My daughter was just accepted into a STARTALK program in Russian. This is a 4 week residential immersion program at the Honors College of a state university. They complete a 5 credit course in Elementary Russian I during the Summer and then complete 5 credits in Elementary Russian II at the university during the 2015/16 academic year.
She is very excited about the program and eager to do it. She loves languages and is already fluent in Mandarin. Linguistics is a possible major for her in college. She is interested in International Relations and Economics as well and hopes to combine her interests in these subjects with the languages in a future career.
Our problem is that her father does not believe that she should start learning another language and thinks this will be a waste of her time this Summer. She has also been accepted into and plans to attend two other programs this summer: a prestigious 2 week young writing workshop and a 1 week program in Cognitive Science (another interest and possible major) at a University. We have less then a week to accept or decline this offer admission. The program is completely free and I was told that they had a record number of applicants this year and accepted only 10% of the applicants.
I am looking for data to provide my husband to defend my daughter’s desire to attend STARTALK and the mandatory Russian class next year. If you know about this program and can provide insights into how it helped you or how it is viewed in college admissions, we would love to hear from you. Her father thinks that she should do an 8 week Cousera class in Economics instead. He believes that putting the Certificate of completion for one of these classes would set her apart more in the admissions process. She loves reading and studying Economics and would enjoy doing some of the reading for this class, but she would not be able to do it during her time at the Writing Workshop any way.
Thanks for any data you can provide us to help make her case.