<p>If I would like to attend Harvard College once I graduated from a high school. What foreign language should I start with in Sophomore year Mandarin Chinese or Spanish (I will take the same language until I graduate the school). Which one will increase chances of admission the most?
What language that Harvard College admission looking for? (Harvard College recommended 4 GPA from high school course work for foreign language) </p>
<p>P.S.
I am not a native English speaker my first language is Thai. Right now I am a sophomore in Kimball Union Academy(2014-2015) and this is also my first year in USA. I also would like to attend faculty of economics not department of world languages.</p>
<p>There’s no “Harvard prefers X or Y”. Harvard prefers top level scholars with a hunger for learning. That can be Spanish or Mandarin or any other language. Frankly, your Thai language may fulfill your language requirements for Harvard and all other colleges.</p>
<p>You should take the toughest curriculum offered at your school and perform at the top of the class. For a native English speaker, Mandarin is objectively more demanding than Spanish, and I’d recommend taking it if you are otherwise unsure. For a native Thai speaker, I don’t think there’s a clear answer. The most important thing for you is to get your spoken and written English as close to a native level as possible.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I question that you are thinking of choosing your foreign language not based on your interests, but the alleged preference of some college in Massachusetts.</p></li>
<li><p>I question that picking one language over another would be the deciding factor for being admitted into this college in Massachusetts.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I offer this in a helpful spirit: H is not looking for students who are eager to make their academic choices based on what they think H wants.</p>
<p>Surely if the OP had a passion to read Cervantes in the original, s/he would have mentioned it. That’s a great reason to choose Spanish. Plenty of people at Harvard consciously chose the most demanding curriculum with an eye on admissions, especially when they were otherwise flipping a coin about which class to take. We’re not all perfectly pure of heart.</p>
<p>My gut tells me that schools are less impressed by ethnic asian kids taking asian foreign languages, even if that language has no connection to the kid’s background. Don’t all asian kids know chinese anyway? (Sarcasm)</p>
<p>Please don’t do something for the sake of getting into a university. Trust me, you most likely will not like it and if you don’t get in (which are pretty high chances, especially for int’l students), you’ll realise what a waste of time it was.</p>