<p>Hello,
I am a current HS senior who will be going to RPI in the fall. I've taken 6 years of Spanish, and I wanted to continue in college, but RPI doesn't offer foreign language classes (or if they do, they are very secretive about it.) Has anyone else faced this problem? I've been considering doing some sort of online enrichment, taking community college classes at home over the summer, or seeing if there are any Spanish language clubs on campus (or of course, just dropping language studies entirely), but I'm curious to know how others have addressed this.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>(To be clear, this is a relatively minor issue- while I would love to continue taking Spanish in college, Rensselaer's engineering and science programs are what drew me and are my real passion at the school, and I applied/accepted knowing full well that it is not a liberal arts/humanities school.)</p>
<p>MY D looked at RPI last year, and asked about taking Spanish classes. She was told that she would need to take classes at the local community college, since none were offered at RPI. For my D, this was a deal breaker and did not apply.</p>
<p>RPI is primarily an engineering university. You won’t find foreign language classes here.</p>
<p>If they are so important to you, why not just take them in the summer?</p>
<p>Personally I’ve never understood the fascination with becoming multilingual through college courses. You’re never going to become fluent in a language by sitting in a classroom and learning grammar in a different language.</p>
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<p>I don’t think that’s a really good reason. RPI has humanities programs, social sciences, EMPAC, etc. We had foreign language classes up until 4ish years ago (at which point budget cuts took over, iirc). Even an engineering school should invest in making its students worldly.</p>
<p>I found languages in the on-line course catalog on the RPI website. If you pull down the LANG dept there are many offerings. Are these courses not really offered?
[Courses</a> - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Acalog ACMS?](<a href=“Courses - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Acalog ACMS™”>Courses - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Acalog ACMS™)</p>
<p>2 or 3 years ago after some restructuring, RPI cut all of their foreign language classes. None are offered as of now. The current students had to continue them at Hudson Valley Community College. Not a great decision but as of now- that’s how it stands.</p>
<p>I went to RPI in 2010 and was considering not going because of the languages since I wanted to learn Japanese, but now that I’ve been here for two semesters I don’t think I would have had enough time at all; the Japanese culture association provides japanese classes on weekends but the workload was just too much for me to really attend most of them =/</p>
<p>But anyways, aside from Rosetta Stone and driving to nearby schools (Albany or HVCC or Sage) they probably aren’t an option to take during the school year.</p>