<p>I decided my sophomore year that I would not continue to take Spanish 3 as a junior. Now a rising senior, I am toying around with the idea of taking Spanish 3 next year. </p>
<p>Would it look odd to colleges that I essentially "skipped" a year of foreign language and then resumed again? </p>
<p>Also, is there any drawback to having taken only two years of a foreign language (the rest of my schedule is robust; for example, I will have around 11-13 AP's completed by the time I graduate high school)?</p>
<p>Don’t worry about this. There are any number of reasons why a class doesn’t get into a student’s schedule. If you want to take Spanish 3, go for it.</p>
<p>If you’re taking 11-13 AP I’m going to go on a limb and say you’re applying to highly selective colleges. In that case, you will need to have that Spanish 3 class on your transcript - only less selective colleges only accept students with 2 years (when they require 3 years, very often students have 4 or AP credit in a language, for instance. A few colleges require 4 years but there are few of them.) It wouldn’t look “odd”, especially if you manage to maintain your average (it’ll mean lots of studying over the summer since students tend to forget grammar and vocabulary when they don’t use them.)</p>
<p>Two things - first, if you are applying to HS colleges, then you need a minimum of 3 years of foreign language; many of them “recommend 4” and some “require 4.” You need to look at each school you are interested in. Our D got a 5 on her AP Span exam in her junior year but many of her potential schools recommended “4 years of foreign language.” She specifically contacted them because she heard that if you did well on the AP exam, that many schools would see that as fulfilling “4 years.” In every case, the answer was things like" we encourage you to take AP Span Lit" or take an independent study in Spanish or take a first year of a new language. So I highly encourage you to take Spanish 3 senior year.</p>
<p>Lastly, depending on how many AP classes you were planning on taking your senior year (since you commented you will have 11-13) … were you aware that there has been some research indicating that after taking about 8 AP courses in high school, the average acceptance rate into VHS colleges does not statistically rise? In fact, from what I have heard from more than one rep is that they often look at kids that are heavy in APs as kids who either are too intense or too competitive. Senior year can be really stressful; take a rigorous schedule but don’t take an AP class just because it is an AP class. Remember that each class is roughly one hour of homework a day, and that many classes add up – and applications take a HUGE amount of time senior fall. Good luck</p>
<p>Also, taking that many, they will want to see the scores- which can be more revealing than the quantity or grades. And no respect for just taking everything with no sense of the more important ones, in general or to your plans.</p>
<p>There are some kids who can get into a most selective with two years- but it is a very rare circumstance where the level of work and achievement is powerfully high, already. That’s not just hs rigor, it’s well beyond. </p>