I will be a senior in high school next year, and I am torn between taking AP Spanish Language or Computer Science.
To give you some background on the situation, I have taken 3 years of Spanish in high school. However, my Spanish classes did not teach me enough to be able to go into Spanish 4 and succeed. There were multiple Spanish teachers at my school, and every year I got stuck with the one that couldn’t teach. With that being said, I’m not sure if I will be able to get good grades in AP Spanish Lang (with a different and more challenging teacher), let alone do well on the AP test.
On the other hand, my school doesn’t have an AP Comp Sci class, but I have the ability to take an independent study course in computer science and self-study for the AP test. I don’t think that self-studying would be a problem because I am very motivated and I feel like I would be able to stick with it. I’m interested in majoring in something STEM related (engineering, math, etc.), so Computer Science will help give me some background in the subject before I go off to college. I do not have any experience in coding, programming, etc.
My senior year courseload is already very difficult, so I would not be able to take both classes. I would rather take Computer Science, but my only concern is that colleges would rather see 4 years of a foreign language. I plan on applying to selective schools (Ivies, Stanford, etc.), and I don’t want to hurt my chances for admissions by not sticking to a foreign language for all four years of high school.