<p>I am a rising senior in high school seriously considering applying ED to UPenn. I want to study at the Huntsman Program in International Studies & Business. </p>
<p>Must students at Hunstman continue w/ the language that they took during high school or possibly their native language, or can they declare a new language that they are unfamiliar with? My situation is that I have taken Latin, which is obviously not offered at Huntsman since it is not a spoken language. I did not ever study a second language. So what do I do? I am thinking about having Arabic or Chinese be my target language (both of which I obviously have no background in) so I am a little lost in terms of a) does this put me at a major setback for admission since I have not studied one of the target languages, b) is it possible for me to be in Huntsman program even though I have not studies a spoken language/one of their spoken languages, c) what can I possibly do to not have this be a major disadvantage if it is one? </p>
<p>I hope I explained it clear. Thanks for any help you all might be able to give..</p>
<p>I think you might be out of luck. Can you take something in senior year of HS? Could you self-study a language? Community College (probably your best bet)?</p>
<p>I have a Huntsman friend who's target language is Portuguese. IIRC he only studied Spanish in HS and they let him switch. He's already a good Portuguese speaker and Penn has Portuguese classes aimed for those who already know Spanish.</p>
<p>But in the case of Latin, its children - the romance languages - are too different to be able to switch and function well. As someone who has studied Latin for 2 years, French for 3 years, Italian for 3 years and currently in introductory Spanish, I can say Latin grammar is so different, and a very large part of the vocabulary is now archaic in modern languages. For example, the Latin word for horse is equus, while Italians say cavallo, Spainards caballo, and the French cheval. Latin does have the word cavallus, but that didn't show up until around the medieval period, whose Latin is generally not studied in school.</p>
<p>You've also not been developing oral/aural fluency in a language, which will be a big impediment to learning a new one. Essentially you're going to have to learn how to pronounce foreign sounds and understand them when spoken, which gets tougher as you get older. Even at 18 it's really hard to get a perfect pronounciation.</p>
<p>good luck</p>
<p>From what I understand they send applicants a competency test in their target language once the application has been submitted. It would be pretty difficult to learn a new language in just a few months (and it wouldn't be worth it, IMO, just for the Huntsman program. You might be better off just pursuing two separate degrees).</p>