<p>Most of the colleges I'm applying recommend taking 4 to 5 years of a foreign language in high school. I've only taken 3 years. I attempted to take Spanish 4 this year but due to a scheduling conflict, I can't. I was wondering if this will hurt my chances of admission at those schools? How important is the # of years of foreign language classes in college admissions?</p>
<p>It probably doesn’t matter much. There’s not much you can do about it.</p>
<p>FIVE years? Where is that, one of the schools with an IR program? Can you find an online program to enroll in?</p>
<p>Or community college/night school. Only very important at top colleges.</p>
<p>A lot of my friends took 5 years of foreign language (in our area, if we’re smart, we can start taking foreign language, Bio Honors, Geometry Honors in 7th/8th grade), but there were a couple who couldn’t fit it into their schedule. Even though a couple of my friends took only 3 years of foreign language, they still got into Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, West Point, Cornell, and other TOP 25 universities. In other words, as long as you have 3, you’ll be fine. Trust me.</p>
<p>Sure the credits look good. BUt all in all 4 vs 3 really isn’t that big of a difference
Can you speak the language? i know lots of people who took 5 years of language, i myself have 3 high school years and 4 elementary years of french (from canada) and i can barely converse with a fellow french person</p>
<p>I’m pretty good at Spanish. Got a 96 in Spanish 3.</p>
<p>In this discussion, when you say years, do you mean levels? Because I’ve taken three levels, middle school inclusive (shows on transcript) but only 2 years in actual high school…In other words, I’ve taken up to French 3, but French 1 was in 7th/8th, while 2 and 3 were in freshman and sophomore respectively. Is this still adequate?</p>
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<p>I don’t think taking 5, or 4 years for that matter, is “very important” anywhere. 3 is fine, especially if you have an otherwise busy schedule that necessitates the 3 years. I’d much rather have a math class, or science class, or a social science class on my transcript (and colleges would probably rather see this as well) than another year of language. GPA will be more important as well. I guess if you were virtually tied with an applicant (truly rare), it could come down to years of foreign language, but really what are the chances of this happening (first the virtual tie. second them deciding between the two of you based off years of foreign language)? </p>
<p>For the record, I took 3 (all in HS, though). I like to think I did allright come admission time at top schools.</p>
<p>So I mean, levels are what matter, right? It doesn’t make sense to me that taking 3 years of a high school level class should be challenged by a potential caveat in reference to WHEN exactly those 3 years were taken.</p>
<p>As long as you’re replacing it with something challenging, you are fine. I didn’t take a fourth year of science and still got into top schools. so almost nothing is set in stone.</p>