<p>I am currently a junior in high school taking Spanish 4 after choosing not to take AP Spanish. I am going to apply to several competitive schools such as the Ivies, MIT, etc. If I have taken 3 years of a foreign language will that be enough, or is 4 really necessary/a lot more competitive? At my school, we are forced to drop either a history, science, or language course due to scheduling conflicts in our senior year. I was planning on just opting out of Spanish because I am not great with languages, but should I just struggle through the class and drop something else?
Note: I am also trying to compensate for not taking AP Spanish by taking 4 other AP's and self studying two to get National AP Scholar by the end of the year. </p>
Probably not the best use of your time, as self studying and National AP Scholar will have little to no impact on admissions. If you’re simply going after potential college credit, that’s a different story.</p>
<p>If you will have 4 years of Spanish at the end of your junior year, you have to drop one of the core classes, and foreign language isn’t your strength then drop it and keep the subjects that you prefer. You can also ask your guidance counselor to note in his/her recommendation that you dropped Spanish in your senior year due to a scheduling conflict. </p>
<p>If you won’t have four years of Spanish then talk to your guidance counselor and look at the requirements for some of the schools you are considering applying to before you decide. In our HS 8th grade honors foreign language is a HS class and shows up on the HS transcript so see what the story is in your school. </p>
<p>@happy1
I will have completed Spanish IV while taking three years of Spanish in high school because I took Spanish I in middle school. I went to a public middle school previously but now go to a private high school so I am not sure if that will technically count as credit. But since I will have completed IV, that should count as four years right?</p>
<p>Collecting AP scores by self-studying may not be the best use of your time; check the colleges you are interested in to see which AP scores actually give worthwhile subject credit or placement into more advanced courses.</p>
<p>I would talk to your guidance counselor. I don’t think that taking Spanish IV automatically counts as having taken 4 years of a language but I’m not positive… If your middle school class was a HS class there should be a way to either get that class noted on your HS transcript or probably (more likely since it is a different school system), to have a transcript of that class sent from your old middle school to colleges in addition to your HS transcript. Every HS has its own quirks. I’m sure this has been handled by your guidance dept. multiple times. Likely you will meet with him/her before you set your senior year schedule so just ask these questions and sort it out.</p>
<p>Sometimes, you may get world language credit by placement exam at college. My D was regret taking the AP Spanish test when she found out from the college orientation a few weeks after AP exam that she would get the same 8 credits from the placement exam right before orientation. So you probably don’t need to self study for another AP test in a already very crowded schedule.</p>
<p>Nope, colleges care about level reached, not actual years of classes. It doesn’t matter if year 1 isn’t on your transcript, you still reached level 4.</p>
<p>It depends entirely on the individual college admissions committee.</p>
<p>We actually called 6 colleges and asked them whether having taken through Spanish 3 (with Spanish 1 having been taken in grade 8) would count as two or three years of language in their eveluation. The majority of the schools said “three” but one said “two”. </p>