<p>fergismom....Wow - your son will be taking Arabic too? There are now 3 of us from the CC forum out of the 20 slots - that have kids taking Arabic...Those are interesting odds, when you realize this is only a very small group of current Plebe families. So this means your 'ole man' and my 'baby girl' ( who is still not even 18) will be learning Arabic along with the others. :-)</p>
<p>Glad to hear Fergs looked well. I kinda worried about that much weight loss that quick. Guess they are all alright & I can put my mom worry beads away. Grandpa & the babies! LOL He knew he was gonna be nicknamed. Too funny. </p>
<p>How did they pick just 20 kids to take the Arabic class? I imagine many of them wanted to take it. Did they have to meet cetain requirements?</p>
<p>JM - no idea how they picked the kids - I think they had to take some kind of placement test - I know "Gramps" was an alternate but somehow made it in......</p>
<p>To get an Arabic or Chinese slot they took the DLAB - the standard Defense Language Assessment Test - had to score over 100 out of 176...this is because these languages are considered a "Class 4" language in terms of difficulty. Then they took your SAT Math score and took the number of language tests you validated from the summer assessment tests issued by USNA. Those 3 scores gave you some kind of ranking - and the top 20 slots went to a Plebe for either Chinese or Arabic.</p>
<p>PK - thanks for the info, now I know :)</p>
<p>Hope you all are having a great weekend - plebe hack has really laid me low - don't know how they made it through - maybe because they are over half my age???? ;)</p>