Foreign Language Major/Housing/Chance questions!

envsci
Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:19:46 +0000

I’m just a nosy parent, but since my D was in almost your exact position at this time last year, I have some experience/advice that may be useful. She is an entering BU Freshman who is planning on a double major in Russian and something yet to be determined…

BU’s language department seems to be fairly strong and at a time when so many schools are cutting languages out due to budget constraints (not French or Spanish however) you are wise to consider the strength of the language departments overall as it will certainly affect your experience. BU offers many different languages and has a grant through ROTC for five critical need languages (Arabic and some less widely spoken languages). The fact that they care enough to pursue and maintain major grants conveys a level of seriousness that makes me feel good about the department. If you are starting over on another language, and are willing to move out of Romance Languages, then these other languages might be interesting options for you. She has a fairly close friend that just finished his freshman year and he has spoken very highly of his experience with the profs in the language department. I will also add that she (and I) were quite impressed with her academic advising session in the foreign language department during orientation a few weeks ago.

In regards to scholarships, my D has nearly identical stats as you do and she received a half tuition university scholarship. Certainly, put yourself in the running for the full tuition scholarships such as trustees, but know there are others available as well (other students from her school also received substantial merit awards).

I’ll leave it to the students to tell you where to live. Good Luck with your college search!