UVA and 4 years of foreign language
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Anonymous
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Dean J just made clear, again, that not taking a foreign language all four years of high school is not a good look for UVA admissions.
https://uvaapplication.blogspot.com/2025/10/uva-language-requirements.html |
Anonymous
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Just wondering.
DD is a native speaker of Spanish but took 4 years of HS Spanish, including the AP class. Is this gonna be counted against her by the UVA? |
Anonymous
| Not sure why you are posting something from two months ago. This is always the message. Also don’t want to hear the people coming back to say their kid got in with fewer than four years. Why are you starting this up again? |
Anonymous
The post is dated October 9! I think it was linked in the last thread we had about this as well. |
Anonymous
I didn't see it. I'm not glued to DCUM lol. |
Anonymous
What gave the impression that taking 4 years to AP and being bilingual would "be counted against her?" |
Anonymous
Native or heritage speaker? |
Anonymous
| DS only had 2 years in HS, AP in 10th. Was admitted a a few years ago. |
Anonymous
| If it’s so important, why don’t they require it instead of recommend? |
Anonymous
How would UVA know besides an essay? she could even be a family with heritage but gave up the language like: Germans, Italians, Irish, ... 4 or 5 years of Spanish is so common as is French, German, Latin, and soon Russian and Chinese. This wont move the needle either way. It will be a check box and then ignored. Our pov is that it should - learning a language from scratch is much harder than having family support. Reality check is that for admissions it wont make or break the deal. Having no second language then that would mean something. |
Anonymous
NP. Just a guess, but all things being equal, school will take the kid with 4yrs of FL. |
Anonymous
| This topic has been posted about as nauseam here! |
Anonymous
No matter what UVA says, no matter how much they explain it, and no matter how many people post that their kid got in without 4 years of language, there are people here who confidently tell others that UVA requires it. |
Anonymous
NP. What about a 3rd language? Does demonstrated proficiency in 3 languages matter to UVA ? (move the needle either way.? ) |
Anonymous
Common App asks about “languages spoken at home” or something like “first language”. Our kids first spoke Spanish, but as they were immersed in regular US schooling, they lost a lot of it. They had to put effort (albeit, less effort than monolingual English speakers) in their AP class to learn the correct grammar and spelling. Many of their fellow heritage speaker classmates, did not do well in their AP class. Native speakers are in a different league. They most likely had formal education in their language. Heritage speakers tend to have a lot if gaps, and their communication skills are not as fluid when the speak with native ones. In addition, their vocabularies are usually limited to the country/region of their parents. So, in my view, there is a difference between native and heritage speakers. World language learners that score 5s on the AP exam should be celebrated a lot more than Heritage Speakers. There should be no doubt about that. |