Your son could test into a more advanced level of Spanish and be closer to the Spanish AP test in perhaps two or three high school years. Top colleges will have a deluge of STEM applicants that have a foreign language AP in their application.
He may really want Mandarin, but the STEM school doesn’t have it. Is learning a specific language more important than having a plethora of better STEM courses available right on campus for high school? (Which also makes attending soccer practice easier?) Many students don’t have the opportunity to attend a STEM magnet school. It’s a really great option for your kid to have!
Several suggestions for learning Mandarin have been offered. He can continue to learn the language through them. Knowing more than one foreign language to a certain degree is a great skill to have and not everyone is fortunate enough to have that option via school classes.
Colleges do notice and care about the level reached, particularly if the student reaches the top level available (CA publics effectively care only about the level reached, though other colleges may differ). I.e. two years that are years 3 and 4 (or 4 and 5) looks different from two years that are years 1 and 2.
He hasn’t done much formal study of Spanish. In 4th and 5th grade, when he was home due to the pandemic and some family stuff, he took some online classes, but otherwise it’s mostly been self study, or just immersing himself in it, which isn’t hard to do in our neighborhood and family. I’m sure he’ll keep doing that. We don’t have the same opportunities for Chinese.
He’s not avoiding the language classes in this hypothetical because they have first year students. I was just saying that while I agree that online isn’t perfect, that the classes available to him at school aren’t going to be perfect either.
He wants to continue Chinese. If he goes to the magnet, the only way he can take Chinese is outside of school, and I think that 4 challenging STEM classes, English, History, and 2 language classes, one inside and one outside of school is too much. Maybe people are right and 7 academic classes will be too much too. Plus, he’d like to take art, and I think that art provides a nice balance to all the academics.
We’ll definitely look at it. Unfortunately, soccer scheduling will probably drive the choice, so while I keep saying CTY, since that’s the place I found first, we’ll probably need to look at several providers.
Oh that may not work for you then. OHS courses are synchronous and they only offer Chinese at one specific time slot . There won’t be any flexibility with that and you won’t know the time of the class before you either apply or enroll .
But we’re comparing level 4 Chinese to level 4 Spanish. I agree that if he decided to take language at school instead of outside that taking Spanish would probably look better than taking French for example.
Probably because the student would reach a higher level in Spanish than French for the same number of courses taken while in high school, due to starting higher than the year 1 course in Spanish.
My S19 took 4 years of Latin in HS, goes to Pitt. Has a winning streak learning Swedish on Duolingo for fun. He’s one of Duolingo’s first app users.
My D22 took no language in HS and goes to Pitt. She has to take 2 semesters of any language. She took French 1 and now in 2. Does Duolingo French for fun.
Pitt has Mandarin and lots of students take it So does Duolingo.
Duolingo is awesome and started by Carnegie Mellon students. He should try it It’s free!
Based on our experience, that’s not really true. What they do is ask all students for hours they can and cannot attend class and then they make a master schedule that maximizes the best schedule. But if you are the family that can’t make the time that’s chosen then you are out of luck as far as that particular class goes.
And I’m not certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they give priority to the constraints of their full-time students over the constraints of their part-time and single-course students.
That’s too bad, I agree that full time needs to come first especially for something like a subsequent level of a language. I will still talk to them. Can’t hurt.
I can’t imagine this is a discussion about whether a 7th grader should take a foreign language in high school “because he doesn’t want to.” My son and his friends are counting down the days until they can say adios to Spanish. Many kids take multi-years of foreign language in high school because colleges want to see it not because they love it. Plus, most private school students have Spanish or French from first grade onward and still take a foreign language for 3 or so years in high school.
If he loves languages then he can take foreign language in high school. It does sound as though he would do very well and likely would not struggle in the classes, so just take it.
I did read most of entire thread. The child seems very bright and capable. There is zero issue why he cannot take foreign language in high school Many experts on CC have told him it is in the student’s best interest to take a foreign language at his high school.
Because the language he loves the most is only available outside of school, and I feel like 4 STEM classes and 2 languages is too much for a 9th grader.
4 stem classes is a bad idea for anyone. This is not grad school. He is not expected to narrowly specialize in high school. Colleges really dont give extra points for more stem courses at the cost of literature, history, art- and yes, FL.
So does Duolingo.