabulary and deepen appreciation of English. 2-3 years of that probably gets closer to the goal than 2-3 years of French/Spanish.
2 Likes
I would strongly urge that she begin Spanish in 8th grade, if not even sooner over the summer this summer. The reason I say this is that the youthful ability to learn language is rapidly disappearing as she gets older. The younger you are, the easier it is to learn another language. It will be easier for her to master Spanish (and believe me, Spanish is MUCH easier than French to learn) if she starts it right away.
In any event, colleges are going to want to see at least 3, and preferably 4 years of foreign language study, that is NOT a heritage language for which there is no AP exam, and preferably through the level of AP (Spanish, presumably).
You might be surprised, she might enjoy it, especially if itâs combined with Spanish culture - music, TV shows, food, travel. My kids got very good at Spanish, in part by watching the entire Spanish teen series The Black Lagoon Boarding School on Netflix. First theyâd watch the episode in Spanish with English subtitles, on slow speed. Then theyâd watch it again in Spanish, with Spanish subtitles, on fast speed. Not only did their oral comprehension get very good from this, they also developed great spelling in Spanish, from reading the subtitles in Spanish.
1 Like
But top colleges are expecting X amount of AP courses no? Is an AP FL expected if offered from the school? Eg. I see Brown says âOur strongest candidates have taken full advantage of what is available to them in their own schools.â Could they consider taking Latin as something less?
This looks like an answer to my question above, but Iâm leaving it to see what others think also
Itâs just how she feels. I would like to avoid pressuring her by telling her âsorry but you have to take some language X or else you donât have a chance in those colleges you are dreaming ofâ. Also, that N+1-th class might be a class that she enjoys more.
.
If AP is taught in year 5 of a language, then a college is not going to expect a student who started in year 1 to get as far as a year 5 course. Students might not have had the opportunity to start a foreign language in middle school, or their middle school might only have one or two languages.
If the school doesnât even offer AP in that language, colleges certainly arenât going to expect the student to have taken it. They can see from the high school profile which APs are available.
Of course, there are other good reasons to start a language in middle school. I agree with @parentologist that Spanish is extremely useful, and I tried to get my kids to take it in MS. But thereâs a limit to what I can convince my kids to do 
What selective schools care about is overall rigor. I would go as far as to say that if your D reached Spanish 4 and it was not AP, it would not adversely affect her application if she had a healthy dose of AP classes in math, science, English and social studies type courses where offered. Four years of Latin without an AP designation would not raise an eyebrow.
I think in part youâre bumping into the general problem that many of us parents trying to help our kids with highly selective admissions face/have faced:
College admissions is quite opaque. Colleges are vague, and what they DO tell you must be taken with a shaker-full of salt.
Not only for the finer parsing of course selection (and rigor), but also ECs and various other issues.
Beware of those on CC who speak very authoritatively, about this or other issues - lots of folks are just guessing.
FWIW, I do think AP count matters, significantly, within the context of whatâs offered at the school. But I donât think thereâs much difference between taking, say, 7 or 8 AP classes. I wouldnât let the lack of a terminal AP class drive the kid away from Latin (if that is otherwise preferred) and towards French or Spanish or whatever.
(Note also that, depending on the school, many of the kids in Spanish class may be heritage speakers, which inherently puts them at a relative advantage, and non-heritage speakers at a relative disadvantage, for grades and ultimately AP scores.)
More generally, while your kid should be constructing a reasonable HS transcript, and should pay at least some attention to that, donât let that dominate her life. Your kid has ~5 years of school ahead of her, BEFORE she gets to college (which is generally only 4 years). Make those 5 years count - take good classes, but also classes that appeal to her. Remember also that a kid taking classes of minimal interest to them is less likely to excel in those classes.
2 Likes
Agreed. I would not worry about the AP, but to be a competitive applicant your student should have a minimum of 3 years of the same language in high school (and 4 is preferred.) I donât think they need to take it in 8th grade, but should definitely plan for a language class for 3-4 years of high school.
1 Like
Spanish 4 was where the kids in our school were offered AP Spanish Language and Culture. Spanish 5 was AP Spanish Literature and Culture.
Yes, the course sequence will depend on the HS. At our HS, thereâs Spanish 1-4, then AP Spanish Language is year 5 (for kids who started in Spanish 2 or higher), and AP Spanish Lit is year 6 (for kids who started in Spanish 3 or higher). It sounds like the OPâs HS is similar.
At our HS, thereâs a separate track of Spanish for Native Speakers that has a year 1 and year 2, then year 3 is AP Spanish Language, etc., so they arenât in the same classes until they get to the AP classes. But weâre in CA and have a lot of native Spanish speakers.
1 Like
Iâm sort of a broken record on this, but the Yale Admissions Podcast goes into depth on a bunch of topics like this, AND they have a searchable master transcript. So they are great place to look for insights on these topics.
And here is some of what they said on APs:
[Hannah] So certainly, be sure youâre taking rigorous courses in your core academic subjects, but you donât need to obsess over the exact total number of AP courses. . . .
[Jill] Yeah, I think we want to select bright, accomplished students who have been resourceful and academically hungry, but not the student who confused learning with grinding out every single AP class.
. . .
HANNAH: Keep in mind that we are always reviewing your academic background. In context, weâre thinking about what your school offers, weâre thinking about whatâs available to you. And if your school doesnât offer AP classes, we are not going to expect that you are taking these AP exams. Weâre not going to be comparing your transcript to the transcript of the student at the school down the road who has 16 AP exams available to them.MARK: Right. I think itâs helpful to keep in mind that thereâs no rubric that weâre using that suddenly awards 10 bonus points for a certain AP score or 20 if you self studied for the AP exam. Certainly we see students who have a real interest in an area of study thatâs not offered in their school. And they take the initiative to go find a way to pursue that somewhat independently either completely on their own or more frequently through something like dual enrollment or connecting with someone else. . . .
But that should be about the experience of learning the material and engaging with it because it interests you not just to potentially score more points because you have one more AP exam score than other students from your school might.
I really think this is plenty clear. Whatever she wants to do most, whether it is DE Greek, AP French or Spanish, or Latin, is fine, it doesnât matter if it is AP. But ideally they want to believe you are doing it because you want the challenge and find it interesting, not just to get out of a requirement as easily as possible.
Well, this is probably an opportunity for some blunt talk, at least among us adults.
This is a perfectly acceptable attitude if your ambition is just to go to, say, a decent public university for a particular major. They may still have some minimal requirements for admission outside your major, but generally will not mind if you just do the bare minimum to satisfy them.
The most selective US colleges are generally not like that. They want kids who are academically excellent in a wide range of classes, and who enjoy a challenge outside of their core academic interests. In fact, a lot of those colleges actually expect you to explore a lot of things before even deciding what you will major in. And those classes you are exploring are going to be taught at a high standard with competitive students, and they want to know you will thrive in a setting like that.
If you instead communicate to them in some way that you are not really interested in that sort of challenge, well, they might decide they think you would be better off going to college somewhere else.
Now since she is just in 7th grade, maybe being THAT blunt with her is not a great idea. And personally, I think if she just doesnât want to be that sort of person, that is fine, even if it means she does not end up at such a college.
But that is in fact the reality of the situation, and so whatever you tell her should not actually mislead her. And in fact maybe if she really is not that kind of person, you should be thinking about how to gradually prepare her for the possibility these may not be the best colleges for her.
3 Likes
So I discussed with them over the phone. They told me that they offer Greek up to Level 6 (not sure what âLevelâ means, but I guess Level 6 = college level?) They highlighted about their accreditations etc. but of course they advised me to first get approval from the HS counselor.
Thatâs actually a good point, and yet another reason not to take Spanish. At least with Latin she will play on a level fieldâŠ
Latin is fine. Latin plus a certificate in Modern Greek could be a plus. (She studied one language because the school required it and another out of interest.)
If she doesnât want Latin, of the languages you mentioned, German and Greek grammar are the most similar while Spanish and French would have more similar vocabularies.
This is the case at my childrenâs high school. Non-native speakers who did not have prior exposure to Spanish in elementary or middle school choose a different language.
Itâs OK for her to pick the language she wants, without trying to game the system and pick one that seems like it might be easier.
My kids love Latin and consider themselves Latin nerds. They get a kick out of stuff like translating pop songs into Latin and singing them, etc. For them it was a fine choice.
We also know kids who chose Mandarin in 9th grade with no prior knowledge of the language (and this IS a class with heritage speakers in it), worked VERY hard in that class and wouldnât trade it for anything. They will tell you it was the best choice they made in high school. I donât know that they would have done better in an âeasierâ language.
You can give her options and let her find her own motivation for whatever she chooses.
4 Likes