Hello! My son was accepted to the Hutton Honors College and got direct admission to the School of Global Studies. He also plans to participate in the Turkish Language Flagship if he attends IU. Does anyone have experience with any of these programs? Do the students who participate in them seem satisfied with the education they’re getting, happy in general?
My son was also accepted with a direct admissions to the Kelley business school but has not decided if IU is where he will be attending. IU was on his short list in part because of their strong and diverse foreign language offerings. He Too has recently became interested in the Turkish flagship program. I do not think this particular flagship program is very large and I think it has not been as around very long so it might be hard to get much information through a forum like this. I am traveling with my son in March to visit the school. He is making appointments with a couple different language departments to meet professors and the pocs for both the Turkish and Chinese flagship programs. Hopefully through these contacts, he will be introduced to some of the current students in these programs and/or be allowed to sit in one of the language classes if IU allows. Does your son have a background in other languages? What particularly interests him in the turkish language? IU is of interest to my son because he is interested in international business and IU offers a large selection of languages. He is very advanced in German and has lived there for a period of time. He will likely get at least get a minor in german and spend do a semester abroad there. He also has a background in French but Would prefer to to the time and effort into becoming fluent in a second foreign language that is a little different. He was mainly considering Korean, Japanese or Mandarin Chinese. He became interested in Turkish after reading about the “language flagship” concept. I think any of the IU language flagship programs will be very good. From what I have read, they are funded better than most language programs and are also high visibility so the university wants to make sure the students in these programs succeed. I will post anything I find out after returning from the visit. If your son has not visited the school and made appoints to ask his questions directly to the faculty, I would suggest he does so soon. That is always the best way to get info.
@foreignlanguages. Thanks for your response! My son is also interested in IU due to the strength of their foreign language programs, the Turkish Flagship in particular. He is very interested in foreign affairs and would like to study a “critical language” to make himself more marketable to government agencies following graduation. The flagship programs are actually funded by the Department of Defense and, we have been told, are heavily recruited from by government agencies. My son chose Turkish simply because he is very interested in the culture and politics of the country. He studied Spanish in high school, but is not interested in continuing it during college. The other school that he really likes a lot is the Univ of Wisconsin-Madison. They have a long-standing Turkish language program, but we’re concerned that it may not be as well recruited from as a flagship program???
We too are visiting IU in March and hope that our son can sit in on classes and speak with faculty in both the global studies and Turkish programs. He has been in contact with both and it looks like it should work out. We actually attended an IU Honors Brunch in Manhattan this past weekend and had to opportunity to meet with the Dean of the School of Global and International Studies. The presentation was very well done and we left impressed with both the university and Global Studies program. Now we need to get more detailed info on the same at UW.
I will also share any information that I get… Thanks again!
P.S. We did find out that the Turkish Flagship at IU currently has 20 students total.