I will be applying to colleges soon and my top career choice has always been pediatrics. My mom is in the medical field and says that knowing your patients language often helps in bedside manner. I am fluent in the Nigerian language Igbo, take Chinese in school, am teaching myself Spanish, and doing a summer abroad next year to learn another language. I know many languages and am searching for other career options. My other top option would be something combining languages and business. I have been looking around for colleges with good programs but want to hear other opinions.
You probably want to look for colleges that offer the languages you are interested in learning, rather than a “college language program”.
@ucbalumnus thanks but many colleges offer the languages I’m interested in. By program I truly mean program same way a college could have a premed or business program I’m looking for a place with a language program. For example Cornell used to have a FALCON program with 9 hours language a day & full immersion and Columbia has a program where you can take your language with other schools in New York. I’m looking for programs like that.
Middlebury has long been viewed as the best language program. This was only strengthened when they acquired the Monterey Institute for International Studies a number of years ago. Hard to compete with them.
I think the key is to spend as much time as possible in the countries where they speak the language you are learning. So I would look for schools with generous study abroad programs. There are also excellent language programs abroad. For Chinese, look at http://ieas.berkeley.edu/iup/
Ole miss has a great Chinese flagship program from what I have heard.
The presence of native or heritage speakers of the languages you want to learn at the school or surrounding community may give you additional informal practice opportunities.
http://www.thelanguageflagship.org
http://moore.sc.edu/academicprograms/undergraduate/majorsoffered/internationalbusiness/optionsoverviews/ibcetrackhongkong.aspx
http://moore.sc.edu/academicprograms/undergraduate/majorsoffered/internationalbusiness/optionsoverviews/ibatrackchile.aspx
http://moore.sc.edu/academicprograms/undergraduate/majorsoffered/internationalbusiness/optionsoverviews/menatrackegypt.aspx
http://academiccatalog.udel.edu/Pub_ShowCatalogPage.aspx?CATKEY=KEY_874&ACYEAR=2012-2013