What is my best option - Which college is right for me?

College Search & Lists
1

<p>I am a 16 year old female (junior in high school), I am to graduate 2016, but I want to take a year off and not go to college until 2017. I’m super lost when it comes to picking the right college.
I want to, one day, become a teacher of music and foreign language (Spanish, German, Japanese only).
I’m interested in teaching grades 9 to 12 AS WELL AS COLLEGE STUDENTS AND ADULTS. If you read below, you’ll see why a college search engine won’t help me - I have some unusual specifications.</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure I want to Major in Education. As for a minor, I’m not sure what to pick. I do want to be knowledgeable about music, and the specific languages I mentioned. I’ve heard of double-minors, would it be worth it to minor in both music and foreign language? Or should I just minor in one, and take electives in the other? If so, which one should I choose to minor in (what would benefit me the most)? I care about them both equally. </p>

<p>I think my guidance counselor is confused and thinks I want to go into college undecided. I don’t really want to do this because I don’t want to be set on an undecided “course” which involves things such as mathematics that I could care less about. I’m not interested in taking the usual required math, history, etc. courses but I wouldn’t mind taking sciences.</p>

<p>I’m looking for (in a school) -preferably- : </p>

<p>Selectivity: At least fairly selective
Years (2 or 4 year): No preference (I wouldn’t mind transferring schools, even more than once.)
Public or Private: No preference
School Size: No preference
Single-sex or Co-ed: Co-ed
Religious Affiliation: No affiliation (My religion is Universalist, so I wouldn’t mind a universalist college, if one existed, but its really not a priority.)
Location: I live in NJ. I wouldn’t mind a college in a neighboring state (must be touching NJ) but I would prefer for it to be in my home state.
Setting (Urban, Suburban, Rural): Urban or Suburban
Residential or Commuter Campus: No preference
Housing Availability: Quite available for younger years, but not a priority.
Housing Preferences: Co-ed Housing, Apartments for Married Students, Wellness housing: /drug/smoke-free
Cars for Freshmen: Cars are allowed for Freshmen
Study Options: Double-major, Internships, Independent Study, Study Abroad, Teacher Education.
Extended Class Availability: Extensive evening and morning classes, Saturday classes available, Weekend college
Sports: Archery, Equestrian, Lacrosse, Weightlifting, Swimming
Activities: Choral Groups (must-have!), Music Ensembles, Musical Theater (really would like this)
Greek Life: No fraternities or sororities. I don’t discriminate, but I morally disagree with this, I will not explain myself.
Transfer Credits: Accepts transfer credits from a 2-year college
Work-Study Programs: Work-Study Programs are available
Campus Services: Tutoring
Diversity: No preference</p>

<p>Which school, or schools, would fit such specifications? I wouldn’t mind transferring from one school to another.
I’ve heard of Montclair State University and Rider University but I’m not sure if they meet all of my specifications. College searches sometimes said Rowan University or Rutgers University-New Brunswick.</p>

<p>Thank you so much for reading my question.</p>

2

<p>Let’s be clear. If you want to teach secondary school (at least for now), you probably will enroll in a five-year program in which you will choose a major and then minor in education, graduating with a bachelors and a masters. That’s why your GC is saying you’re undecided. You’ll have to pick a major. A major cannot be spanish, german, and japanese, and music education–with a minor in secondary ed to boot. </p>

<p>I suggest if you go this 5-year route that you major in music or in one language. Japanese is not in much demand in high schools on the east coast, generally. German is more in demand, and Spanish of course is in great demand. Personally, I’d wouldn’t be caught dead teaching spanish to high schoolers. I don’t know of the demand for music teachers, but I suspect it fluctuates from school district to school district because art and music classes seem to be the first ones school districts cut.</p>

<p>Your specifications are pretty narrow, and I think another conversation with the GC early in September would be a good idea. He or she should know NJ schools better than I will. You can always come back here and ask again.</p>

3

<p>What I am wondering is if the major can be in Foreign language and then the actual languages you pick can vary? Would it have to be one language? I would like to be fluent in all three of these and wouldn’t mind taking them as electives. Being fluent in all three would mean I had the opportunity to teach at least three different classes.</p>

<p>My specifications in what I’m looking for in a school are pretty flexible especially when it comes to housing or cars, since I could just park somewhere else, get my own apartment, or if the school was near my home, that would solve that problem. Really the only must-haves for me are a Co-ed school with little to no religious affiliation, choral groups and not in a rural area. I’d like for it to accept transfer credits if I were to transfer to it. But really that’s all, everything else is flexible there. </p>

<p>Are there alternatives for this 5-year program? Like I said I wouldn’t want to be limited to just Secondary Education, I might even be interested in a position such as a University Professor, private adult or child teacher etc.</p>

<p>The reason I am nervous about majoring in music and would rather major in language is because I know that the demand for music teachers is basically unstable. But would it really have to be just one language?</p>

<p>I could cut the preferences down to this (not including “no preference” choices):</p>

<p>Single-sex or Co-ed: Co-ed
Religious Affiliation: Little to No affiliation (My religion is Universalist, so I wouldn’t mind a universalist college, if one existed, but its really not a priority.)
Location: I live in NJ. I wouldn’t mind a college in a neighboring state (must be touching NJ) but I would prefer for it to be in my home state.
Setting (Urban, Suburban, Rural): Urban or Suburban
Study Options: Independent Study, Study Abroad, Teacher Education.
Activities: Choral Groups</p>

<p>If that is a little more graspable and/or realistic.</p>

4

<p>You could choose to major in two languages at some schools, but then the education component would have to wait til you were working, presumably. You can work as a teacher, if that’s even what you want to do after several years of school, in a private school, or you can work in a public with a certificate but usually the school district wants to see that you are working toward an education degree while you’re working full time.</p>

<p>You could take the third language in intensive summer sessions at UWisconsin (I think) or at Middlebury. There are other such immersion language programs out there that you can do extra-curricularly. There are state department programs for summer immersion and study abroad. usually those are in less common languages in the US, like pashto, urdu, mandarin, arabic, etc.</p>

<p>College is not necessarily the place to do everything at once. You have the rest of your life.</p>

<p>Do you have a native fluency in one language? does anyone at home speak only or mostly non-English?</p>

5

<p>You appear to have far too many constraints. I can’t think of a college that would “suit” you. Nor a program that would make you successful. I recommend that you slow down, and come back this forum at the end of your junior year, or, if you indeed take a gap year at the start of your gap year.</p>

6

<p>What do you mean by “then the education component would have to wait til you were working, presumably.”?</p>

<p>Would majoring in two languages count as a double-major? If I could major in two languages, then theoretically that means I could dual-major and have four languages? </p>

<p>I wouldn’t mind learning the languages in other programs, electives, such as study abroad. They wouldn’t have to be part of the major/minor if I could find a school that had all of them in the programs. Then I could just major in music and minor in education. But I also know that music can usually be learned in elective groups. I am really only interested in teaching courses involving choir, so I don’t think a major in “Music” really works because I don’t have the interest in learning music at a higher level than what will be taught in the “choir” classroom. That’s why I thought I could work something out with the language major.</p>

<p>I don’t have fluency in any language except English, neither does my family. Trust me, I would have learned by now c: Thank you for your inquiry, interest and responses.</p>

7

<p>Majoring in two languages would be a double major. Majoring in four is probably not possible. Certainly not while adding the music. Pull up Rutgers list of courses and majors and see what’s required as an example. If you don’t have any fluency in other languages now I can’t see you getting three languages down in college. Talk to your GC more.</p>

8

<p>How many years of each of the three languages have you had in formal schooling? I’m wondering if you’ll need to take the first two years (the language intro years) for each language. Usually a college language has four years of language study if you don’t come in with some knowledge of the language, in addition to other major requirements.</p>

<p>OP, it seems you need to educate yourself about what you want to do. You don’t appear to be getting much help from your instructors or counselor, so do some research. Look at undergraduate catalogues online for a particular school. See what courses a major must complete. How many credit hours are involved (usually 30-36), if there are any elementary language courses you can test out of, etc. Then see how many credit hours you need to graduate (usually 120 total), what general education requirements there are, if you’re required to take a minor, if you can take a second major, etc. Many departments will have a recommended schedule for the courses you’ll take over 8 semesters. See if you have any APs or IBs that could stand for any of those courses. You might have some room in your schedule for two majors, if the school allows double majors. Come back after this and ask some questions.</p>

9

<p>Yeah, I agree with the above, you can’t just major in “Foreign Language” and study whatever languages you want and then double major in something else. I’m not familiar with the prerequisites for becoming a teacher, but I know some of the language teachers at my high school teach more than one language (e.g. French and Italian) and know even more languages than they teach. There may be a path internally within school districts for teaching languages other than just the one you were hired for (again, not sure though). </p>

<p>As far as schools, Kean in NJ leapt to mind, at least in my area it’s regarded as a teacher’s college, not sure about their foreign language offerings though. </p>

10

<p>Just a few things for you to keep in mind:

  1. If you think you’ll be able to gain total fluency in three languages in four years without any previous experience while taking other classes, you are setting a pretty unrealistic goal for yourself. I’ve studied four languages (Spanish, Latin, Chinese, and Arabic), for a total of about 10 years (including multiple years at the university level), and I would say I’m only borderline fluent in one, and that was only after spending a month in China. This is especially true for you since you picked two entirely different types of languages: Romance languages (German and Spanish) and an Asian language (Japanese). The reason you see some foreign language teachers teaching multiple languages is because they are most of the time in the same family. For example, the Latin teacher at my school speaks Italian, Spanish, German, French, and Latin. However, since all of these languages are in the same family, it’s not as difficult to learn Italian if you already speak Spanish as it is to learn Italian while you already speak, say, Urdu. And please, do not underestimate the difficulty of learning a new writing system. Both Arabic and Chinese use completely different writing systems and it took me months of study to get the basics down. Learning Japanese will be entirely different from the other two.
  2. Kind of back to what I said before, I think you should either major in Japanese or double major in Spanish and German (or only major in one of them.) As I said, German and Spanish are from the same family, so it would be easier to study them concurrently than to study them in addition to Japanese. Like one poster said, maybe try an extensive summer program for the other language(s).
  3. A very few number of colleges offer a “Foreign Languages” major, but I don’t know of any that meet your extremely restrictive list of requirements. One is Lewis and Clark in Portland (I know. portland is no where near NJ.) Foreign language majors there are required to select a primary and secondary language from the following: Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. If you look at the course requirements, a few of the requirements for Spanish and German overlap. I have no idea what the education program is like there, or if they even have one. Same goes for their music program.
  4. As a junior, don’t set up such specific parameters for your college search just yet. A year ago, I had a completely different list of colleges than I do now. As you start visiting more colleges, researching more about academic programs, maturing, etc., your thoughts on leaving home, religious affiliation for your college, etc. change. It’s nice to have a list of things you want, but don’t force yourself to stick to those requirements if you realize you like something you didn’t originally think you would. </p>

<p>Here’s Lewis and Clark: <a href=“http://college.lclark.edu/live/files/3346-major-minor-declaration-form”>http://college.lclark.edu/live/files/3346-major-minor-declaration-form&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Edit: I don’t want to discourage you from studying anything that you find interesting or mean to sound like I think that you should give up on those three languages because it’s a hopeless cause, I just want you to understand how becoming fluent in three languages at the same time solely through college courses is not likely without TONS of dedication and effort on your part. </p>

11

<p>German is not a Romance language. It would be more appropriate to learn German and Swedish or Spanish and French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, or members of their families.</p>

12

<p>You’re totally right. I forgot that German was the odd one out. But I don’t think that takes away from the validity of my claim that German and Spanish will complement one another better than Japanese and German or Japanese and Spanish. My point is that the similarities between Spanish and German are going to be much more obvious than Japanese and either of those other languages. I don’t want to suggest any different languages to the OP because I’m sure she has reasons for choosing those specific languages, but choosing German and Spanish makes more sense than pairing one of those with Japanese. There will be slight cross over between German and Spanish and there will be none with Japanese.</p>

13

<p>yes, they share an alphabet, more or less, and some sounds that Japanese does not share with them.</p>

14

<p>I’ll have taken Spanish 1-3 by the time I graduate and I already know the basics of Japanese. I got kinda screwed over because when I transferred to my school I couldn’t keep up with the rest of my class in Spanish 4 Honors. I know I could make it though, since I have a really high aptitude for learning languages. I’m really great at English as well.</p>

15

<p>If I had to pick between my three choices I’d have to drop the German (not that I don’t want to learn it as well). I am aware that it won’t crossover well. Actually, Spanish and Japanese are similar in unapparent ways (they share the same vowel sounds, pronouns aren’t repeated in conversation as they are in English, etc.) I’m absolutely sure I’d want to visit Japan but Germany I could hold off on. And I understand my college search specifications are narrow. </p>

16

<p>The main reason (not the only reason) I would like to learn these languages is because I would like to visit the specific regions and maybe even live there for a part of my life. I also want to study abroad in those countries specifically. I have a deep fascination in Hispanic and Japanese culture especially.</p>

17

<p>Please understand that I don’t expect to master a language and be totally coherent and fluent in the language in a matter of four years. I know that’s silly. I would still want to study these in college because I want to make it a part of my career. I certainly wouldn’t stop learning and practicing after college either.</p>

18

<p>Thanks to all by the way I’ll definitely come back and ask later, maybe close to when I graduate, and once I’ve talked to my guidance counselor.</p>

19

<p>Japanese and Spanish history have some interesting connections. </p>

<p>Again, if you have this gift, and if you study only one language in college, you will still be able after you graduate to learn another. If you take two languages, you will not have time for education because the five year programs usually require you to take education courses, too, and to spend your last u/g semester in a practicum, where you’re in the classroom teaching as if it were your job.</p>

20

<p>Here is an update I made to my college search after my SAT test 12/06/14.</p>

<p>College Search [College Search - BigFuture | College Board] Criteria:</p>

<p>School Gender: Coed
Cars for Freshmen: Yes
Study Options: Double major, Independent study, Student-designed major, Study abroad, Teacher certification
Majors: Music - Voice/Opera,Foreign Languages and Literatures, General</p>

<p>(Some info about my major choices: I have decided to pursue my interests in college (singing and language) and then get a teaching license afterward. I also decided that I would enter a trade school before going to college in order to learn Food Prep/Professional Cooking. Remember that my choices are subject to change at any time.)</p>

<p>Location: All locations
Work Study Programs: Yes
Setting: Suburban, Urban
Sports: Women’s: Lacrosse
Activities: Choral groups, Music ensembles, Musical theater
Transfer Credit: Yes
Campus Services: Tutoring
Special Housing: Coed dorms, Wellness housing</p>

<p>Recommended Colleges (11):</p>

<p>Boston University <a href=“100%%20Match”>Boston, MA</a> This school has courses in all the languages I’m interested in.</p>

<p>University of Southern Maine <a href=“100%%20Match”>Gorham, ME</a> This one impressed me less especially since it was further away but at this point I am open to a lot of things.)</p>

<ul>
<li>Some others that were too far away for my taste were included. Do you think this is a better search? Do you think BU is worth visiting [approx. 3 hr away]? Too far from home, or just right?</li>
</ul>