We’re just starting to pick classes. I’m in Spanish 3, and have heard doing AP Spanish 4 would be best for competitive colleges. But I want to do a different elective that I actually am interested in. What should I do?
What is the ideal number of years of foreign language in high school?
The number of years the college recommends
But will it hurt my admissions chances if I do a class I’m passionate about instead of a foreign language?
Are you a junior who has taken 3 years of Spanish in HS?
You’ve provided too little information for me to answer. It depends on the target colleges. It depends on the course you’d rather take. It depends on your planned major. It depends on what other core/elective courses you would be taking that year. It depends on how many courses your school requires per year.
But what I will say is that in general, colleges are not putting together their recommended HS preparation for giggles. If you want to deviate you should be armed with a valid reason. There a couple of valid reasons and a lot of invalid reasons.
I’ll also add that many colleges have a foreign language requirement to graduate. In theory, the more you take in HS, the fewer you’ll need to take in college. And personally, I think that taking a Spanish class taught by a grad student at the expense of a course taught by a full professor isn’t maximizing the college experience.
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Remember too…if a college “recommends” up to level 4…that really is code for “required”. Most students applying to competitive colleges will take the highest level recommended by the college.
There are plenty of colleges that require up to level three. If that’s all you want to take, look for colleges that have that foreign language requirement.
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Some colleges don’t require language. Most two. Some 3. Some four. Some require two but recommend four.
Who is on your list ? They will answer in the admission FAQs for their school.
I like when kids take what they like but it’s not good if you are targeting X school and that causes you to be disqualified.
In that case, you have to decide if the tradeoff is worth it.
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As others have said, this really depends upon what universities you are applying to. Whether you actually end up needing or using the ability to speak Spanish is likely to depend upon what major and what career you end up with.
You can get into good universities with just three years of Spanish. For highly competitive schools you might be better off with four years, and this will vary from school to school.
Someone I know very well who works in health care has said that the ability to speak Spanish reasonably well (not fluently) has helped her in every job that she has had. This is probably true for nearly anyone who works in health care in the USA with direct patient contact. One daughter had only three years of Spanish in high school, did quite well applying to universities, but eventually ended up with a career where the ability to speak Spanish is useful and ended up taking additional Spanish classes while in graduate school.
Our other daughter was pretty close to fluent in Spanish, and is now in a graduate program where it is really not useful at all. Similarly I do not think that the ability to speak Spanish would have helped me at all in my career (and the ability to speak French only helped once or twice, and it was not important).
It all depends what you want to do. However, you most likely can make it work either way.
This is very likely to depend upon where you apply, and may also depend upon what other class you are thinking of taking instead.
Well there’s one way to find out.
Every university lists their requirements for admission to their school. Look at their websites and do a little research see if that corresponds to the number of years that you’ve taken your foreign language.
The top universities will list the minimum requirements for foreign language coursework; but when they say “four years recommended”, they mean: if you want to get into our school, you’re going to take four years. Foreign language is a core requirement. Most of the really good schools want to see rigor. If you take two years, and four years of studies are available, you’re not demonstrating rigor and they will wonder why you opted to chose a non core elective over a core requirement.
Is there another time that you can take the class that you’re really interested in? You can find out by taking the class of interest and then submitting your applications. They will let you know, whether or not, you’re accepted or rejected.
I agree with the previous poster that a number of universities have foreign language requirements. So, if you didn’t meet the high school foreign language requirement, you’re going to have to complete it at the university level.
From my experience, these classes were a lot tougher at the university level. I took 4 years of French in high school. I had a big gap between morning and afternoon university classes, so I decided to take an introductory conversational class in French. I was blown away by what they called introductory French! Fortunately, I’m fluent in Spanish, so I could fill in the gaps with the Latin-rooted terms and phrases, but it was a tough course.
I would typically say up to level 4 because FL is a core subject area.
My daughter’s HS strongly encouraged 4 years of FL but she ended up having a conflict between math and FL. As a prospective engineering students, she opted to take math. As such, she only reached DE Spanish III but her guidance counselor wrote about the conflict in the LOR. The GC wouldn’t have done that if it was a personal choice.
Thanks everyone for all the replies!
Good luck
Also, “recommended” usually means “required unless not available to you”. Since availability is not the issue, if you are targeting colleges that “recommend” level 4 of foreign language, treat that as “required”.