<p>i am going into my junior year and am having a hard time deciding if i should take a 4th year of Latin. i have never gotten below a 100 for a quarter over the past 3 years and never put in any effort whatsoever. even though it would be a major gpa booster since level 4 is ap, i feel as though the class is a waste of time as i have not gotten anything out of the class in terms of increased vocab or lit understanding, though i have learned a very small bit about roman culture. the teacher basically just reads us the english translation and we have to copy, so that aspect of the class is a total bust and that is what we will be doing all year. </p>
<p>the other option would be to drop latin 4 and take ap eco, which is a field i would be interested in as a career, so i may get more out of the class. and it should also be a fairly easy class, based on other students experiences.</p>
<p>the only concern i have about switching is for my college app. does it look bad to drop your only language after your sophomore year. i have asked my guidance counselor and gifted instructor and they gave me different answers so i would like some more opinions. some of the colleges i am considering: mit, caltech, upenn, harvard, some others, but overall top notch schools.
Thanks</p>
<p>Take AP Latin junior year, and AP Eco senior year</p>
<p>I think for top schools admissions it will be more beneficial to take an AP Latin than AP Eco if you can do well on Latin.</p>
<p>you shouldn't limit yourself yet, by dropping the language. Several colleges have language requirements and an AP course could exempt you from such a requirement.</p>
<p>perhaps you can take AP Econ your senior year. It sounds like Latin is helping your GPA, and also a lot of colleges want you to take 3 years of foreign language.</p>
<p>i really don't want to have a senior year. i will have finished all of the math and science classes my school offers and i am not really interested in taking 2 ap histories, a language, English and whatever else i can find to fill my schedule. my parents wont pay for me to take classes at a local college since odds are that most of the credits wont transfer. so it comes down to one or the other. with either class i should have a 97+. i have read that most colleges want 3 years, but i was not sure if that meant up to level 3 or 4, since most people at my school start language in middle school.</p>
<p>Too bad. I only have taken Latin for one year, but I found that my understanding of the English language was significantly improved. </p>
<p>Stick with it for one more year.</p>
<p>Is it AP Latin Virgil? If so, that class is really hard core. You should definitely take it. I don't know what your Latin class has been previously, but for me, going from latin to AP Virgil was kind of insane. Definitely the hardest AP out there. go for it! take both classes.</p>
<p>Since you seem to be doing very well in the classes without any effort, and have learned very little, I would worry about the quality of the classes in your school. These forums are full of kids who get high scores in classes, and mediocre AP scores. </p>
<p>How do kinds from your school do on the AP exam? are they getting good scores? or are they unprepared? Look through some old tests. Of course, having only taken 3 years, it should not be easy now, but you should get an idea if you are being solidly prepared to take it.</p>
<p>the students i talked to last year felt the ap test was fairly easy, and the lowest grade in the class was like an 85, in latin 3 it was a 83. so based off of that i would say that the class prepares you for the test, but is not very hard. the teacher is 24 yrs old and makes several translation mistakes per period so she just reads the translations and tells us to memorize quite frequently, as all of her tests are word for word translations of what was covered in class. she told us at the end of the year that we would more or less be memorizing whatever the works were that we had to cover for the ap test so we could just recognize the 1st few words and just recite from memory. that approach seems to make the class a waste of time in my opinion.</p>
<p>if the grades were a little lower overall, i wouldnt have this problem, but since almost everyone has a 93+ the classes seem a bit lax</p>
<p>my school has over 20 ap classes each year and the students average 4-5 on the exams, but the grades in all of the classes are very inflated before being weighted again, so you could easily fail a few major assignments and still come out with a high b low a. it doesnt bother me, since it allows for you to bs all of your homework and pull out a b on the tests and get a 97+ for the quarter. then they add another 8% which puts most students in the 97+ range without much studying or effort.</p>
<p>any thoughts</p>
<p>I wish I went to your school...that is INSANE grade inflation...</p>
<p>Haha Latin at my school is the same way... they stopped offering Latin though so I couldn't even take Latin 4 if i wanted to...</p>
<p>the grade inflation makes for a very "competitive" top 20 students, at least gpa wise. compared to the other languages at my school, latin is by FAR the least demanding, mostly due to the teacher. my friends who are in spanish tell me horror stories about how insanely hard their tests are, but at least the teacher puts a major curve on everything. in latin it is not uncommon for everyone to have an a without any curve.</p>
<p>If you're graduating early, then take AP Economics. It sounds a lot more interesting than AP Latin, and fits better with you.</p>