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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No. But if one had to rank.. Latin would be at the top[/quote]

Mandarin Chinese is not only more difficult for a native English speaker to master, but pragmatically it’s not even a fair fight. Latin will come in handy when you’re planning to storm the Vatican or if you ever gain access to a time machine … for literally everything else, bet on Mandarin Chinese.[/quote]

Anytime we need Mandarin, we are going to use a native speaker who speaks English, not some white American who stumbled through four years of high school Mandarin.[/quote]

[b]It’s about pursuit of a rigorous program, and frankly, a student choosing Spanish or French (assuming Chinese is also available) could be viewed as taking the easiest way out for those four years of FL coursework.[/b]

If I was looking at otherwise identical students and one completed four years of Mandarin Chinese as their FL and the other completed four years of Spanish - I mean, if you understand the fact that the former is far more complex to master, you would have to tip the scale to that side, if think.

And then as to your last point, I guess it depends on how far a student pursues native fluency. I know of students who completed a Mandarin Chinese immersion program in the K-5 period, then returned for HS (with, as another poster pointed out, a class full of classmates surrounding them who use the language daily at home, as their primary family language) and some of them are very, very, very capable of reaching effective native fluency at 17 years old, with no indication in accent or otherwise.[/quote]

Your speculation is incorrect. Colleges do not rank languages on a scale of rigorous and non-rigorous. It doesn’t matter what language you take. DCUM-land is bat sh*t crazy sometimes.

[/quote]

On what expertise do you base the statement that they don't? Are you an AO?

They rank rigor in every domain area, they value AP coursework. These things are usually one of the Top 3 - 4 areas focused on for admissions. But they don't care if one kid was on auto-pilot for four years with only ¿Dónde está el baño? to show for it, while another kid has spent those four years learning to read, write, and speak in the most commonly used primary language in the world, which happens to be far more complex and uses a different alphabet and complex tones? That doesn't seem logical, or sensible, for that matter. Why wouldn't they consider that, even if as part of the puzzle?[/quote]

To start with because most schools don’t offer Mandarin. So, they don’t penalize kids for not taking a language that isn’t available. You have to choose off the list your school offers. And in most schools, you are looking at 2-3 Romance languages. Also, I had a kid take Mandrin as a second foreign language, get As, and have trouble counting to 100.  Not all Mandrin programs are created equal. And unless you have an OPI score or get an AP score junior year, it’s hard to judge class rigor. Plus, at least in this area, most Chinese classes are filled with native speakers. And that is clearly not rigorous.

But I hope you super special Mandrin speaking snowflake gets lots of Ivy love. [/quote]

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