<p>My son took Spanish as a freshman and then decided to move onto Latin. He loves Latin and had taken Spanish in middle school as well so had plenty of Spanish. We were told this might be a red flag for admissions folks and that we should find a way to explain it.</p>
<p>Do you all agree or disagree? If you agree, how and where does one explain it if the school does not interview? I would hate for him to draw attention to it!</p>
<p>My daughter took Italian freshman year and switched to Latin. I don’t agree that it’s a red flag at all - I think it makes her stand out a little more: not a lot of kids take Latin or get magna cum laude on the National Latin Exam. </p>
<p>If you’re worried about it, turn it into an asset. Have him take the Latin SAT II and the National Latin Exam - it’ll set him apart. In a good way!</p>
<p>as long as he has 3 ye4ars of the same language (which he will if he sticks with Latin), he will be five for any school.</p>
<p>Not a problem. I don’t think colleges will see middle school plus one year of Spanish as “plenty of Spanish” for their purposes, but three years of Latin will be fine. No need to explain - there are lots of reasons people switch languages - sometimes just because the other language has better teachers.</p>
<p>Not to denigrate the National Latin Exam, but my younger son is a dunce in Latin and he always does pretty well on the NLE. Silver medal maxima cum laude this year - 81 in Latin and that was a gift from the Latin teacher. We can only hope that the college admissions office will think he has an extra demanding Latin teacher - which is certainly possible.</p>
<p>S1 took Latin for 3 years(made A’s), decided he had enough and took no foreign language senior yr. It was not a prob. He just graduated fr. our big state u. (fullride).</p>
<p>The only issue I can see is your S will now have to take a language Sr year instead of something else in that time slot. Most colleges want 3 years language. Of course, maybe your S would have take a language Sr. year anyway.</p>
<p>And as Mathmom said, my S is not particulary good in Latin but got a maxima cum laude on last exam.</p>
<p>I’m currently a rising junior in HS, and next year I’m switching from latin to french.
I started latin in 7th grade and I never really understood it. I wanted to switch after freshman year, but my mom encouraged me to stick with it, and I agreed. It does look better to have the same language all 4 years.</p>
<p>Last year in latin class I constantly felt lost, and didn’t enjoy it at all. I was planning on sticking with it, even though it was now my least favorite class and I dreaded going to it each day. Even my teacher thought I should switch languages, as she didn’t think I could handle the work in Latin 4H. (Which is kind of rude, because she should want me to take latin since more people are switching out each year.)</p>
<p>If I were to take latin during my junior year, I had promised myself I wouldn’t go on and take latin senior year. (This was the main reason part of me still wanted to stick with it.)</p>
<p>After doing miserably bad during the 4th quarter, and on the final, I finally decided to switch into french for next year right before school ended. I’m certain I won’t regret the decision.</p>
<p>I decided that I didn’t want to be that person that did everything because it “looked better” on your transcript. I believe that there is a certain point that you should do what you want, and if colleges don’t accept you because of this small little detail then they aren’t really worth 4 years of your life, and thousands of dollars.</p>
<p>(p.s. sorry this was really long.)</p>
<p>Lives for Summer, your last paragraph was wonderfully put.</p>
<p>Good for you lfs. That’s the reason my S dropped Latin after 3 years. He was just really worn out with it (and the teacher…same one for 3 yrs.)</p>
<p>If anything, Latin will be seen as a plus by some colleges. I think having a good base in Latin really facilitates learning modern Romance languages—French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and no doubt others but those are the ones I’m most familiar with. It also helps with English vocabulary and even grammar, because it forces you to become a disciplined grammarian. College adcoms know this.</p>
<p>I agree. 3 years of the same language is fine.</p>
<p>bclintonk, Interesting that you should say that. When S1 was taking Latin, he commented that it really helped him in his h.s Eng. classes. Also he recently took a Foreign Language Aptitude test (for a govt. program) and scored very well on it even though he hasn’t had Latin for over 4 yrs.</p>