<p>I'm currently a high school senior that will probably graduate with a ~3.5 GPA . I had a 2330 SAT. This past year I've started taking math classes at my local college and plan on taking senior and graduate level classes next year. So far I haven't significantly participated in extracurricular activities.</p>
<p>I already know where I'm likely going to college next year, but I'm strongly considering transferring afterward. One of the larger reasons is my desire to avoid taking foreign language classes. So I'm looking for colleges with a good math department (specifically in foundational math) that either has no foreign language requirement or would allow substitutions in lieu of a language progression. I have pretty significant credit from AP tests and my college classes, so I'm hoping to graduate in three years; meaning a transfer might have to occur after only one year.</p>
<p>I'd also appreciate any tips people have about making yourself attractive to colleges as a transfer student, and how the selectivity of transfer admissions compares to normal applications.</p>
<p>Thanks for your time and any help you can offer.</p>
<p>Most technical institutes and engineering schools do not have a foreign language requirement. Would you be able to pursue your particular math interests in one of those?</p>
<p>Tech schools that have pure math degrees probably have the kind of classes I’m interested in. Tech schools that only have applied math departments very probably won’t. So if I were able to get into a place like MIT I’d probably be set. The problem is that I don’t know that I’d be able to.</p>
<p>A couple reasons. The biggest issue is that, from my experience with language classes and from talking to people who have continued foreign language beyond the point I did, it seems as though foreign language classes are mostly memorizing vocabulary and specific grammatical structures. I hate memorization because the information is discrete and has no reason behind it. This seems especially true of vocabulary where there’s no particular reason to associate any given idea to a particular string of sounds or symbols. For me rote learning is boring, unfulfilling, and difficult.</p>
<p>(I’m aware some people argue that a foreign language shakes you out of complacency about the way information has to be transferred, but I guess I fail to see how having two arbitrary data points will help you understand information and communication as a whole significantly better than one point.)</p>
<p>The other reason is that practically I have a ton of interests including math, philosophy, physics, even linguistics, and will probably gain more in college. There’s only so much time to spread amongst these topics (all of which are more relevant to my vocational plans than a foreign language) and I don’t want to devote three semesters of it to learning a language.</p>
<p>… Okay. Nevermind that there is plenty of reason why a particular string is mapped to an idea (the history of language does not involve throwing preconceived letters into a hat and pulling out random combinations), and that there is an entire field dedicated to studying equilibriums and their origins. Nevermind that the two arbitrary data points == one point doesn’t make any sense, both metaphorically (does drawing two points of a line tell you more about a line than one point?) and realistically (a language is one data point? Jesus Christ. I speak 3 languages, and I can guarantee you your “one data point” contains vast extrapolation error). Nevermind that language classes isn’t just rote memorization (it’s the application of a function to a string, more than anything). You’re basically want to avoid a college because you don’t want to take 3 extra classes that you don’t want to take. Dude, and I say this without any malice, man the **** up. Jesus, if I took off every engineering school in the country that required chemistry/thermodynamics as part of the curriculum off my list I would have ended up in Bob Hope college or something. Sometimes we all have to do **** we don’t want to do. But many of those things enlighten us regardless. The point is, if you don’t like foreign languages, fair enough, but to transfer just because you want to avoid taking them? That goes way beyond not liking a subject, and into phobia territory. My advice? If you like the college, just stick with it. Transferring just because you don’t want to take 3 of those classes, and for no better reason? Come on man, that does not sound healthy. </p>
<p>Let me give you an example. Freshman year, I was pretty damn overweight and was required to take a swimming class. You think that was fun for me? But swimming is a damn useful thing to have. In the past I avoided classes that involved presentations because I rationalized them as stupid and uneducational, nevermind my fear of public speaking. I’m over that now, thanks to classes I had to take. C++? Bullcrap language. Very practical. Don’t try to rationalize yourself and say that you don’t need a foreign language. A foreign language is one of the most useful things you can ever learn (you seem intelligent, figure out all the situations where this can be incredibly useful). Desperately avoiding stuff like this won’t help you in life.</p>
<p>And I’ll just point out the irony of you liking linguistics when the entire field of linguistics relies on the notion that languages don’t just start as an arbitrary mapping of sounds to ideas.</p>
<p>I recognize that words can be combinations/modifications of other words, but even if you consider most words to be such you’ll still need a sufficiently large basis of ideas that are assigned words arbitrarily. Even that wouldn’t be overly horrible except that the functions that combine words are inconsistent. So it’s impossible to work up from first principles and you’ll need to memorize anyway, unless you happen to have the exact connotative mental web of ideas as the people that developed a language and happen to make the exact same choices when choosing how to combine words.</p>
<p>Extending the metaphor further, I think it’s totally fair to say that a line is as completely inadequate for describing any complex function as a point is. If you actually want to understand the function in any kind of meaningful way you either take a ridiculously high number of data points (and end up extrapolating anyway, which is unsatisfactory to me at least) or you study the function as a whole. When I say I’m interested in linguistics I don’t mean tracking the origins of words (although figuring out how ‘connotative webs’ are shaped could be pretty cool) but looking at languages in general structurally.</p>
<p>I don’t question that a language could potentially be useful, but I also don’t question that there are times you need to use both hands in the rain and an umbrella hat would be useful. That doesn’t necessarily mean I should go out and invest in either of them. Will there be time(s) in my life when I want to communicate with someone that speaks only whatever language I choose? Possibly. Will this be more useful to me than understanding a topic related to the field I want to enter? Questionable.</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s just 3 classes, but assuming typical class loads that’s one eighth of my remaining undergrad career. There are more than eight things I’m curious about, and I want to learn about one of them instead of a language.</p>
<p>I’m going to keep talking to people about this, and will probably discuss it with a counselor at the school I’m going to, but as of yet no one has convinced me taking a language is preferable to taking other things. So until then, does anyone else have suggestions on schools that will allow me to focus on the areas I want?</p>
<p>You should know that many graduate math programs require reading proficiency in German, French, or Russian, so you may really limit your choices if you don’t study one of those, even if you do very well in your math classes.</p>
<p>@aigiqinf: I didn’t know that. When you say reading proficiency do you mean that they want you to be able to translate common words/phrases/ideas from proofs, or would these colleges expect general fluency so that you could do something like read a book?</p>
<p>Will you be able to pay full freight if you transfer? many school don’t give scholarships or great aid to transfer students.</p>
<p>Your best chance of aid or scholarships is as an incoming freshman. </p>
<p>But, if your parents are willing to pay $50k per year for wherever you go… awesome!!!</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>*You should know that many graduate math programs require reading proficiency in German, French, or Russian, so you may really limit your choices if you don’t study one of those, even if you do very well in your math classes. *</p>
<p>I think that was a req’t awhile ago… I don’t think it exists anymore.</p>
<p>My son is a math major and although he did take a FL, he was given the option to take comp sci courses instead.</p>
<p>Many mathematics PhD programs do still require reading knowledge of at least one of German, French, or Russian. UIUC still does—I just looked at the description of their current PhD program ([Course</a> Information Suite, Course Catalog, Class Schedule, Programs of Study, General Education Requirements, GenEd](<a href=“Course Explorer”>Course Explorer)). Although they have watered the requirement down from when I was working on my math PhD at UIUC back in the 80’s. We had to demonstrate reading proficiency in <em>two</em> of German, French, or Russian. They had special two semester sequences designed for non-foreign language grad students to take to meet this requirement. The OP might want to look at the requirements of some grad programs in math at the level of institution she wants to do her grad work at before deciding to abandon FL all together.</p>
<p>He could not have said it better myself, but I’ll add in a few more “data points”</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Back in the day I majored in Computer Science. Not only did I have to take four semesters of foreign language, but I had to take two semesters of Art. I’m glad they made me take all of that… but I wasn’t at the time.</p></li>
<li><p>The fact that you are eager to skip distribution requirements and graduate in three years troubles me. Are you really looking to get an education, or are you looking for something else?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“Will you be able to pay full freight if you transfer? many school don’t give scholarships or great aid to transfer students.”</p>
<p>I’m not getting scholarships or aid anyway; so while most of the schools being mentioned are more expensive it’s a wash to some extent.</p>
<p>“The OP might want to look at the requirements of some grad programs in math at the level of institution she wants to do her grad work at before deciding to abandon FL all together.”</p>
<p>I skimmed the requirements at a few colleges and a majority want a foreign language. However, the language requirement is specifically focused on reading math papers. I don’t know how much verbiage is in most papers, but if it’s anything similar to the way English is used in proofs I should be fine. (Frankly I ignore the English a lot of the time I’m reading proofs and just attempt to model what’s happening from context.) Basically my issue is with memorizing a large number of nouns/verbs. I’m fine with just using new symbols for a small number of relations ([if then] |-> [whatever if then is in German]).</p>
<p>Of course if math papers don’t just use language symbolically it might be more difficult for me. In your experience how is language used in actual papers?</p>
<p>I’m a PhD mathematician. Please believe me when I say it’s not that simple once you’re doing graduate level mathematics. You really can’t just “ignore the English a lot of the time” if you really want to understand what’s going on, let alone learn how to <em>write</em> quality mathematics. And trying to read mathematics in a different language is far more complex than just learning a set of “new symbols”. Indeed—the mathematical symbols are pretty much standard across all language. The vocabulary used to write the mathematical ideas used in the proof, however, is keenly language dependent and translating mathematical (and other technical) language is not at all easy.</p>