<p>Does it matter if you take 3 consecutive years of foreign language in high school or if there is a "break" in your schedule (say if u took Spanish during 9th, 10th, and 12th grade, but not 11th)?</p>
<p>Can't speak from experience - but I don't think it would be a problem.....especially if there was some reason (scheduling conflict or something) that necessitated the "break." </p>
<p>I think what is more important is to make sure all those years are in the SAME language. I don't think 2 years of 1 language and 1 year of another language would necessarily be impressive.</p>
<p>^^^Agree, it's the number of years of ONE FL, not whether or not they were consecutive.</p>
<p>How is it going to look at the time you apply? 2 yrs with 1 year hiatus....</p>
<p>Doing a SAT FL might alleviate any negative impact?</p>
<p>Harvard and Princeton say recommended 4 years of FL,
do they mean up to French 4, or just 4 years in high school, because i took french 1 in 8th grade.</p>
<p>Also, is it bad if you took only 3 years of FL in high school.</p>
<p>It can be lesser number of years if the level of achievement is higher
(3/2 yrs concluding at an AP level); Admitted students who had lesser
years of FL usually tend to be FL-strongmen who have a way with
multiple languages. 2FLs at AP level for a non-native speaker would
be impressive.</p>
<p>My son was accepted to Amherst with only 3 years of (the same) foreign language. They "recommend" 4 years, but obviously it wasn't a deal breaker. I think the more important point is to have a total application (transcript, test scores, evidence of special talents or interests, ECs, essays, recommendations, etc.) that is appealing. If it's appealing because you've done interesting things with the educational opportunities you've had, then I don't think they'd give you the boot just because you have 3 years of FL and not 4.</p>
<p>A break in the sequence of classes, as in the original post wouldn't matter, and yeah, if a student started a language in 8th grade and did 4 years of classes, but only 3 of them at high school, I'm sure it would still be considered 4 years of FL.</p>
<p>Regarding Post #7:
It may depend somewhat on other applicants from the same high school. </p>
<p>At my public school people are at AP FL in either Junior or Senior year but
tend to do a language all 4 yrs of HS (even if it is a different one).
In the case of Latin they tend to do 2 APs.</p>
<p>Almost uniformly those that did not do a language in Junior yr at my
school fared relatively badly in getting admittance to the top schools.
This was not the case at some other schools that did not emphasize
FLs.</p>
<p>4 years in hs.
My question: what if you are already fluent in a foreign language and took the SAT II for it? does that override the 4 years "course-taking" in hs? I'm currently taking my third year in spanish aside from the other " fluent" language. :?</p>
<p>MIT012 raises an interesting point about how it might look a little different depending on the high school you're coming out of... especially in the case of certain high schools that are very well known to any particular college admissions office.</p>