I was thinking about applying to Middlebury, however, I took Latin as my language for high school, and I realize that is well known for its amazing language program. I plan on taking French classes in college but not major in French. Would I fit in with the culture of the school not knowing a foreign language?
Same boat as you, took Latin for three years and taking french now. Love it here. While Midd is super well known for its language program, it doesn’t completely define academic/social culture at all.
If you took Latin, you have a pretty good base for taking Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and/or Romanian. You probably would pick up those languages fairly easily and be surprised at all the words that will “ring a bell” once you encounter them. Latin is far from dead.
Heck, English uses plenty of Latin (and Latin derivative…) words and phrases – Latin lives on in our language too.
I imagine Midd is a wonderful place to major in a language or just to take a class or two.
Our tour guide at Middlebury, while praising the language programs there, also commented that he himself had not taken any language classes there. And he loved his experiences. So, while Middlebury is among the best colleges for language study, you will not feel “out” of things if you do not speak a language.
Think about it, would you not fit in if you didn’t study Economics at the University of Chicago? Or if you didn’t study Art History at Williams? Of course not. They’re just really strong programs at those schools. Plenty of people don’t study languages at Middlebury.
My one son became fluent in Chinese. The other didn’t take a single language class and studied abroad in Australia-
I’m a Midd senior who has never taken a language class and have never felt ostracized or like I didn’t fit in because of it. However, I am a little sad I didn’t have the time to take advantage of the really strong language program here.