<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I need advice regarding my freahman year schedule. I'm Chinese, and I speak mandarin very fluently. If I were to take mandarin, I could easily take AP mandarin my junior year. This could boost my GPA by a ton. However, I also might want to take Latin. What are the pros and cons for each?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Latin is a dead language.</p>
<p>Why are you taking Mandarin if you’re already fluent in it? I would take Latin since it would be your third (if not fourth) language.</p>
<p>Latin, not only will colleges see through your high Mandarin grades but it will also be boring for you. Though depending what you want to do you might want to consider taking a more “practical” language.</p>
<p>Take something you like, dont give any fuss of what the colleges think</p>
<p>Colleges obviously want me to take a different language…but if I take mandarin I can take 3 AP’s in freshman year. I don’t know. I wanted to take French, but it got replaced with Latin in our school…</p>
<p>You speak mandarin fluently, but how about reading and writing? There’s a world of difference between speaking a language and “learning” a language. Many students in our community grow up speaking Spanish, but struggle once they get past the first year of classes, because they don’t read and write in Spanish - no different than kids who struggle reading english, yet speak perfectly well.</p>
<p>Which of these languages will serve you best in the future? Latin is helpful in many ways, though it is no longer a “living” language. People don’t speak Latin, they study it, but in doing so it helps with other languages, and provides a strong basis for understanding English, as well as terminology from many fields.</p>
<p>Mandarin, on the other hand, could be useful in international business, or any field where you might end up working with those who have Mandarin as their primary language.</p>
<p>Latin if you wanna run for Pope. I don’t think anybody else speaks Latin.</p>