<p>I'm in Japanese and Latin right now and I'm going to try and add Chinese next year <em>crosses fingers as they may not let me do it</em>. There's even about a 15% chance of German coming in during Senior year. Are there any colleges out there that are kind of linguistics/language orientated? I've heard of colleges that specialize in the wackiest things, but never really heard of language colleges.</p>
<p>Say I took a science career (most likely second option)- are there any colleges where I could use my languages to advantage, or continue the study of my languages in depth? (I'm especially interested in continuing with Japanese and Latin).</p>
<p>Dartmouth is famed for their language department. Story is that people wake you up early in the morning and quiz you on the language. I believe I read on here that Swarthmore is quite good, I don't know about individual languages though, sorry.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is known for its linguistics department.</p>
<p>There aren't specific colleges that "specialize" in language, to my knowledge, but there are many who are strong in it. If you want a wide array of languages, a larger university will serve you well: Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, and Harvard come to mind, and they're usually tops in many of the different language departments (I believe Berkeley's ranked in the top 10 of all the languages ranked by the NRC). They'll have many "exotic" languages -- Khmer, Croatian, Tamil, Hungarian, Yoruba, etc. -- and these are often in small classes. Just glancing over the language lists, I see at least 50 languages offered at each of these universities. Also, note that there are often only a few classes offered on a ton of different languages (no classes offered beyond that), that you can request languages, and that students often lead groups to learn languages (such as Berkeley's decals). This is, again, where universities with a wide course selection and large student body will benefit the linguaphile more, at least in this area.</p>
<p>Just looking at the NRC rankings for language and language-related disciplines, I see the following colleges ranked in the top 10 a few times:</p>
<p>Harvard
Berkeley
Yale
Princeton
Chicago
Stanford</p>
<p>Definitely look at University of Chicago. I dabbled in three languages there, and really liked it. Other people there were involved with Chinese, Persian, Hebrew, and other languages, and all of the programs seemed to be high quality.</p>
<p>Studying languages and studying linguistics are two separate things, kind of like the difference between Art History and Fine Art (one is theory, the other is doing).</p>
<p>The languages you express interest in learning about are standard fare for any solid college, as is a science major. If you anticipate being interested in a certain group of languages that are more obscure (for example, dead languages from the Near East), your list of colleges would have to be much more specified.</p>
<p>Middlebury has the most noted language programs in the world probably.</p>
<p>Other top LACs have really good one, Berkeley and UCLA have some of the best, top privates usually have great ones too ( i know U of Chicago has an amazing east asian languages...ive been in their program)</p>
<p>If you want the best East Asian Languages, ide say Berkeley, UCLA, U of Washington, U of Hawaii at Manoa (they supposeddly have the best japanese program in the country...but the rest of the education isnt so stellar), U of Chicago, and some other privates</p>
<p>I don't know about the actual language education, but Tufts has a strong emphasis on international experience and study abroad, and selects for students with an international perspective, so your language studies might be good leverage with them. And if their language education isn't good enough for you, you can take classes in over 140 different languages at the Boston Language Institute.</p>
<p>Tufts has great language departments and, indeed, their emphasis on studying abroad and perfecting a language (no matter your major) by the time you graduate is proof of that.</p>