<p>My friend wants to take AP Stats instead of AP Spanish Language this year as a junior. He wants to save the AP Spanish for an "easy" senior year. Should he stick with the 4th consecutive Spanish class (we don't offer Spanish Lit/5)), or go with AP Stats (his choice) and skip this year and continue next year with Spanish? His goal school is UCLA. The rest of his schedule is pretty rigorous (I think 5 or 6 APs total).</p>
<p>Thanks! :)</p>
<p>The negative aspect of taking a gap year of Spanish is that you might forget some of the things you’ve learned. Its your choice, but I think it’s better to take it in your junior year so you still have the material fresh in your brain</p>
<p>Thanks! But if my friend is Mexican (the person with this issue), then would this be okay?</p>
<p>Well I took Spanish 3-4 Freshmen year and then took a City College Spanish course this last summer (end of Junior Year), and it wasn’t too bad.</p>
<p>But AP Stats is supposed to be an easy class, so I fail to see his reasoning for “saving” Spanish.</p>
<p>If your friend being Mexican means he’s already 100% fluent, then taking Spanish classes won’t be super helpful into getting him into any college. If his being Mexican was meant to imply that he practices at home often and wouldn’t get rusty, then I can’t see spacing out the years of language as a bad thing - one thing that might help him, to guarantee that colleges won’t look upon his decision poorly, is if the guidance counselor will explain that Spanish 5 is not available at his school.</p>
<p>I’d say that four years of language is normal for applicants to colleges like UCLA, and that if they reject people partially based on language class decisions, it’s because they took French 1, Spanish 1, German 1, and Mandarin 1 - or French 1-2 with Spanish 1-2, …or because they took non-honors classes in their first language that they have maintained fluency in. UCLA probably has a fair few number of Mexican/Hispanic applicants, so they may not be impressed by native speakers who “took the easy way out” by studying a language they know quite well. If this is the friend’s case, tell him to consider sending a supplemental essay explaining his choice (passion for the language, inability to write paragraphs worth of Spanish, interest in other Hispanic cultures, plans to continue study of Spanish in college, or whatever his best excuse may be). </p>
<p>That said, only fluent speakers pass the AP test with a 4 or 5 (according to mi profesora) so it can’t be THAT bad to take Spanish as a native speaker.</p>