Foreign Language Requirement?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>I know on Harvard's website they state that 4 years of a foreign language is ideal, but would taking only 3 years affect my chances? I am currently scheduling my classes for junior year and there are other AP Science and Math classes that I would MUCH rather take than take Spanish 4 (not to mention the Spanish department in my school is completely awful. I took Spanish 3 this year and it was a complete waste of time - I don't think I've learned a single thing). I honestly believe that taking another advanced math or science class would be much more enjoyable and beneficial to my desire to have a career in the field of medicine, but I definitely do not want to risk my chances of getting into my dream school - so what do you guys think?</p>

<p>(Also a quick little side-question, is American Lit E or AP Lang & Comp more beneficial/challenging? I've heard the AP Lang test is near impossible with the teacher at my school and that AP Lang doesn't prepare you at all for AP Lit & Comp.)</p>

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Absolutely not. FWIW: Harvard, and all selective colleges, are looking for students that have a passion for learning. Please read: <a href=“Applying Sideways | MIT Admissions”>http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Thank you! I actually liked that article a lot, it made a lot of good points.</p>

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<p>Fundamentally, gibby is right, and stopping Spanish after only two years in high school probably won’t affect your chances in any meaningful way. But Harvard’s recommendation surely deserves more than an “Absolutely not,” and it’s a little offensive to contrast, implicitly, a “passion for learning” and taking advanced foreign language courses. Especially when the “passion for learning” is expressed as “another advanced math or science class would be much more enjoyable and beneficial to my desire to have a career in the field of medicine” – to my ears, that sounds like careerism, which is kind of the opposite of a passion for learning.</p>

<p>There are lots of good reasons why Harvard recommends taking four years of foreign language in high school. One of them, unfortunately, is that the quality of foreign language courses in American high schools is so awful that unless you take four years of something you will have hardly learned anything at all, and therefore gotten no benefit out of it. It really makes my blood boil, how bad Anything 3 is (except maybe for Latin, which is taught well almost everywhere it is taught at all). But as far as I am concerned (and, I believe, Harvard agrees, at least officially), there’s tremendous intellectual and moral value in the exercise of learning a foreign language well enough to read, write, and converse in it at an adult level, and to start to understand the cultures where it is spoken from the inside. Basically, every educated person in the world other than Americans has that experience – mainly because they have to learn English, or they live in an English speaking country that values foreign languages more than we do.</p>

<p>Anyway, if Harvard really does care about this, at some point it will have to start rejecting people who drop Spanish for more AP science classes in 11th grade. I don’t know if that will really happen, but it hasn’t happened yet.</p>

<p>I would also suggest, from a careerist point of view, that taking more language in high school may well be the better path to becoming a doctor. Which do you think is more valuable: an “advanced” science course at your high school, or the same course at Harvard? If you drop Spanish now, and if you wind up going to Harvard or someplace like it, there’s little or no chance you will place out of its foreign language requirement. So you will wind up having to take at least a year of language courses that are really intensive and time-consuming, requiring hours of lab time and homework almost every day, and making it tough to schedule labs for science courses, not to mention maintaining a medschool-worthy GPA. If there’s something you truly don’t like, high school is probably a better time to get it out of the way than college.</p>

<p>I’ll add, too, that there is a desperate need for multilingual doctors in the US. Read The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman. Practicing medicine without effective communication with your patients, and respect for their culture, is about as valuable as using leeches or magic spells, maybe less so. There’s no real difference between a charlatan and a dedicated physician who commits malpractice out of cultural arrogance.</p>

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<p>^^ FWIW: Both my kids took 3 years of Spanish in high school, which culminated in the AP Spanish exam. They could have taken a 4th year of Spanish (AP Spanish Literature), but did not as they had had their fill of Spanish and wanted to take other “more interesting and enjoyable” classes. Their lack of 4 years of a foreign language in no way hindered their college acceptances or effected their placement/exemption for foreign language at Harvard or Yale. But, I understand where you are coming from JHS.</p>

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<p>Very true. If the OP is accepted to Harvard, or another top school, unless they have received a 4 or 5 on the AP Spanish exam, they will be required to take 1 to 2 years of a foreign language at the college level, depending upon the school they attend. They best way to avoid (or shorten) a college foreign language requirement is for the OP to take AP Spanish and score a 5 on the exam. Beyond that, there’s absolutely no need for them to take a 4th year of a foreign language – unless they have a burning desire to do so – as scoring a 5 will exempt them from Harvard’s foreign language requirement for graduation. The OP should check with other college’s on their list for specific foreign language requirements.</p>

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<p>gibby, I think your kids’ school is unusual. Most high schools around here, and the school where I went, would have kids take Spanish 4, and then Spanish AP (or Spanish Lit AP, which is increasingly rare) the following year. I can’t have much of a problem with a kid dropping his foreign language after taking it through the AP level. My experience, however, is that my AP language classes (which were what is now called AP Lit) were absolute highlights of my high school education (in fact, of my education, period). I would be poorer, intellectually, if I had not taken them, and I would have little interest in the languages if I had not taken them. They were the payoff for all the busywork that went before. There really isn’t any point in studying a language if you are not going to get to that level of proficiency.</p>

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<p>I think my kids would agree that they learned more conversational Spanish in middle school when they were split into groups, given a video camera, and told to make a Spanish language music video, a Spanish language TV newscast, and to record a debate on a random topic in Spanish. For them, high school Spanish was completely boring, even at the AP level, and made them lose interest in speaking the language. Fortunately, their middle school experience enabled them to be street-fluent and to carry on a conversation in Spanish with a stranger. Unfortunately, that’s something not everyone learns in H.S., even if they get on 5 on the AP course.</p>

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<p>AP level in foreign language is level 4 or 5 in most high schools, and probably looked at as such by college admissions people, even if fewer years were taken in high school to reach that level.</p>