<p>How many semesters of a foreign language would a non-engineering pre-med student have to take? [no language APs, SAT2s]</p>
<p>At Yale or in HS in order to be a viable applicant?</p>
<p>At Yale, graduates need to show proficiency – therefore it can be as little placing out by scoring extremely high on a placement test to taking 1 year of intermediate coursework.</p>
<p>At your high school, they like to see 4 years. At Yale, if you don’t test out/place out, you need 3 semesters. My son took Italian. he had taken Spanish in High School</p>
<p>I would say you need to have a real high proficiency to test out. My son took 3 years of Spanish in HS and only placed in the L1 class at Yale.</p>
<p>I have just looked at the course placement decision tree in the 2015 freshman handbook.</p>
<p>Students can place into levels 1 through 5 of a language by taking a placement test upon entrance to Yale. Students who are starting a new language do not need to take the test and place into level 1. Students who have received an AP score of at least 4 in Latin place into L5 Latin, and students with an AP score of 5 in French, Spanish, and German also place into level 5 of those languages.</p>
<p>Students take differing numbers of semesters, dependent upon the starting point.
Level 1 : 3 semesters : L1,L2,L3
Level 2 : 3 semesters : L2,L3,L4
Level 3 : 2 semesters : L3,L4
Level 4 : 1 semester : L4
Level 5 : 1 semester : L5</p>
<p>Students who place into a language at a particular level are free to switch to another language and start that at L1, and they must take L1,L2,L3 in the new language. An exception exists for students who place into L5 in one language; if they start a new language, they need to take only 2 semesters, L1 and L2, of the new language.</p>
<p>I am not too familiar with this, but there are study-abroad programs in the summer that allow students to get credit for L1 and L2.</p>
<p>^ This is accurate. Essentially you need one high level semester in the same language if you got a 5 on the AP or two semesters in another language. All others need three semesters.</p>
<p>^This is not an accurate synopsis of my post. One can place into level 5 of a language, without having taken the AP test, by scoring very well on the language entrance exam. Dependent upon the level of entry into a language program, as determined by the entrance exam or standardized test score, a student will take 1, 2, or 3 semesters. Students placing into L4 or L5 take 1 semester, into L3 take 2, and into L1 or L2 take 3. </p>
<p>Adding to my initial post, while the decision chart in the freshman handbook omitted mention of the IB exam, the text lists it as an alternative to the AP exam.</p>
<p>To clarify one point: you cannot entirely place out of the language requirement. No matter how proficient you are, you will have to take at least one semester of language at Yale.</p>
<p>Hunt’s comment is correct. My daughter’s a freshman at Yale. She had 5 years of French; got a 3 on the AP exam. Language isn’t her strong suit :). She took the placement exam and placed into level 3, so she’ll be taking two semesters of French. It’s an intensive class (5 days a week) and keeps her busy so far.</p>
<p>I will add one more comment here, from my own past experience. This advice is thirty years old, but it’s probably still good: especially if you’re a good test-taker, don’t necessarily sign up for the most advanced language class the placement test says you can take. I did, and I turned out to be the dunce of the class. Take a look at how the class is described, and think carefully if you believe your high school language classes have prepared you for that.</p>
<p>If you place into Level 5, the course you take doesn’t necessarily have to be a straight FL. The course my son took was in an entirely different department.</p>
<p>One caveat - be sure you will be completing a full year of a new language before you start one. Each semester is worth 1.5 credits, but you don’t get any credit for the 1st semester if you don’t complete the 2nd. That is definitely true for the L1-L2 sequence, and I think it’s also true for the L3-L4 sequence.</p>