Do colleges really want to see a foreign language class every year of high school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m almost 50 years old, and colleges wanted 4 years of foreign language back when I was applying to college.

The difference is that now all our phones can do real-time auto-translation. That translation is not perfect, but it’s worlds ahead of where four years of high school language will get you. So every year the number of kids who see four years of high school language as pointless goes up.

Where we are now is yes, sure, take four years if it’s straightforward. But if you run out of courses at your high school? If you’re otherwise an A student but you’re getting Cs in Spanish? If the schedules conflict so you’d have to skip APUSH to take French IV? If the teacher is terrible? The increased odds of college admissions in an opaque and unpredictable market are almost never worth keeping up the language.

OP here. From what I'm hearing here, it's not about being bilingual (which DS is, since he already passed a foreign language exam that gets enough foreign language credits for graduation). I mean lots of kids in this area are bilingual already without ever setting foot in the classroom. It's about the evidence of taking progressively harder language classes culminating in an AP class and exam. Correct? Bc that's a different requirement than being bilingual or fluent in another language. If that's the case, then this is valuable info for me.

[Anonymous]

They want level 4, not all 4 years of high school.

[Anonymous]

Kid opted out of a 4th year of Spanish in favor of doubling up on science classes. Got in ED to a top tier SLAC, no hooks. 🤷‍♀️

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They want level 4, not all 4 years of high school.

No. They want all 4 years, even if that means post-AP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA really cares. Assumming they have some sort of checklist. Other schools appear to have flexibility in decision-making

But do they care about FL all 4 years of HS? Or do they care that the kid maxed out the langauge up to AP level? These are not necessarily the same thing.

This. UVA (Dean J) is pretty clear that they care about having taken it through the AP level, and if that was in 11th grade, that's fine. And for languages like Spanish, where there are two AP options, it seems to be enough to have just taken the first one (AP Spanish Language) and no need to take the second one (AP Spanish literature). At least it was for my DC (who got in OOS with AP Spanish junior year and no foreign language senior year).

I'm still confused about the dual immersion kids though - our high school pressures them to take the AP test in 9th (they are actively prepping in their 8th grade DLI class for the AP test). They have an opportunity to take dual enrollment for college credit in 10-12, but a lot of target schools aren't going to accept the dual enrollment credits. I see no advantage to following this approach, especially since my kid isn't awesome at FL. UVA and other schools aren't going to see 1 year of language in 9th and a 3 on the AP test and deem that sufficient, are they? Why not take 3 in 9th, 4 in 10th, and AP in 11th and get a 4 or 5 on the AP test? All three years would be easy As, and we'd be giving schools what they want to see.