I have taken Chinese as a foreign language in my Freshman year and AP Chinese in Sophomore year. My school doesn’t provide any higher levels of Chinese. Many colleges want to see students taking 4 years of a language in high school, so do I start a new language for the next 2 years?
The recommended or required number of high school years of language is a level-reached rule not actual-number-of-years rule. If you complete AP Chinese in sophomore year, you will have satisfied any four year language requirement or recommendation with one caveat: a number of colleges such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale, have previously indicated that they are unimpressed by someone who tries to meet their language recommendation with one’s native language.
My son got into Stanford with only 2 years of German
But your son may have had an acceptable reason to stop German. Context can matter. So if OP advanced because he’s a native speaker, adcoms may wonder why he didn’t take a more foreign language, from the start. The point in asking for FL isn’t ‘just’ to get to AP. It’s the breadth and depth of the course exposure, over time.
Thanks for your comments! Actually Chinese isn’t my native language, I just started learning it earlier than most.
@heyyythere, good for you! So was it Chinese 3 freshman year? If you want to continue further language study, check out local community colleges, but I agree that elite colleges won’t hold it against you if you stop after an AP.
@typiCAmom Thanks, yeah it was Chinese 3 freshman year. My high school is a bit weird so they don’t count local community college courses in your transcript…
@heyyythere, my daughter’s school gives an option to include cc classes in high school transcript, but they are counted as regular classes (and actually dilute daughter’s GPA). So D keeps them separate and will submit the cc transcript along with high school transcript (a requirement). Her main goal is to complete GE requirements for our state flagship, but I think as a side effect it might show colleges that she has challenged herself by taking classes such as Philosophy, Astronomy, etc.
Whether or not a college course is added to your high school record does not matter too much if you do not need it to fulfill high school requirements (though including it may affect (not always favorably) high school weighted GPA and class rank derived from weighted GPA, if your high school does that and it is important to you). When you apply to colleges, you will submit academic records from your high school and any colleges you attended while in high school (i.e. transcripts or self reported academic records, whichever the college applied to uses).
Note that since any Chinese language is a relatively difficult one for English speakers, it does take more levels of high school or college course work to reach a given level of skill than it does for languages that are less difficult for English speakers like Spanish or French. So if you want to continue to increase your skill in the language, and a nearby college offers accessible (in terms of scheduling, commuting, cost) courses of a suitable level (which may require a placement test), you may want to consider taking them. A less formal option to practice may be trying to speak the language to any friends in school who are heritage speakers, and read Chinese language news sites on the web on a daily basis.
OP, as is often the case with new posters, we have no idea what college targets. Or what major. That can matter.
In your case, you got to AP Chinese as a non native speaker…you are done as far as college admissions is concerned.
Many colleges require you to take a foreign language (or place out of it)…so it is important to do well on the AP exam.
Do you want to continue to learn Chinese? If so, then look into your local community college.
Here’s the thing: not necessarily done. A lot depends on the targets and the hoped-for major. And what replaced lang study. Higher math, eg, tops some weird elective.
Thank you all for your responses! I now have a sense of what to do.