Language Requirement - Years or Levels?

lanawinters
Fri, 23 Aug 2013 10:15:10 +0000

I’m a rising HS senior with hopes of reaching for admission to Stanford, but I have a slight schedule issue with my foreign language.

Since I changed into a different school district my Freshman year, I was late to applying for certain classes and was unable to get into the foreign language course I wanted to take (French or Spanish) because they were full. Not wanting to miss out on a year on a foreign language, I opted for my only option, Japanese. I’m a pretty good language learner, so despite the fact that it wasn’t the language I wanted, I still excelled in the class. However, when it came time to sign up for level 2 the next year, I ran into scheduling problems again, having to choose between choir and Japanese. Since choir is something I’m incredibly passionate about (I’m now in the top two most selective choirs in my high school), I was not willing to give it up and opted for dropping Japanese and taking up French 1. Long story short, I eventually ended up skipping a level and going to French 3 for my Junior year.

Now, for this year, I originally intended to take French 4 or 5, whichever would fit into my schedule best. However, of course, due to the amount of AP classes I’m taking, although I have the open hours in my schedule, the time French is taken doesn’t fit into any of that empty space. So basically I have to decide whether to attempt to self-study the 4th/5th level of the language on my own during study halls (which may be stressful without an instructor) or to just drop the language and take another AP course (like Psych or Environmental).

So here’s the TL;DR: To college admissions, will getting to level 3 in French count as “3 years of a single foreign language” even though I really only took 2 literal years? Because if right now I’m considered to have taken 3 years of a language, then I would think it would be most logical to opt for a class that fits better into my schedule. My counselor also told me that she would write in my application that I tried my best to complete the foreign language requirement and that it wasn’t any fault of my own that I couldn’t continue studying past level 3.

So if someone could please clarify the “3 year” recommendation, that would be great!
Thank you!