<p>Our younger son is a HS junior in Latin III. The Latin teacher is retiring at the end of the year. The outlook for hiring a new Latin teacher is bleak due to defeated tax levy and lack of classics teachers in our area.</p>
<p>So how important is that fourth year of Latin? Does anyone know of resources for online high school Latin IV credit?</p>
<p>Son is ranked in top three of a public HS class of 435 in northwest Missouri. ACT of 33 and has attended the Missouri Scholars Academy. Is an IB certificate student (not diploma due to no IB Latin at our school.) ECs are speech/debate, Math Olympiads, Eagle Scout, Freshman Mentor, Church Youth Group Mentor to junior high students.</p>
<p>Wants to major in nuclear engineering/nuclear physics or physics. Will not having a fourth year of language hurt at top engineering colleges?</p>
<p>Everything that I have heard on admissions is that the admissions officers won’t penalize a student for what the school doesn’t offer. While looking for outside resources is great, I suspect that most schools will understand if a 4th year is missing and the GC explains in their note that the class is not being offered.</p>
<p>Right – if a subject isn’t offered, a student isn’t penalized for not taking it. Plus, engineering schools are different than liberal arts schools. The engineering schools S looked at didn’t have a foreign language requirement for graduation. So, logic says to me that if you don’t have to take a foreign language to leave the school, you probably don’t have to have 4 years to get in.</p>
<p>My son was admitted to a top school with 3 years of foreign language (and the 4th year was available), and I’ve known quite a few others too. And these kids are all humanities kids where I think it would count for more. In your case, especially, I wouldn’t worry about it.</p>
<p>It only offers three years of Chinese and Japanese, so no one with an Asian Language/Asian Studies interest can get the recommended fourth year in unless they succumb to Spanish or Latin (the former being the largest and easiest because of the teacher and the latter being undesirably difficult after the first year). </p>
<p>But that’s just how it is. I took two years of Latin, two years of Chinese, and all three offered years of Japanese, and I can’t say I regret not getting that fourth year in. Now I have a sound foundation for continuing my Asian Studies interest in college.</p>
<p>Taking Spanish would have been useless to me because I have no intention of using it for anything. And I only took Latin because it was the only language offered to me in intermediate school (I took it in seventh and eighth grade, then switched to Japanese in ninth).</p>
<p>So really, if you have a passion that your school fails to fulfill completely for you, don’t sweat it. There’s little you can do to make a high school cater to your needs. Trust me, I know.</p>