TL;DR: Good academic standing but Spanish is major part of college app. I like Chinese & Japanese better. What do I do?
I go to a private college-prep school, sophomore, and currently taking Spanish 3 Honors. I took Spanish 1 over the summer before 9th, but my interest in the language has been killed due to the fact that I no longer care about learning it. I’d rather learn an East Asian language instead.
Although my school doesn’t offer it, I’ve self-studied a fair amount of Japanese, but I probably won’t take the AP test until Senior year. However, I’ve found that I really like the language. I am currently taking a directed-study (an unlisted “class” where a teacher basically acts as a tutor) in Japanese (around high-school level 2) now.
I found out that I could take Chinese 1 and 2 over the summer. Junior->Senior summer I intended on a study-abroad in Japan, so I can’t skip any more Chinese. Chinese is a language very similar to Japanese, so I know I’ll like it. Then I could take Chinese 3 and 4 Junior and Senior year.
THE PROBLEM:
I am already enrolled in the Spanish National Honors Society (requires me to stay in Spanish) and on track to enroll in the Global Studies Honors Society (required me to take 4 years of the same language in the upper school (summer Chinese doesn’t count for some reason)). I am not enrolled in any other honors societies. I HAAAAATE Spanish, but it has gotten me into 2 honors societies because I’m really good at it. I refuse to use it in the real world because I hate it so much. I DO NOT HAVE ROOM IN MY SCHEDULE TO TAKE BOTH SPANISH AND CHINESE!
I have a 4.2 GPA and I really wanted to go to an Ivy League like MIT, or at least a school like UCLA. My fears are that, by switching out of Spanish, I am both hurting my college-admission chances and wasting my parents’ money to send me to private school. I need guidance here.
Is you GPA out of a 5 point scale?
MIT is not Ivy League.
That’s not really worth aiming for.
It won’t hurt to switch to Chinese, particularly if you finish Chinese 3 or 4. But I think you will find that there is really little similarity between Japanese and Chinese. If you’re thinking the grass is greener, it’s not. But if you really have a burning desire to learn Chinese, feel free.
It is fine to study another language–especially after 4 years of Spanish.
I have never heard that “Chinese is a language very similar to Japanese”. Are you sure about this assertion ?
Lots and lots of people like studying a new language, in the beginning. The challenge is (in fact, the goal is,) sticking it out.
Just self studying is not truly equivalent.
Talk to your GC. And start learning what matters to tippy tops. It’s not honor societies.
Last, “my interest in the language has been killed due to the fact that I no longer care about learning it.”
Not the sort of attitude toward learning top colleges look for.
Some may get that impression from Japanese use of Chinese characters for some words (kanji), although Japanese also has two alphabets and is not otherwise that closely related to Chinese.
The analog with English is thinking that Indonesian, Hawaiian, or Turkish are closely related to English due to all using the Latin alphabet for writing.
A lot of the onyomi are very similar, which are Japanese pronunciations that literally come from Chinese. Also a lot of the characters are very similar if not exactly the same. For example,
English: Library
Japanese: 図書館 “Toshokan”
Chinese: 图书馆 “Túshūguǎn”
English: Korea
Japanese: 韓国 “Kankoku”
Chinese: 韩国 “Hánguó”
English: School
Japanese: 学校 “Gakkō”
Chinese: 学校 “Xuéxiào”
ひらがな (Hiragana) and カタカナ (Katakana) are the phonetic characters which are really easy to learn. ひらがな is mostly used for grammar when Chinese characters don’t work with the language and カタカナ is mostly for foreign words.