<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>I was just wondering how helpful this would be with college admissions. So, here we begin:</p>
<p>When I was 14 I realized that due to my passion for the spanish language I wanted to really become fluent in it. Note that I am a Caucasian male who had no experience with spanish prior to my spanish I course freshman year. My studying abroad was not part of an organization, it was completely independent and done on my own. My dad's roommate knew a kid in Spain that wanted to learn english so we had him come to our house during the summer of freshman year. Come September, I went to Sevilla, Spain to spend the entire school year studying there and living with his family and no other americans/english speakers. It was a private school that had relations with Germany so I also learned a lot of german. By the end of my 10 month stay I had become fluent in the language because I was pretty young and I was very focused/determined. So now I'm officially bilingual in spanish and english, and I know some german. My GPA took a hit while I was there obviously because I had classes like biology...in spanish. By the end of the year I could manage well but wow that first trimester was hell. My GPA was a 3.4 at the end and I can say I'm pretty proud to get that in my second language. Now, when I came back to the US my dad had moved to Philly so I had to switch schools again and now I go to a pretty competitive and well-known all-boys private jesuit school. Upon entering the school, I wasn't sure what to expect and was scared to take a hard schedule so the only honors class I took was honors spanish IV, which I got an average of 99% for the year. My GPA is a 3.71 here but if a 90% was an A in my school I'd have a 4.0 but the scale is like this: 93-100 A 85-92 B etc.. My senior year schedule is harder, I am taking AP Spanish IV, AP English IV, and honors latin II which is considered one of the hardest, if not the most, classes you can take at my school. I can only dream of going to a respectable university now because of my stupid junior schedule and my freshman gpa (3.2). My dream school is UMich but honestly I think it would be such a reach unless they actually read a detailed story of my experience abroad and how it affected me. But I feel like they'll look at my GPA and just not pay attention to the rest of the app.
Oh, and my SAT was a 2050 but I am retaking it in October and I have been getting an 800 on the math section on practice tests so I expect an increase. And on the SAT II spanish I got a 790.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance :)</p>