Should I take the AP Spanish exam without having taken the course?

Test Preparation AP World Languages
1

I’ve had three years of high school Spanish in the honors program (I’m in Spanish 4 honors now) and I have a 4.3 cumulative Spanish GPA and a 780 on the Spanish SAT II, as well as many awards from Spanish spelling bees, poetry contests, and community service. I couldn’t take AP Spanish because of a scheduling conflict but now I’m really regretting that I didn’t do anything about that since I’m a junior and I won’t have taken the exam or course before college admissions.

My plan was to take the AP Spanish exam then drop Spanish and add another science course since I’m planning on a Chemistry major. I’m reasonably fluent in the language anyway from a month-long study abroad trip to Argentina and an earlier trip to Costa Rica, plus I live in San Antonio, Texas, which has a large Mexican population. I’m not a native though.

I asked my teacher and she became very aggressive in telling me that I could not take it, asking me why I thought I was better than everyone else, why I wanted to get a 1, and why I just didn’t take the course if I wanted to take the exam so bad. She said she would do everything she could as the head of the department to prevent me from taking the exam, so I would likely have to take this to the principal (no big deal, I know him well) or try to take it at another school. She said that because I didn’t know the “themes” of the course I will fail, and that it doesn’t matter how well I know Spanish.

I bought the Princeton review guide for the test and was planning on taking a few practice exams and seeing how I do, but I don’t want to try for this if she was right and I could potentially get a 1. If I just worked through that book and a few other books, would I be prepared for the test giving I already know the grammar and most of the vocabulary that will appear on the it?

Should I even bother? I don’t know if colleges will like it better if I just took 4 years of Spanish to show commitment.

2

My son never took even one Spanish class. But he speaks only Spanish to my wife, and she only speaks Spanish to him. I speak English to him, and vice-versa. When guests are present, we speak the language of the weakest speaker. He scored 800 on the SAT subject matter test in Spanish. Give it a try?

3

If you feel that you have a solid background in Spanish, there is no reason why you cannot do well on the test; it is very unlikely that you would score a 1.

4

You could also try the CLEP (another College Board program) Spanish exam. Many students who have only studied a foreign language in high school will attempt the CLEP foreign language exams (Spanish, French, and German) so that they won’t have to take a foreign language in college (check the colleges for posted CLEP policy). CLEP exams are open to anyone and are offered year-round.