Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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I apologize, @eandesmom . I didn’t mean to offend anyone of course. It’s definitely a personal decision. Both my husband and I took our foreign languages all through college. My husband worked abroad for many years after school and my brother in law lived in France and raised his two little girls there for five years before moving back. Our nieces and nephews also studied in France living with families who really only spoke French. So…our history may not be the norm. Of course, music and many other subjects work the brain. :wink:

One of our kids would be considered a STEM student but we think his learning a foreign language is so different from all of the math and science that it’s good for him! Hard to fit it all in though. We all agree on that.

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Amending my original post to say " my son has had No difficulty with acceptances with 3 years of language" My brain works faster than my fat fingers . :wink:

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It is hard to fit it all in. And you all are totally right that you don’t NEED 4 years of language to get into great schools. I’m just saying it is definitely one of those things elite schools kind of expect to see, like leadership positions, great grades and test scores. All of us will know someone who got in somewhere great without one of those elements. I would suggest that that student was probably really strong in other areas.

It is a rare (and probably extremely stressed) student who checks all the boxes and excels in every single area. The trick for our kids (and us as we seek to guide them) is to figure out where we are going to put our time and energy.

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The other thing I’d note is that probably 95% of colleges in this country you can get in with less than 2 years of a foreign language. If your kid can graduate from high school they can get into college. It will all work out okay.

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Again it is a personal decision , but extremely important to know your target schools. Not everyone is looking to attend the Ivies or super selective schools, and some of the information being provided is being presented as requirements and not recommendations. I think that we need to present info accurately as not to cause undue anxiety . We need to remember that there are parents on this thread looking at a whole variety of choices for their children and there are no absolutes regarding acceptances into a college other completion of a HS diploma or GED. IMO.

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My experience is that if we try to anticipate what the schools want to see, and react to that, we will not do nearly as well as if we march to the rhythm of our own heart. Most school admissions, in my experience, are based on thresholds not maximums. If they ask for 2 years and you have it, 4 years is not better. If they are looking for a 1400 SAT and you have it, unless you have a 1600, anything else is really pretty much the same (since 1600 means “1600 OR HIGHER,” it could be of some marginal benefit, IDK).

To compare extremes, by way of example, reactive worriers seem to have less luck than centered “doers”, if that makes any sense.

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@ItsJustSchool Love your avatar. Excuse my ignorance . Does the Y stand for Yale?

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Maybe it’s because we really don’t have a good feel for target schools or major yet that we’re planning on four years of all main subjects. Our counselor has warned that kids change a lot between freshman and senior year so not to peg students for certain schools or majors too early. Of course, affordability is something that can perhaps limit choices and that may not change in the next two years, so that is something we’ve already talked about with both of our kids.

If you would have asked me in December about our son’s interests, I would have said Bio major for sure. He couldn’t stop talking about it and was talking about med school. Then, last month, they dissected a rat. That med school idea flew out the window pretty quickly after that. Now he says he wants to write. Hm.

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When I say know your schools , I mean types of schools i.e. LACs, flagships , private , public , large and small. Then research a variety of schools that fall under those categories and you’ll get a fairly clear picture of the similarities in types of schools and recommendations for admissions.That’s very helpful in knowing what direction to go . No one is suggesting to lock into a major or specific school as a Freshman in HS. So many changes are possible within the next 3 years.

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@homerdog no offense taken. :slight_smile: I would agree that your experience is not the norm, but it is the norm for your family and that makes it incredibly real and valid (and thus normal and expected as a minimum) and I can absolutely understand and appreciate the passion behind it. It sounds amazing actually!

Our house is the same way with music. We can’t comprehend not taking it all 4 years and in the case of my kids, 2 classes each. I do recognize that it’s not the norm by a long shot, even if we know more on that side of the equation than on the language side. Each family, and child needs to balance what is right for them while hedging their bets against the unknown. It is interesting, I’ve seen several folks running into issues with fine arts requirements at colleges, when they haven’t had any in HS and really don’t care to take any in college. Our experience so far has been a mix regarding languages.

SS11 had 2 years. Enough to get into his college but it did require he take a language while there. Which he did, abroad, as a completely new language. Checked two boxes there.

SD14 had 4. I believe this actually may have hurt her at one school as it did not allow for an additional stem class that may have made the difference at one school. In the end it didn’t matter as she went ED but that rejection still stung a bit (maybe a lot) and we suspect that for that particular school, it could have helped to have made a different choice.

S17 will take 3 to try to balance somewhere in between the older two. I do need to look more closely to confirm but at present, given his non elite list, 3 seems sufficient with a couple perhaps requiring language in college or a placement test. He’d rather take the new language at this point if he goes to one of those schools and I don’t think that’s a bad path He did not want to take year 3 but recognized he needed to for applications. He will not take it senior year and instead will take a class related to one of his areas of interest (and likely non major related job opportunities while in college). I support that. He will however end up one stem class short of what would be ideal in terms of potential majors and it may hurt him in the same way it hurt SD but he knows the risk. Not the same class but the principle is the same.

Which brings us to S19. Wild card at the moment. Current advice from the GC is if he can pull off a C, he should stick with French 4 but if not…perhaps not. Good communication from the French teacher, we will see. He is certainly capable of A level work but we have some barriers to get past and I"m not sure there is enough time left in the year to hope for better than a C and a C may be serious serious work.

@mom23travelers much as I may argue about the “need” for a 4th or 5th year, I am not sure 1 year cuts it anymore. More HS’s are requiring two and the advice our GC"s give is 2 is the minimum, 3 recommended, 4 for elites/competitive. They encourage 4 more for the MS kids that took language to show rigor, than they do for the late start ones.

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“there are many, many reasons for speaking more than one language.”

I agree. But that doesn’t necessarily mean high school languages are useful. I know plenty of people who took 3-4 years of Spanish who aren’t that good at speaking it.

I think the requirement is silly. Harvard asks for 4 years of foreign language. Why? How exactly will that help the engineering major with perfect SAT and grades who will never speak Spanish outside a Mexican restaurant?

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^^^^^
The most spanish I’ve spoken in my career was " waiter, dos equis por favor".

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@RightCoaster

No “donde está el baño”?

Lol!!!

@carolinamom2boys makes a great point in terms of knowing the school “type”. For examples S17’s list looks like this

REU’s: 2 years in HS required, 3 recommended. BA degrees may require FL, BS may not or at a lower level. Some allow you to test out, some do not. Most do not require language at all in S’s stem field for the majors but some do. Requirements are 1-2 semesters.

LAC’s. Most are 2 required, 3 recommended but one is 3 required. Some do not list a HS requirement all. Almost all require 1-3 semesters of language in college. Some allow testing out but many do not unless it is a 4 or better on an AP and for some even that will not allow you to test out, it just places you at a higher class level and may reduce the total semesters required. Some will accept an abroad intensive immersion class as an alternative to the 1-3 rule. Some are deliberately vague.

Bottom line is YMMV.

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If you are shooting for a selective school then 4 years of a foreign language is a safe bet. Saying 3 years of language is enough because it worked for their child is probably not particularly good advice especially if their child only applied to a small number of schools and they weren’t selective. The information is listed by each college specifically stating the number of years “required” and number of years “recommended”.

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@ssjr16 Thats why its important to know your schools requirement . It also matters what is offered at your school. There are major differences throughout the country with what is offered and when. There is no absolute.
@eandesmom " Donde esta el bano" is my level of expertise , but my Spanish education was too many years ago to reveal.

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Anything that is “recommended” by a college/university … take that as required. Advice gleaned from a director of admissions at a highly selective school.

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@carolinamom2boys “donde está el baño” is critical so I think you did just fine!

right up there with “mas tequila” and “dos cerveza por favor”

I’ve retained little more than restaurant Spanish which was very very helpful back in the day when I managed some fine dining establishments in a large midwestern city It also was enough to let me understand a lot of what was being said while on an agricultural Conservation International/Fair Trade Int’l trip to Mexico and while I could not really speak back at the same level I could get basic meanings across and understand a fair amount, and more recently to realize that our train platform had switched while in Italy (obviously in Italian lol) and was able to keep us from missing the train.

I wouldn’t call my lowly 2 years as being useless at all, it has served me well, or well enough. Would I love to know more and be fluent, yeah that might be cool. But it hasn’t held me back and I’ve not see the variety our kids have to date, have an impact on their paths.

That said, I would agree, on the whole, that 2 is the new 3.

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@RightCoaster what is an REU? Sorry. Still catching on to some of the lingo!

I hear what you’re saying about type of school. I just don’t think we are there yet. GC thinks our son seems like an LAC kid to him, but our son thinks those would just be too small. Half the size of his high school. Maybe by the time we have to decide on senior year classes (mid-junior year), he will have a better idea. Right now, we are thinking LAC, honors college at OOS school, or mid-sized universities. Unfortunately, that doesn’t narrow things down much. I suppose if I had to make a list with him, we could make one based on geography, cost, merit opportunities, programs of study, etc. Maybe we will wait another year and see if we could do that. At the very least, I suppose we know four or five OOS schools that I could investigate on their websites to check out requirements.

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Plenty of time @homerdog. No worries. We started looking in earnest the summer before and Junior year , and it worked out fine.

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@homerdog I didn’t mean to type REU, stupid phone. I meant Research Universities. REU is Research Experiences for Undergraduates which would typically happen at a Research University, or be facilitated /funded by a company or other grant, at such a university.

No need to make lists yet, far too early in my opinion for that but having a general idea of costs and requirements of various options is never a bad exercise.