I know it’s too late, but I want to know the repercussions of switching languages after freshman year. I took Spanish 1 and 2 in middle school, but my high school put me in Spanish 2 again because there were scheduling issues. The teacher I had was terrible (among other reasons), and the other teachers weren’t great, so I decided to drop Spanish and take French. I took French 1 this year, and I will continue till French 3 in senior year.
I read on a few posts that colleges want to see 4 years of the same language, so would my switch harm my chances in any way? Some more details:
I am already "completely" bilingual
I plan on majoring in artificial intelligence / computer science at colleges like MIT or CMU.
My school does not offer honors courses for any languages
What does that mean, in your mind? Have you actually taken classes, or are you saying you are bilingual because you’ve learned to speak it through your parent(s) without formal classes? There is a difference.
There are few colleges that require/request 4 years of a foreign language. Neither CMU or MIT requests it, so it’s a moot point there. If any of your target schools request 4 years, it’s not a make or break situation. College guidelines for HS preparation are just that - guidelines. While they can be considered strong suggestions, they are not a checklist.
That said, if you really want to pursue it, you have a couple of options.
• You could take a summer course at a local college to be able to complete through level 4.
• If you have actually had some study in your bilingual language, you could ask the target college if some type of certification of proficiency will suffice.
You will be fine…any college that doesn’t require a foreign language in college won’t care.
But can you take an AP or SAT subject test in your other language? I think the idea is that colleges would like students to be aware of the rest of the world…you can show your bilingualness if you have a test result.
^^^Definitely go for the AP Spanish exam if you’re bilingual, but only do it if you know you can get a good score. Also, I’m not sure if it’s the case for Spanish, but the French government offers proficiency tests in the French language. Maybe there’s something similar for Spanish? You could also take an online course or a summer college course if you need it on your transcript.
Spanish is not the language in which the OP is bilingual.
Most of the major languages hale this. DELE for Spainsh, DALF and DELF for French, CILS for Italian, JLPT for Japanese as examples. The challenge for some though, is finding a place that administers them in the US.
Sorry, I didn’t have a chance to respond earlier as I am currently in finals week.
I know Konkani, which is an Indian dialect. I learned it from parents/family/friends, and I never took any classes. But I speak it like a native Spanish speaker would speak Spanish, if they had not taken any classes for Spanish. Also, I tried looking up official bilingual tests for this language, but I was unsuccessful in my attempts to find one.
As for CollegeBoard exams, my school has a VHS AP French course, but I would need to skip two levels in order to take that. I don’t plan on taking AP Spanish, as I am not in that line of language anymore. I’m already taking SAT Math 2 this August and I will take SAT Physics next year, so both exams will be done before I start senior year.
Anyways, thanks for the feedback. I just wanted to know if I hurt my chances of acceptance to a dream college by switching languages, and it turns out that it doesn’t.