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I mean, just look at the recommendations in this thread. From Earlham to Berkeley. Now, one of those (at least) has to be the wrong choice for any given student, regardless of the language departments. Without regard to big picture stuff, suggestions are being thrown out from left field, right field, and the bullpen in a way that isn't really focused enough to be of much value.
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<p>That focus could change so many times between now and selection day and even afterwards. I was thinking the same things, but not as specifically as mini has mentioned(great advice BTW), but I advised S to pick one, and commit himself to making the very best situation out of the choice he makes. No regrets. There will be trade offs.</p>
<p>BTW, second in a class of 600 should make your son a very competitive applicant for Middlebury, assuming the rest of his application reinforces a very strong class rank. Definitely cover a range from safeties on up. But, a really high class rank is significant in college admissions. If I had to have one "stat", that's the one I'd want.</p>
<p>Midd also has been known to play games with their SAT reporting, making it look a bit more competitive that it alread is.</p>
<p>One of my criteria for picking a college was that I could study Sanskrit if I decided I wanted to. I never decided to, I never seriously considered it, but I still think (for me) that was a good criterion.</p>
<p>If you are interested in languages, and might seriously consider wanting to study some less-popular languages in any kind of depth, that narrows your options considerably, and essentially rules out the vast majority of smaller colleges.</p>
<p>Thanks, everyone, for many great suggestions and discussion. My son is a very focused student, and after much serious consideration, has settled on teaching French, with Spanish as a second language. Knowing him as I do, he probably won't change his major. French language & culture is one of his passions. We live near Chicago, so IU is already on our list. I attended a large state university in the 70's, majored in chemistry, but didn't finish my French minor in part because I was disappointed in the quality of the offerings in the upper level courses. By using this forum, I hope to be able to guide my son toward some of the best FL programs. Many of the schools you have suggested are already on his list for application in the fall. We'll look into some of the others that we hadn't considered.</p>
<p>I am wondering what exactly he would like to with his languages? I imagine that wanting to teach a language would lead to a very different college than wanting to work for the state department...? Just something to consider.</p>
<p>Middlebury has an outstanding intensive summer language program which draws students from all over the world. It would be a great way for your son to experience Middlebury without being there for four years. I was a Russian major back in the day, and attended a 9-week Middlebury summer session before my senior year of college. This was during the cold war, and several of my fellow students were from NSA. At least one of the professors had defected from the USSR. It was a very stimulating environment. With the credits that I earned that summer I was able to graduate a semester early.</p>
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Midd also has been known to play games with their SAT reporting, making it look a bit more competitive that it alread is.
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<p>Middlebury used to report the SAT I scores of only those students who submitted them for evaluation (Midd is SAT I optional). For the past three years, Midd has reported the scores of all applicants, regardless of whether the SAT I was used to evaluate the student. If anything, this makes Midd look less selective than it is. Get over it already.</p>
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My son is a very focused student, and after much serious consideration, has settled on teaching French, with Spanish as a second language. Knowing him as I do, he probably won't change his major. French language & culture is one of his passions.
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<p>In that case, then I would go with mini's advice!</p>
<p>sioux2u,
My daughter is a first-year Russian major at Dickinson. When she first started searching as a junior, she hadn't even heard of Dickinson, but that summer we were in the Lehigh valley looking at a couple of other schools and I happened to see a comment here on CC about Dickinson having a strong language program. We had a free afternoon and made a quick trip to Carlisle and she liked what she saw. She had initially looked at Midd and Swarthmore but, realistically, admission would have been unlikely. She's a bright but not brilliant student, and there are lots of kids like her out there. She is very happy with the language instruction as well as the overall freshman experience she's had this year. I'll admit to worrying a bit about the small size of the Russian department, but she is planning a junior year in Moscow and is confident that she will come out of it fluent. At this point, she plans to continue with advanced studies in Russian.</p>
<p>I'm glad to hear your son is planning a career as a language teacher! I'm a high school teacher, and one thought I'll throw out there is that one should at least weigh the expected cost of the undergraduate degree against the expected income of the student, unless your situation is such that financing college is not an issue. I was responsible for my own education costs and even with good financial aid and fairly low public U tuition, I took eight years to pay off a relatively small student loan on my teacher's salary. I have enough seniority now to earn a decent salary, but during the first years of my career, my kids could have qualified for a free school lunch if they hadn't packed their own. I believe in the value of a good liberal arts education, but I would really hesitate to recommend that a future teacher take on a lot of debt to finance it. In my daughter's case, we knew we would need some help, and Dickinson came in second out of her top three in terms of the financial aid award. Fortunately, it was enough that we can manage it, and in fact, we would have had to pay almost as much out of pocket for our in-state flagship.</p>
<p>My daughter had similar interests and she decided that Fordham and GW (mentioned above) and Delaware (which I just suggested) did not have enough Arabic. Be sure to look in the on-line course catalogs at the depth and breadth of the languages you are interested in.</p>
<p>SUNY Binghamton's language programs are great. We thought that U W Seattle was a good fit and U T Austin was a great fit for a language lover interested in Arabic.</p>
<p>Maybe take a look at Concordia College, the one that is known for Concordia Language Villages. Many languages and an astounding quantity of study abroad.</p>