I’m a sophomore in highschool. I moved from New York to Florida this year, in the middle of the school year. Because of this I was unable to complete my two years of highschool foreign language (I also took this language since 7th grade). UF is said to require 2 years of foreign language. However, my teacher allowed me to take my lanuage’s proficiency exam before I left and I passed with a great grade. I go above and beyond the rest of the college’s criteria (minus my SAT and act grade, which I will take next year. I’m positive I’ll do great on those though.). Will this however eliminate my chances of even being considered for acceptance? Thank you.
Why can’t you take a foreign language in junior or senior year?
I’m also involved in dual enrollment, and a bunch of other things in nearby colleges. I don’t really have the time to do so, and plus the language I took in New York is not available in my current school. I took Latin, not a lot of schools have Latin haha.
Oh, and they require the years to be sequential.
@kaitlynw2000
Since you are in Florida you could take Latin through Florida Virtual Schools. My D took Latin 3 over the summer, and while it was a lot of work she felt the quality of the class and instructor were quite good and she was well prepared for AP Latin.
Also, UF grants competency in Latin with a 540 on the SAT subject exam (that is about the 25 %tile). However, since UF does not consider SAT II scores for admissions you would need to add the fact you have Latin competency as part of your application. I think you would be better off to take the Latin class with FLVS so you can check off that box in the SSAR.
Thank you! In your opinion, do you think I’ll be better off taking the Latin class? Because in their requirements they state they require two “sequential” years of a language. If I took it freshman year, then took the online course junior year would that cause an issue? Or should I try to fight to take Spanish one and two my junior and senior year?
Sequential does not mean back to back years in your school years, but that the second year builds on the first. Like you cannot take Latin 1 freshman year and Spanish 1 sophomore and call that two sequential years.
You bring up a good point @kaitlynw2000 , taking a year off in a language is tough and then changing between curriculum makes it harder. My D felt FLVS focused more on translation than grammar while Latin at her school focused more on grammar and vocabulary. She felt the FLVS course was so well designed the transition was not a major issue.
If you can take Spanish 1 and 2 junior and senior year at your brick and mortar school that would be fine. But if you really wanted to take Latin and maybe have time to move on to Latin 3 then FLVS appears to be a good option.
I don’t have specific info, OP, but I do know that it is fairly common for Florida homeschoolers to take high school level courses in 8th grade and have them “count” on the high school transcript. Though you are not a homeschooler I am not sure why that concept would not apply to you if you demonstrated proficiency for the first level of that language and thus went on to the 2nd level.
Also, as far as I can tell “sequential” doesn’t mean one year right after the next. It means the next level of language (i.e., Spanish I, then Spanish II). One of my homeschoolers took a year “off” between the two courses of one language (long story). It does need to be the same language though.
Both my kids did courses in FLVS; they can be time consuming and unwieldy at times. Other courses are fine. You do have a grace period to try the course (perhaps a week? Double check me on that).
If I were in your shoes I would call or email UF admissions and ask them your exact question. The good news is that you have time to address any possible “deficiency” in your transcript (though hopefully there won’t be one). Go straight to the source for the answer to your question; in this case that would be UF!
How about taking the CLEP exam? Maybe a passing grade there would count.