Georgetown SFS High School Requirements

Hi everyone, I’m just here with a question about what high school courses the SFS requires for admission. So my freshman year, I was placed into Honors Spanish 2, and this year (sophomore year) I am taking Honors Spanish 3. So here is my question. I know the SFS is very focused on foreign language, but I am considering dropping Spanish for my junior year in favor of an AP course. I would then take this Spanish class in my senior year. The reason for this is that at my school, AP credits are worth more than honors credits, and I would rather have two semesters with an AP class in junior year than just one semester with an AP senior year. Would I be going against the SFS’s requirements by taking Honors Spanish 4 my senior year? Thanks for the feedback!!!

Continue with Spanish. It’s really hard to get back into the swing after a year’s break.

The effect of a 3.5 year weighted GPA of one honors class is akin to a pimple on an elephant’s butt. If you get rejected, this will not be the reason why.

I am aware of this, however, my gpa is somewhat low for these schools, and I need to bring it up as much as I can, but would only taking 3 years of a language make me ineligible for the SFS?

No. But you are grasping at straws and overestimating the effect that this small GPA bump will give. Additionally, because there is so weighting standard, colleges will use UW GPA or will often reweight according to their own parameters. I have no idea how/if Georgetown recalculates (nor does anyone here), but I would not suggest spending a lot of effort trying to game your GPA.

Ok, thanks so much for the advice @skieurope !!!

Late response, but we just got back a few days ago from visiting Georgetown and the SFS presentation. Under no circumstances should you drop your foreign language. First, you MUST achieve proficiency in a foreign language to graduate, so by dropping a language now you are just creating more work for yourself in college. Second, lack of sufficient foreign language training—especially if they realize you could have taken additional years in high school and chose not to—will be a major strike against you in admissions. There will be plenty of applicants with good grades, good test scores, and some ECs that show interest in this field—don’t be the one who looks like they aren’t interested in foreign language study.

@BooBooBear I dropped Spanish after 4 years so I could take International Relations. Maybe a bad decision but I wanted try out a subject that would hopefully be a focus at SFS. I know I’ll go back to language study in college. Will that be my downfall?

Did you reach level 4 or AP?

@MYOS1634 Level 4 all honors. It would have been AP this year. Took Honors IR and 4 other APs instead.

If you reached level 4 you’ll be ok, but try to think of the areas of the world that interest you most and the language you need (ie., If Africa, French, perhaps wolof; if Asia, Chinese, Japanese, Japanese; If India, Hindi; if Europe, German or French; if South America, Spanish).

@brontosaurus05 : It should help that you have legacy status at Georgetown. (Legacy is “considered”–so not a big boost, but still a boost.)

Georgetown has feeder schools & likes full pay applicants since, like NYU, Georgetown’s endowment doesn’t match its status.

If you did 4 years, and took an International course instead of year 5, that is likely just fine I would think. I responded in another thread on this issue as well. I worry about, and have seen questions to this effect elsewhere on the Georgetown forum, the kid who takes the minimum 2 years and stops but wants to do international business or politics.

I do believe that we on CC can get a distorted picture due to seeing “desperate” questions about admissions from kids who likely represent the actual top 25% of admittees (“Will I get in?!? I have a 35 ACT, a 4.0 average with 15 AP classes of which 13 are 5s, I spent six summers in Morocco and speak fluent Arabic and French, and also am a varsity swimmer with 3 state records and finished twice runner-up in the state science contest. Oh, and I am student body president and started a charity that feeds 200 homeless every Sunday in my town.”)

So are you saying that everyone in SFS doesn’t speak 3 languages and hasn’t done community service abroad the last 3 summers? I was completely discouraged the first time I read the “chance me’s” on this site. I guess it makes sense that SFS would want students that have International experience, but for some, it just isn’t feasible. I am hoping to learn and get that experience in college.

@apdns19 Keep in mind that CC tends to attract the type of people who do speak three languages and do research/intern abroad or whatever. International experience is definitely nice, but Georgetown recognizes that not everyone has the chance to do that. What matters is what you did with the opportunities you were given. You’re being evaluated relative to the resources you had.

That being said, SFS students do have a pretty accurate stereotype by the time they graduate from Georgetown: speak 2+ languages, studied abroad somewhere, interned on Capitol Hill/somewhere in government, etc–you get the picture. So you’ll definitely have a chance to get that experience if you haven’t thus far.

first of all GPA doesn’t matter as much as coursework IMO so taking less classes to get a higher GPA is a very bad idea. Secondly if you are going to study IR in college you will probably learn a language so by taking courses in high school you are saving yourself time and money in the future. I personally dropped Spanish in my sophomore year but I replaced it with advanced Russian. If there are any alternative language courses you may want to take those instead (since Spanish isn’t in high demand among IR majors regardless of where you go to college)

@jsviracc Latin America is really popular as a region to specialize in at Georgetown, so many people do take Spanish. Of course, critical languages like Russian, Chinese, or Arabic are always in high demand.

Also as a note about the IR class, I know friends who took IR in high school, which they didn’t think was as helpful because everyone in the SFS has to take IR anyway, so that’s something to consider. Language classes though can help you move to more advanced levels more quickly.