<p>I know Harvard recommends 4 years (ive tried to search for some old threads).</p>
<p>however, what I dont get is </p>
<p>(1) What is considered 4 years? The level or the years in high school? Im asking this because many people started in middle school</p>
<p>(2) I took Spanish III as a 10th grader last year. I dropped it because I did not realize the importance of foreign language for admissions (but i dropped it for an AP class, so not some blowoff). For next year, I am considering taking Spanish IV as a 12th grader.</p>
<p>Will it look bad if I take a complete year off?</p>
<p>Or do colleges not care to how/order they took things?</p>
<p>As an example...</p>
<p>Person 1 did Spanish I, II, III, IV in 8th,9th,10th,11th (then quit in 12th grade, so no year V)
A person 2 like me who does Spanish I, II, III, IV in 8th, 9th, 10th, and 12th grade</p>
<p>Which would look better? Or is there no difference? </p>
<p>I know we shouldnt target at collegs, but cmon its Harvard...i do have motivation to go there, and one of their strong recommendations is 4 years of a foreign language.</p>
<p>Most colleges will consider you as having taken four years of a language if you are taking Spanish IV. There are some students who swear that their GCs have told them that the courses have to be taken in high school, but I don't believe it. :) I don't think there's any difference between person 1 and 2. You can always blame it on a scheduling issue.</p>
<p>Oh wow, its level that matters? Never knew...</p>
<p>But seriously, I doubt they will care that you skipped a year.
And you can always take something you like (as long as it isnt a blowoff class, taking an AP class instead of a fourth year in French might even look better, especially if you want to go into Chem and you take AP chem.)</p>
<p>Harvard wants you to have a sustained commitment to achieve mastery of a foreign language. If you can do that by 11th grade, or taking a year off, I doubt there's a big problem, although it would always be more impressive if you went beyond rather than stopping after the minimum. And taking a language only through Level III probably shouldn't cut it, even if you spent four years doing that.</p>
<p>lets say you stopped after 11th grade after Spanish IV (person 1)...colleges arent going to label you a quitter and auto reject you</p>
<p>just like if you took a year off, colleges arent going to label you a slacker and auto reject you (person 2)</p>
<p>Like i said, i know the website says consecutive, but taking another level is always better than not taking the level at all, consecutive or not</p>
<p>what if it was due to schedule issues? i didn't take the fourth level because it couldnt fit in my schedule, so i decided to self-study for ap and my counselor mentioned it ..would that be alright?</p>
<p>Yeah....they are cutting my language next year (Latin), but I am taking AP outside of school. Is that considered four years although it'll only show up through Latin III on my transcript?</p>
<p>I don't think it's a problem. I took four years of French in middle school allowing me to complete the highest French course a year early, so I would hope it doesn't affect my chances that I didn't take it this year.</p>