My daughter is a freshman in high school and she had planned to take Spanish for all four years of high school. She’d wanted to take an advanced 3rd year Spanish class next year, but apparently a friend of hers had told her how helpful Latin was in helping people through med school (She plans on entering the medical field; Either radiologist or pharmacist, she hasn’t decided yet.)–Terminology and whatnot. She told me she doesn’t know what to do and, obviously, neither do I. Any thoughts/input?
Taking Latin in 9th grade because she’s heard it will be useful in medical school is crazy talk. Right now she’s interested in the medical field, but it is a long time from now until med/pharm school - and who knows if she will end up at either of those!
She can stick with the plan to take more Spanish for now. If she still is probably pre-med by her senior year, then if she wants to take Latin that would be soon enough to do it for pre-med purposes.
Four years of a single foreign language in HS (can include middle school equivalent) will fulfill requirements at colleges, meaning none required in college.
Physician here. Spanish is a useful, living language (I took French in HS- before the large numbers of Spanish speakers up north, and German for my chemistry major- back before computers translated everything- how times change).
Latin is NOT at all needed or desired for medicine. You learn the vocabulary as you need to. btw- neither is taking any classes such as an undergrad course in any medical school class- there is a reason you take them in medical school. It seems a waste of time to me when she could be learning more Spanish- and perhaps eventually become proficient enough to converse with Spanish speaking patients.
Your D is best off continuing through the 4th level of Spanish. If a fifth year is offered she should decide if she wants that extra year of culture- by then the fundamentals will have been covered. The four years of the same language would make her competitive for various universities and perhaps free up her college schedule for other courses.
Be sure she takes the most rigorous classes her HS offers (in areas that interest her/required)- it will help her get into colleges and will also best prepare her for college. Once in college she needs to take advantage of the fun electives she would not have time for if she goes to medical school. Her major will be determined by her then current interests- she may choose a totally different direction by then. If she still is interested in medical school she can major in anything she wants- including social sciences and humanities- all she needs to do is take the required courses for medical school admissions (which may have changed by the time she is applying). She needs to get a well rounded education. This includes literature, art (eg art history), music (eg a survey course about symphony), and any other course that piques her interest at the time.
Short answer- stick with Spanish.
Spanish would be great for a doc in the US (and elsewhere), latin helping in med school is a myth 
Your daughter should tell her friend that in their new requirements/recommendations, med schools actually appreciate/recommend their applicants to have a working knowledge of a language spoken by an immigrant group. Spanish is a fine choice, but a bit more variety in language choice might be helpful since it might become a differentiator. (In other words, become as fluent as you can in Spanish, but since a LOT of med school applicants will have Spanish, knowing Spanish and something else - or just something else- would help you stand out. For someone who knows Spanish, obvious choices would be French for Creole French, as well as Portuguese.)
In that context, Latin is of no use whatsoever.
Languages that can count include Urdu, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, French Creole, Russian, Hmong, Portuguese, Somali…
An issue is that few universities teach some of these, so a good way to handle this is either
1° pick a language the university offers to the advanced level or 5th/6th semester (French, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic) and volunteer at a clinic where immigrants use that language (for French Creole, you’ll need to find some private study because the languages are close cousins so that one can recognize one if one knows the other, but to be fluent practice/study is important - the sounds are different as well as common expressions, such as “mwéla” =“moi là” = je suis là, “Kreyol ayisyen” = “créole haïtien”, pronounced “kreol ayisyen”; for Chinese, you’ll need to progress very quickly over 2 years so that your language gets to a point where you can use it because it’s a very difficult language. Same thing for Arabic. French, Spanish, and Portuguese are the languages that are easiest to learn for an English speaker, with the caveat explained above for French-to-Creole.) If there’s enough demand, one can imagine premeds at a large university may be able to request “Spanish for the health professions” or in other languages that many premeds take (French seems to be another one, so French Creole?)
2° Take an intensive summer course such as Middlebury’s or Penn State’s in a language not offered at your school, reach intermediate fluency over the summer, and then join community groups to practice in the area where you go to college, until you reach enough fluency to volunteer in a clinical setting. OR take such classes entirely in community education settings, asking for volunteering opportunities.
http://www.outreach.psu.edu/language-institute/
http://www.middlebury.edu/ls
First of all, many pre-meds change their minds. So it would be bad for your daughter to change from a language she wants to a language she’s lukewarm about for med school, only for her to decide freshman year of college she wants to do something else instead.
Second of all, I think Spanish would be more useful for a doctor - doctors can take on more patients if they know another language, and they can also serve underserved areas where Spanish is a dominant language. Memorizing the Latin terminology isn’t that difficult for a reasonably bright person, but learning a new language is a years-long undertaking.
Whether she is pre-med or not, many colleges want students who have completed at least three years of the same foreign language, and a fourth year is strongly appreciated by many. (In many cases for a student who started in middle school with that language, that would take the student through the AP level.)
With respect to Latin, if the teacher is fabulous, perhaps it is worth doubling up and taking it as an additional language. D did that, but our H.S. had one of the very best Latin teachers you could imagine, with bunches of students who won gold medals in the National Latin exams. I don’t think a lot of the Latin she learned would have helped much for medicine. I don’t remember body parts being a particularly significant emphasis in the standard Latin curriculum.
I would stick with Spanish. My oldest took Spanish for 4 years. My middle one is going to be taking his 3rd year of Latin. basically because the Spanish teachers are either ok or really awful at our school while the 1 Latin teacher is really good. The youngest is going with French since we have heard good things about that teacher too. Colleges want to see at least 3 years of 1 language so having your D changing now wouldn’t make any sense. She could always take a year of Latin as a senior if she wants.
Stick with Spanish. Whether or not your D chooses to stick in the medical/pharmaceutical field, Spanish is a helpful, growing language.
This is not necessarily true at all colleges. Some require some sort of proficiency test (either the college’s own test, or sometimes AP or SAT subject or other external tests are allowed) to prove a certain level of proficiency if one wishes to fulfill the requirement without taking college courses. A few, like Yale, require course work even for those with relatively high levels of proficiency: http://yalecollege.yale.edu/foreign-language-requirement .
As a practical matter, Spanish may be more useful for a physician or pharmacist who interacts with patients who may include those whose Spanish is much better than their English (more common than those whose Latin is much better than their English).
^^Yes but there is a higher chance that OP can test out of college language requirement if she takes 4 years of Spanish than if she takes some latin. I really wish I had pushed 4 years of language (that ended in AP or high proficiency). In the colleges that do take those results or even if you can do well in placement tests, you can avoid what may be 2-3 (4 for D1) semesters of language.
Spanish, especially conversational Spanish, would be very useful. Latin is helpful in solving crossword puzzles.
My daughter found Latin to be helpful in preparing for the old SAT with its emphasis on vocabulary but that may not be true in the new SAT. (For the record, she took both Latin and Spanish through the AP level but is dropping Spanish and continuing with Latin. I suspect that if her college has an additional language requirement, she may take another language.)
I think with the new SAT less emphasis on vocab so I will be curious to see if the Latin classes at our school see a sharp decline in enrollment.
I always thought it was a little silly when people say they want to take Latin because they want to go into medicine. I don’t really see how beneficial it could really be, especially when you consider what you would have to sacrifice to take it. I think there’s a belief that Latin will help learn the terminology in medicine, but to be honest, you really don’t need to take any Latin (especially not years of Latin) to learn that terminology. Students do it quickly all the time, and once you pick up the roots, you can parse out what tons of new terms mean. Many of the roots students will already know from exposure, and they can pick up the few they don’t as they need them. If you really wanted to, you could probably learn all the roots you would need in medicine in an afternoon. You don’t need to take Latin to do that, and you certainly don’t need to be taking years of Latin to help with medical school. The benefits just aren’t that great to make it worth it, in my opinion, and while some students may consider it helpful, it certainly won’t give you any benefit over another classmate who didn’t take Latin.
Spanish, on the other, can be a huge benefit to a physician, especially if you get it to the level where you could practice in Spanish. If she thinks she might want to work in an area with a large Spanish-speaking population, then it will likely be beneficial in a wide variety of areas, including potentially medical school admissions, patient care opportunities, and job placement. I’m not in medical school, but I went to graduate school in a healthcare field and work in a hospital. Foreign language skills (especially in a high-demand language like Spanish or East Asian languages) always gave applicants a boost in admissions to the program and in hiring health care professionals (including physicians) in our division. No one would have cared if they took Latin.
That being said, she should take the language that she’s interested in. If she thinks Latin is really cool, then she should take Latin. But if she wants to take the language that is most likely to be beneficial to her (as a future doctor or as anyone really), then she should take Spanish, hands down (or whatever foreign language is most common in the area that she might like to live/work in or perhaps even the language of a place she would really like to study abroad in).
Modern languages are truly one of those things that either you learn as a child (best), or you can learn at any time in your life. It is probably the easiest subject to learn outside of a school environment as there are lots of immersion programs or abroad programs or extension classes or private tutors. This is not by any means you kid’s last chance to become proficient in Spanish.
My D will be taking AP Latin as a junior next year. Latin can be a fabulous experience. At least in her program, it is part grammar, part history. part textual analysis and part literature. It’s one thing to take World History and learn about Julius Caesar or read the Illiad in English. It’s another to read it in the original. Latin s not “utilitarian” in the sense that a modern language is, but it is still “useful.”
I live in the Bay area and work in Health Care. Spanish is useful. So is Tagalog, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Mien. But in the end, most MD’s use a translator
Spanish is a great language and IMO everyone should know a little. However, as I said, if you don’t learn it in 9th grade that doesn’t mean you’ll never learn it. 9th grade is really too early to plan out a career path. Let her explore a bit if she’s at all curious.
A freshman deciding on classes based on future med school? I would be careful to encourage her not to pick a career just yet, keep an open mind and explore interests. Often the desire to do med school is a sign of immaturity and lack of knowledge of options out there.
She should know that she can major in anything and go on to med school. There is actually a push these days to get more humanities types into med schools.
50-100 years ago, Botany, Zoology and Latin were prerequisites for medical studies. Things change …
As for additional languages, don’t take a difficult language where you may have to compete with heritage speakers (Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.) or your GPA will take a hit and you won’t get into medical school.
I took German and Latin in high school. I do not feel either heped me in medical school.
My wife, also a physician, took 4 years of Spanish in high school. She, with some additional work, is fluent and that skill has served her well.