<p>UT charges $75 for most language placement tests, so I want to be wise in knowing if I should take a test. How challenging are these tests (what level of course work is needed for credit...AP? Regular?) and are there practice tests available? </p>
<p>I only took basic Spanish during my sophomore and junior years, so I would need to refresh my Spanish. I took French throughout grade school, but just in my freshman year of high school, so I need to review that a lot (if it's even worth it). </p>
<p>And lastly, how are the language courses at UT? I'm not interested in taking a GPA hit or challenging language courses as a science major because I'd like to focus on those courses, but if they aren't that bad, then I could forget about taking the placements I guess.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for the replies!</p>
<p>If there’s any chance at all you could get some credit, you should definitely take the placement tests. The lower division language courses here are six hours, so that could eat up half of your schedule if you’re taking 12 hours and is still a pretty big hour commitment if you’re taking more. (i.e. i’m taking 15 hours but only 4 courses because of Spanish). If you’re not good at learning languages or you don’t really care about learning the language you’re studying and just need the credit (the requirement is like 4th semester proficiency i think for most majors) then it’s really just not something you want to be stuck with. Having the six hour course also means that if you were to make a bad grade, your GPA would be hit doubly hard (normal courses are three hours so a six hour language course is almost like having two courses in one). As for how the language classes actually are, my Spanish class is easy for me because of how long I’ve studied it independently, but for some of my classmates it’s their hardest class. </p>
<p>Anyway, sorry for the rant, just wanted to clarify. The Spanish test I took at orientation was really hard since if you ace it, you can get credit for all three semesters of intro 6-hour Spanish. The questions were anywhere from beginner to upper advanced and if I recall correctly the listening comprehension bit was really hard. Even so though, I know plenty of people that took Spanish in high school and were able to place out of at least one semester.</p>