<p>in a similar boat…son hates spanish after 3 years of it…distressed when counselor told him he would have to write off selelctive colleges if he did not have 4 yrs of spanish. he really wants to take physics C etc. maybe i’ll have take spanish at cc instead of at hs his senior year. he struggles with spanish grade. i was thinking it may be better to help gpa ( he is a 3.7 kind guy) than get hammered in lang class…next year: Ap Calc BC/AP chem/English 11 honor/US history honors/AP envirn sci/…not going to pretend he isn’t lopsided…wants to be material engineer…</p>
<p>kayakmom, I also struggled with whether to let my son drop French. He has the 3 yrs but 4th year French was honors and he really didn’t want to take it which is why I contacted schools that he likely will apply to to check. For him, it was a good choice. It allowed him to focus on his other 3 APs and take the CAD class he wanted. I think since your son is a Math/science type, schools will be more impressed with Physics C than the 4th year of lang. </p>
<p>OP, I also agree with the history choice now that you told us about the quality teacher. It may end up being her most memorable class from HS and really all of HS can’t just be about focusing on getting into college.</p>
<p>Kayakmom, I don’t think taking AP Physics C instead of Spanish is going to doom your son’s chances - especially as a future engineer. In general I think more language is a good thing, but not always. </p>
<p>My younger son definitely benefited in the GPA department by not taking Latin as a senior. (He had four years on his transcript though since the two years in middle school get put down as one year.) </p>
<p>Both my kids didn’t take AP English as seniors a choice many would say would doom them. The older son got into Harvard, Carnegie Mellon and a couple of other tech schools. My younger son got into Vassar, Tufts and U of Chicago. The rest of their schedules were rigorous and they got really good grades in English when they could finally take something fun.</p>
<p>6 years ago we found that highly selective colleges that dd applied to considered 3 years history/SS and 4 years language was ‘most rigorous’. I view the 4th year of a language as a core and the Ethics etc class as an elective–I’m sure it would be fun and stimulating, but I think you’d get a more in depth class in college. There are times when you take the elective because it is related to your passions or your EC’s of course, or maybe just because it is such a famous course at your school. They will see why or you mention it in your application. DD pretty much gave up electives to take ‘most rigorous’ and to get ahead in math and sciences (or used extra specialized sciences as electives, more accurately.) </p>
<p>She did take the 4th year of language, considered it a core. The colleges don’t care too much what language, but they do care about the proficiency level. There was once a link to this effect to a statement from a very tippy top college posted here, they considered the 4th year crucial, but I don’t remember enough to find that link.</p>
<p>And yes she was able to converse in Spanish, and that was likely helped by her lucking into a month long summer immersion.</p>
<p>Brown doesn’t have language or any other requirements, famously, but she did take advantage of the S/Nc system to take Mandarin and Russian and has used them both.</p>
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<p>Is it possible for her to take any two of these online therefore freeing one period per day ?</p>
<p>There may be other places but for nutrition
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<p>As for EMT training, each state probably does it differently but lots of people become EMTs and they are not in high school. </p>
<p>[EMT-Basic</a> Training Programs and Requirements](<a href=“http://education-portal.com/emt_basic_training.html]EMT-Basic”>EMT-Basic Training Programs and Requirements)</p>
<p>Even if she took the courses online, the school schedule would not permit her not to take these because all the students do. There is only one section of all of these courses (there are only 65 or so students in her class). So the times would not work out.</p>
<p>We will look into her possibly taking Spanish at a CC over the summer. She has decided that she wants to take the Ethics class and feels it will be a better experience even if it “hurts” her record. I don’t want her sitting in Spanish all year, wishing she were somewhere else.</p>
<p>^That’s perfectly reasonable. The original post didn’t emphasize how good the ethics class is reputed to be. My kids made decisions that I thought might hurt them - they may have, they may not have. I wasn’t a fly on the wall in the admissions office. They each got accepted at some great universities and they each got rejected by other great universities. If your daughter can’t get a CC Spanish course in, I suggest she make a note on her application that she would have liked to have taken a fourth year, but there was a scheduling conflict.</p>