You need to distinguish between “needs 4 years to apply” or “needs 4 years to graduate.” For all of my son’s schools, they require intermediate level to graduate, but it wasn’t mandatory for the application.
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Well…be careful. My kid didn’t need to take college foreign language at all for her engineering degree in the college of engineering. BUT she picked up a second major in biology and that was in Arts and Sciences where the FL in college was required!
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DD took up to French 3 in HS. She applied to several schools that required 3 and recommended 4 years of foreign language in HS. She did get accepted to some of them.
Of course, in college there is a foreign language requirement to graduate. She was able to fulfill that with 1 semester of French after a placement exam.
The college foreign language requirement varies wildly…and even from major to major. This OP needs to check colleges of interest.
Or just take French 4 and NOT limit your options.
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No offense to grad students, but paying 80k a year to take even one semester of intro French not taught by a faculty member isn’t the best ROI, IMO
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I completely agree with your child. Senior year is too busy and short to mess with dealing with a flake. Check her universities and I would contact the Registrar at her desired universities to find out the requirements for her college diploma.
My 3 children had this experience with their AP Spanish teacher flake.
( I’m bilingual Spanish and English is my second language.)
My kids are bilingual, but are native speakers with “diminished” grammatical skills, so they took Spanish for native speakers. The Spanish teacher was not a native speaker, taught AP, but for some reason, she believed she became a native speaker by osmosis or something. She was cruel to her students, played favorites, and outwardly admitted this to administration, but she had tenure.
Once my kids got their 4th year in, they were done (MS Spanish classes helped). They avoided her like the plague. She wanted my kids in her AP classes. I was on staff and had my kids transferred out of her classes and she would intimidate the scheduling clerk to transfer them back. I had administrative approval to transfer my kids out because of their sports schedules. (AP Spanish was always held at the end of the day and our kids had HS games and tournaments. She hated the kids in sports. This teacher kept trying to get my kids back to the point that she would corner me in the halls and try to intimidate me! I told her she needed help.)
My kids were often humiliated by her, in class, because she made them her “favorites” and caused the other students to ostracize them.
Life is too short. Keep her out of the weirdness and let her do her senior year requirements in peace. She’ll be too stressed next year with all of her applications, essays and waiting.
Mine did too…but they finished honor Spanish 4. They didn’t want to limit their college options by not completing this.
Mine had MS Spanish Semesters 1 & 2, and were able to start the second year as Freshman. They finished their 4 years by Junior year, but this woman was a nut.
She only averaged 5 AP students in her classes. This was at a school with 3K kids. They finally took the AP courses away from her.
That is what my kids did too. But to be honest…the MS teacher wasn’t exactly great either. But they completed through level 4 in high school because that mattered for some colleges.
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If a typical year schedule at the $80,000 per year college is two semesters with four classes each, then each class costs $10,000. Obviously, the best ROI in academic terms would come from (usually upper level) courses whose content is not readily available at lower cost (e.g. community college or high school AP).
Of course, lower level foreign language courses are not the only “not the best ROI” uses of schedule space in college. The common practice of repeating one’s AP credit in math or other subjects that the college is willing to give advanced placement for is another.
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There are always wacky teachers everywhere and it is not possible to avoid them all. How upset will the student be if rejected by the 4 years recommended schools? In our situation I wanted the peace of mind of knowing we had done everything possible, given how competitive the admission rates are. I didnt want her looking back with any regrets.
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This comment really drives home some harsh economic truths in a pragmatic manner!