<p>My daughter is a good student but only took 2 years foreign language. Will this likely eliminate her chances at more competitive schools like Notre Dame, Boston College, Carnegie Mellon, etc?</p>
<p>Any particular reason? Extenuating circumstances?</p>
<p>So long as the school doesn’t have a requirement, it shouldn’t hurt her.</p>
<p>Yes, check with the schools.</p>
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<p>This statement doesn’t apply to all schools (the OP listed some schools but finished w/‘etc.’) </p>
<p>For highly selective schools that recommend four years of a FL, two years would be a significant impact within a very competitive pool of applicants. I’m not saying it’s insurmountable, but it’s not trivial either.</p>
<p>I would disagree. I think a college is more concerned a student pursuing their passion in high school. If a student wanted to be an engineer and picked up a challenging engineering course instead of a language course, no negative repercussions would ensue. At Swarthmore there are plenty of kids with 2 years of a language (white males included).</p>
<p>I got into MIT and UChicago as a White male without taking any level three language classes [I took Chinese II and Latin I in 9th grade and Latin II in 10th grade and then stopped]. However, I took a lot of other extremely advanced classes dual-enrollment so that should have compensated for that.</p>
<p>It usually helps to read the actual words that someone has written. For instance, I said:</p>
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<p>swattiechick, I could not find recommended coursework for Swat on their website, please provide a link that shows it’s FL recommendation in order to make your statement applicable/relevant to what I posted above.</p>
<p>The FL recommendations for MIT & UChicago are as follows:</p>
<p>[What</a> To Do In High School | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/highschool]What”>What to do in high school | MIT Admissions)</p>
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<p><a href=“https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/apply/preparing.shtml[/url]”>https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/apply/preparing.shtml</a></p>
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<p>I want to be sure the OP understands these comments relative to the FL recommendations of the schools. </p>
<p>When dealing with college admissions, it helps to be specific as there are very few generalities that can be made over all schools. That is why I worded my post as I did, and I assumed that other members would read it verbatim rather than making it into a generalization to suit their own personal experience.</p>
<p>Also, please note my follow-up statement:</p>
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<p>Please people, use those great CR skills that I know you have :rolleyes:.</p>
<p>[Swarthmore</a> College :: Institutional Research :: Common Data Set](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/cds.xml]Swarthmore”>Common Data Set :: Institutional Effectiveness, Research & Assessment :: Swarthmore College)</p>
<p>2011 Common Data Set. Swarthmore recommends 3 years of a foreign language. Keep your condescension in check please.</p>
<p>Something worth considering is that a college may have a foreign language graduation requirement that is greater than its foreign language admission requirement. A student who took the minimum level of high school foreign language for admission may have to take additional foreign language courses in college, while a student who reached a higher level of foreign language in high school may have to take fewer or no foreign language courses in college.</p>
<p>For example, Berkeley and other UCs specify level 2 in high school as the minimum for admission, but Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science has a graduation requirement which level 2 in high school does not satisfy, but level 3 in high school does satisfy (other ways of satisfying it include a second semester college course or sufficiently high test scores on foreign language AP or SAT-S tests).</p>
<p>^This is true for Swarthmore as well. Though my language classes in high school were more like language appreciation classes where I learned very little. At Swarthmore you can speak with reasonable fluency after two semesters. So depending on the circumstance, one might choose to fulfill the language requirement at the institution of choice.</p>
<p>I don’t think anecdotal evidence really helps here. OP, you should be able to do the research. Colleges publish the number of years of foreign languages they recommend/require. As an applicant, it’s your job to find that information.</p>
<p>And yes, having more foreign languages is always better than having less, but no one can tell you how big an impact it is, and it probably varies a lot between different schools and even different applicants (an intended STEM major isn’t going to have his foreign language courses looked at in the same light as an intended Poli Sci major, for instance).</p>
<p>It’ll make your application weaker unless you have good reason to have taken only two, but definitely doesn’t put you out of the race. I am a Chinese immigrant who took Chinese 2 and 3 (5 is AP level), and got a B in Chinese 2.</p>
<p>I appreciate the comments. Certainly I’ve been able to “do the research” as Kudryavka suggests, but since most schools require 2 years FL but recommend 4, I’m wondering what happens in the real world of college admission. I actually find the anecdotal evidence helpful if there are example of students who did get accepted into competitive colleges with only 2 yrs of FL. My D has taken challenging AP and honors courses but had a horrible, new Spanish teacher freshman year who ultimately was fired. My D came to Spanish 2 poorly prepared and got a B and didn’t want to continue to make her GPA suffer so she stopped after that. She’s willing to take more Spanish in college if needed.</p>