<p>Hello everyone, I'm new here so please bear with me. I am going to be a junior this year and still have not taken a foreign language class. It is not on my schedule, and I do not plan on doing it. My goal is to attend MIT, but just about any one of the top 10 schools will be fine. I want to pursue a major in aerospace engineering. However, my peers have told me that I have to have at least 2 years of a language to be competitive in the admission process. I am originally from China and lived there for 5 years, so I speak Chinese fluently but do not know how to read or write it. Currently, I have taken one AP class and all honors classes except one, and have gotten all As except a B (89.4...) in chem. I have 4 more APs junior year and the rest are honors classes. Will taking a language class like Spanish be beneficial to me or should I just ignore it?</p>
<p>I know that most schools really want you to have two years of a language at the very least. Some make it an admission requirement. In fact, most really competitive students have up to three or four years of a foreign language. I think you are probably going to want some kind of language class (maybe see if you could take Chinese) otherwise that will be a really big weak point.</p>
<p>I would agree with RoxSox. It would put you at a disadvantage when you consider all the thousands of applicants who apply to top colleges with 3 or 4 years of a foreign language. Plus a lot of colleges have a foreign language graduation requirement so you’ll have to take a language in college anyways and if you want to study abroad, it will be beneficial to have some high school foreign language under your belt. It seems like there’s a lot of advantages to taking a langauge in high school.</p>
<p>The normal foreign language requirement is tailored to the usual monolingual American applicant. Even four years of high school study often doesn’t get students to an intermediate level in a foreign language, much less to fluency. So if you already speak Chinese fluently, that’s a huge plus and may make the rules different for you, provided you can demonstrate that fact for admissions committees. Can you spend one or two years learning to write Chinese–if not at an advanced level, at least at a beginning/intermediate level? You may not be able to do this at your regular high school, but perhaps you could find a class at a local college, Chinese cultural center, or the like, or even take private lessons if that’s in your budget. At the end of that time you’d have serious competence in a language most Americans find very difficult to learn. That would IMO be a far more productive way to spend your time than to take two years of high school Spanish, which isn’t going to be enough to be useful anyhow.</p>
<p>For university applications, you can show that you are fluent by taking the Subject Test in Chinese. Explain your nonstandard language background in one of your essays.</p>
<p>You’ll be at a disadvantage when compared to other applicants.</p>
<p>And if you get in, you’ll still be at a disadvantage because many colleges require students to either pass a foreign language test (or have certain scores on a foreign language SAT II) or to take 2 full years of foreign language in college. It’s must harder to learn a foreign language in college because one year of a high school foreign language course is what you are expected to learn in one semester of college. In addition, many students taking foreign languages in college already have taken the language in high school, so much of what they’re learning is a review for them.</p>
<p>When did you arrive from china?</p>
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<p>you might as well give up your hopes for MIT. for every A- or lower you get they kill a family member and when they run out they reject you. you’re doomed to community college. kthxbai.</p>
<p>some Chinese “Sunday” Schools give hs equivalent classes and are credited towards your hs curriculum. But those classes are not for some one do not know how to read and write Chinese, it will be brutal for some one like you take that class, as it will delve into ancient Chinese literatures.</p>
<p>I think the answer to your question lies in your Chinese language skills - did you move to the US from China when you were 5 years old? If so, is Chinese the main language spoken at home? How fluent do your primarily Chinese speaking family members feel that you are? If you are truly fluent in the spoken language I would put some effort into learning to read and write and then document your abilities through the SAT subject test or some other form of formal examination (CLEP perhaps?).</p>
<p>You are aiming for a school that is a reach for everyone so don’t pin all your hopes on admission at one school, but you should be able to use your current language skills to equal or surpass the qualifications of your peers in the foreign language arena. You will have to think a bit more about how to present your knowledge.</p>