I met admission counselor from Boston College, and he emphasized the importance of taking 4 years of foreign language.
He highly recommended taking foreign languages for 4 years.
I know most competitive colleges require you to take a language class at least 3 years, but I realized that BC wants you to take 4 years of foreign language class.
Even though I ended up not applying for BC, I just wanted to share this info for those of you who will apply for BC.
Important to recognize that this is definitely not a restrictive rule by any means. Definitely depends on your school, other courseload, etc. I was accepted EA and I’m just taking my second year of foreign language during my senior year! Don’t count yourself out because you’ve only taken 2 or 3 years of language.
My kid only took 3 years (level 1-3) of a language and was accepted this year, early action. If you have a great app and other courses (not just frees), this won’t be used against you.
Au contraire. The most competitive colleges prefer to see 4 years in each of the basic academic disciplines: math, english, history, science AND language.
Also, taking four years of foreign language in high school covers the foreign language core requirement at BC.
Don’t know about BC, but other top 25 schools that I asked (USC & Duke) said that 3 years of FL is fine, so long as the class is replaced with equal rigor. I had asked specifically about son replacing Span 4 (his lowest grade was in Span 3 Junior year) with AP Econ (in addition to AP Gov & AP Calc AB). They said no problem – as long as he didn’t replace it with fluff or a free period.
You will quickly learn on cc that what schools say and what they mean behind closed doors can be different. That being said, I stated that top schools “prefer” four years of each academic discipline all other things being equal. (Math is math, and not sure why it should substitute for another discipline such as Lang, unless your son is doubling up in Calc and AP Stats?.)
Top colleges also “prefer” to see Calc, if it is offered. Of course, not every school offers Calc and not every school offers a fourth year of Lang, so colleges can’t publicly cop to what would disadvantage some applicants.
But yes, BC does place a little more emphasis on Lang that some other colleges and that is bcos its part of the Core. But taking more Lang in HS, it frees up more electives at BC.
@bluebayou Sure, BC may emphasize FL more than other top schools, but if a school doesn’t want to let my kid in because he chose AP Econ (& is applying as an Econ major) over regular Spanish 4, then that’s just stupid & they are rejecting a qualified, awesome kid for a dumb reason. And, maybe other schools want rigor instead of a proscribed “4 years of FL no matter what”. At my son’s school AP Econ is widely considered to be one of the 2 hardest courses, so he is picking something (objectively, not subjectively to him) harder. Luckily for me, I won’t know the reason he gets accepted or rejected 
@STeglitz90 None of us know what these schools are going to do as it’s like going to Vegas for the selective schools and, as you said, fortunately we won’t know the reasons for our kids’ acceptances/ rejections. Definitely no secret formula. I would point out that a college may choose one applicant over an otherwise qualified and awesome candidate if one has the 4 years of language and AP Econ vs a student who has 3 years of language and AP Econ. They won’t necessarily be looking at it as an AP Econ class replacing a foreign lang class because there is no way for them to know that. If there were a reason a student were unable to take both (eg. because scheduling did not permit), I would make sure the college counselor addressed that in the counselor recommendation.
With all of that said, I am sure there are students accepted to BC with 3 years of for lang. There are many opportunities for a student to shine in other aspects of the application that may overcome other criteria they are hoping students will meet.
Well, my oldest got into BC with only 3 years of FL, 3 years she hated. She had 5 AP’s her senior year, including AP Econ which is hard enough to require 2 AP tests (macro and micro). There were plenty of people from her high school with 4 years FL who didn’t get in. I think as long as you have a challenging course load and the minimum 3 years FL, it doesn’t matter too much.
Did she attend BC? Did she take a language? Enjoy or hate?