The reality is, however, that for many US HS students, the options for foreign language study is Spanish or … Spanish.
One can argue whether one particular foreign language is more practical than any other, but while many espouse the flavor-of-the-week languages like Mandarin and Arabic, the number of HS’s that offer either of these languages is few and far between.
So I just go back to what I said before: a student should make the choice based upon his interests. The college is not going to care what language he selects. If an applicant from the Punahou School, for example, presents an exceptional application package, no AO is going to say, “Darn, I would have admitted him if only he didn’t choose to spend 4 years studying a useless language like Hawaiian.” YMMV.