My daughter (in 10th grade) is looking for some advice. She’s currently scheduled to take Honors Spanish 4 next term, but she’s thinking of switching to regular Physics instead and moving Spanish 4 to her senior year. From a college application perspective, would that be okay/? There will be a significant gap from Spanish 3 to Spanish 4.
As with everything … it depends!
In general, schools love to see 4 years of all 5 academic subjects - English, math, social studies, science, foreign language. And in science they like to see bio, chem & physics.
How you fit courses over the 4 years is, I believe, less of a concern. Although colleges like to see a student progressively challenging themselves.
Also important to consider—what is your kid’s likely focus in college and what type of college are they considering?
Here are my life examples, my D22 was a STEM girl interested in highly rejectives. She did only 3 years of social studies, but did 6 years of math. Attends a highly rejective LAC for comp sci.
My S24 dropped a foreign language after year 3 to have more room for business electives. At that time, we checked the requirements at the big universities on his radar. Most required only 3 years of language to avoid taking more language in college (which he did not want to do). He attends a Big 10 school for business, and he was glad he’d had some accounting before he got there.
My S28 wants to study music (likely music ed). We are currently trying to figure out what he can whittle off of the 4x5 requirements to take more music classes. The school is really only set up for 1 or 2 electives a year, and he wants 3. 
What is making your daughter want to add physics now? My gut says the year off Spanish is fine (although she may need some extra review the summer before she gives back in).
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Speaking less from the college application perspective and more from a language learning perspective, going from having her last Spanish class in December 2025 and then not having it again until August 2027 or January 2028 is a LONG gap, especially for people who are not yet at the fluency stage. From the foreign language perspective, I’d consider it inadvisable.
In terms of college admissions, it likely depends on what type of college your kid is interested in and in how much Spanish your school offers (i.e. is Spanish 4 the last class offered, or do they offer more?). If your kid is looking at schools with low admit rates, then those schools are probably going to want a foreign language every year, if it’s available. At schools that aren’t very selective, it may not make much of a difference one way or the other as to when she takes Spanish 4.
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