Reply to How important is it to take a foreign language in high school?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "How important is it to take a foreign language in high school?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thank you everyone.
I appreciate the advice.  As I mentioned earlier since he is a junior, he does not have a firm list of schools he wants to apply to but since he is interested in a liberal arts education and is likely to have a few top 20 schools on his list, I went ahead and looked at the common data set for a few of these and half recommend 4 years although I don't think any require 4 years.  
I did raise the prospect of taking the AP exam in the Spring after taking Spanish 5 but he was horrified - he is finding Spanish stressful and taking an AP exam without having taken the course would add to the stress he says.  He says he is now ok with taking AP Spanish next year but he is not happy about it.  He is a straight A student who does not shirk from hard work so I don't think this is laziness.  For some reason he finds the class stressful.  I have offered to find him a tutor if necessary.  
[/quote]

I think what you have to understand is that the top 20 schools might list their "requirements" on the Common Data set, but those are a minimum.  What they actually require is that student makes good use of the opportunities available to them, and consistently chooses to challenge themselves.  They won't require more than 4 years of language because there are many districts in this country that don't offer language in middle school.  But they might look down on a student who could have taken more but didn't.

This doesn't mean he needs to take AP Spanish.  It just means that he will need to show that he challenged himself in another way.  If he takes an additional AP social science, for example, that might demonstrate that challenge.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics