Being multilingual was one of my D’s strongest selling point on her college application. The grades, and the tests were excellent but in terms of standing out, that was it (with just one more strong area, music). Yet every time I asked about it on CC, I was told it wouldn’t matter all that much, maybe in Middlebury, or in the School of Foreign Service but not really elsewhere.
While we haven’t seen her app materials with AOs’ notes, so no hard proof, I must assume that in the ultra-selective college that took her, it must have mattered. Now they sometimes play a little game in various groups on the campus: how many languages are spoken between us. In a 3-person group, it’s usually about 8.
I refuse to even consider a possibility that speaking a foreign language fluently could be detrimental to anybody’s admission chances, and if you suspect otherwise, I’d run away from that place, screaming.
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