<p>I'm trying to plan out my schedule for my junior and senior year, and I was thinking about dropping one or two of my planned Spanish classes. By the end of this year (my sophomore year), I will have completed three years of Spanish, and I was wondering if that would be enough for top schools (top 20-30). Currently, I have Spanish 4 planned for junior year and AP Spanish planned for senior year. I would be replacing them with a Journalism class, so that I'd be able to get more involved with the school paper. I start writing for it next year, but I'd like to take the class as well. I might be willing to take Spanish 4, but at this point I've all but swore off AP Spanish. So, do you think three years would be enough? I know a lot of schools say 3 is recommended, but wouldn't 4 be better? </p>
<p>tl;dr How many foreign language classes for top 20 schools? Is 3 enough?</p>
<p>I agree with TheKongo, take Spanish 4 just to be on the safe side. I don’t know exactly how much a top school requires, but I’ll leave that to you. Research the colleges your are interested in and look at its requirements regarding languages.</p>
<p>Well you’ve only take language for two years in high school, and if you want to be a strong candidate for a top 20 school, mastery of a foreign language trumps journalism. Even if you don’t take the AP, Spanish 4 puts you ahead of many other competing students, and journalism doesn’t look as impressive. I would suggest you take the AP, but if you’re really against it, take journalism your senior year.</p>
<p>I highly recommend taking a foreign language all four years of high school or up to the AP level or equivalent. It is not required, but it’s almost always recommended at most colleges.</p>
<p>Ugh. What if the class I’d be replacing it with was more pertinent to my interests/intended career? For example, if I was interested in chemistry, would it make more sense to take an AP Chem class than to take Spanish 4? That’s just an example, I’m not actually interested in chemistry.</p>
<p>Do what you feel is appropriate. No one can tell you what classes to take, that’s your decision. Like I said before, research the school(s) you would like to go to and see its language requirements. Fours years of a language is great, but not required by most schools. If you’re interested in Journalism, take Journalism. You don’t have to take AP Spanish if you don’t want to. I wish I could continue Latin, and right now, this coming school year, this will be my first language course. But my interests lie within the sciences, so I’m taking AP Biology and AP Chemistry instead and I’ll try to have Latin II or Latin II & III senior year.</p>
<p>Gah, I’m all conflicted. Whatever. I’ll figure it out by the time we register for classes next year. Another, semi-related, but more general question came to mind while I was thinking about this: How do colleges quantify the “rigor” of a particular schedule? Is it just based on the number of higher level classes, or do they understand that yes, while classes like Journalism or Marching Band aren’t AP classes and maybe don’t require studying and flash cards to get a good grade, that the degree of commitment in those types of courses, both in and out of school, is equal to or greater than that of an AP course?</p>
<p>Some colleges only consider ‘core classes’ in GPA calculation - otherwise I think they understand you are clearly passionate about something that may not have significant GPA weighting. </p>
<p>At my school, all classes have levels, and 5 is considered equal to AP, so people with Level 5 Band/Orchestra/Chorus are getting free GPA weighting. As a JROTC kid who gets no weight on the academic equivalent, it really burns me sometimes, but I don’t think colleges are weighting the same.</p>