<p>There’s been talk of creating an undergraduate linguistics major. Currently, people major in linguistics through New College (UA’s design your own interdisciplinary major program). Students interested in linguistics would create a degree plan in consultation with New College advisors and a few professors who’ll be teaching some of the courses.</p>
<p>UA offers courses in many less commonly taught languages via a system where a student has a native speaker of that language as a tutor and supplements them with computer-based assignments. UA has traditional language classes for a wide variety of languages as well.</p>
<p>Has your daughter considered learning a Native American language? UA will offer courses in Cherokee upon request. Knowing a Native American language can lead to a variety of careers with government agencies.</p>
<p>Thanks for explaining all about the NMF,mom to two college kids. (Your mother is a beauty.) We live in New York State, 64 miles north of Manhattan. The HS is NOT like a HS in Westchester,two counties below (eg. Scarsdale) where all the kids have tutors… An “ordinary” public HS. </p>
<p>mom2physicsgeek, your daughter sounds amazing, all power to you. My 3 girls go/went to 15 years (starting with Pre-K, so 15…) of Mandarin (through Taiwan, not mainland China…we learn the traditional characters). I study/ied along with them until about 5th grade, then they overtake me. D1 has taken (simplified mainland) Chinese at college now for three trimesters. </p>
<p>funny,the one thing my husband knew about Bama before I started talking about it is that it has a good Classics Dept. How wonderful and amazing. ( I have no clue how he knew that…) He would dearly love his girls to study classics; he has BA from Kenyon (MA from Columbia) and is so in love with the humanities and classical languages. He lived in France for a year in prep school and has the ability to still hold onto his fluency. D2s main interest is French,as I said; it is a joy to listen to them together. </p>
<p>Bama sounds so fascinating. But 99th percentile, how staggering! To state the obvious, high GPAs and high SATs/ACTs are not necessarily congruent… She is self-motivated and studies for the SAT on her own.I help/encourage/stimulate/listen/communicate and keep ties with the teachers but I am NOT a tiger mom. How I will miss this girl when she goes away to college! (I am also interested in Tulane for her, because of the scholarship opportunities and the French…)</p>
<p>Thank you for the information and dialogue…</p>
<p>A 210 PSAT sophomore year is a great score. It’ll likely go up junior year. Only need another 10 points at most. Did she prep for it, or just take it cold?</p>
<p>Nothing to do with classics, but I learned recently that E.O. Wilson is a UA alum. Can’t wait to share THAT with H.</p>
<p>Mom2, that’s your mom? I thought that was you in a special stylized retro photo. You look just like her. But I think your dog is so cute, liked that pic a lot.</p>
<p>@sea_tide and @mom2collegekids, thanks for the feedback. The Native American lang is a fascinating idea. She just loves languages. (She is to lang what her brother is to math and physics). She is only a rising 10th grader, so she hasn’t narrowed what she wants to do. She has thought about everything from language preservation to translating. </p>
<p>How does one go about learning a Native American lang or even selecting which one? Where do you find the resources? </p>
<p>She loves epic poetry. She is probably the only kid whose favorite reading in 7th grade was Marmion and Idylls of the King. In 8th grade she was fascinated with Paradise Lost. But,when we read the Iliad this yr, it was not a favorite. I don’t think ancient Greek is something she ever even considered. she does love Latin, though, and she has been talking about trying to earn enough $$ to go to Rome with the University of Dallas in a couple of summers. I’ll mention classics to her and see what she says.</p>
<p>But…I know the idea of Native American languages will definitely intrigue her.</p>
<p>My D is just finishing her minor in Latin and loves the prof. She has had the same one for every Latin class that she has taken. She is majoring in Spanish and on the UA in Spain trip now. I was wondering what kind of career majoring in linguistics would lead to? D is double majoring in English and Spanish with a minor in Latin, but she has no clue what to do with her life. She isn’t interested in medicine or law. </p>
<p>What I noticed is that there were even more sophomores taking it than juniors. I never paid attention to that section before. In our state, practically no sophomores take the test. Fewer than 4,000. Then almost 18,000 juniors, but that is still a really low proportion, less than a third. That’s how we get such low cut scores of 210 or so.</p>
<p>Ct, if you look at the link, you can click on score reports for your state for the most recent year and also archived years. They have separate reports for sophomores and juniors. You’ll see that in NY only 0.7% of sophomores were able to get 70+ on CR section. So your D is really up there. Of juniors, it was 1.9%. Because the kids are older and more mature and have more experience with the test. Those numbers do bounce around from year to year. Different kids and different tests. Unfortunately, the reports don’t give data for total scores, only by section. But it still helps give you an idea of where your D fits. Remember when you look at it that few kids do well in all sections. The ones who get 70+ in math are not exactly the same group as the ones who score that high in CR, though there is some overlap, of course. </p>
<p>Language preservation, translating (doesn’t need to be in terms of documents, etc, but even Disney movies are translated), etc are few fields dd has researched. </p>
<p>My son took Latin and Greek in high school, but always wanted to learn French. His last semester at Bama, he took French 101, and he loved it! He also took an honors course taught by one of the Italian professors where they read Dante’s trilogy. His book had English on one page and Italian on the opposite page. So cool! The Italian professors are a husband and wife team. Son had the wife guest lecture sometimes. He really enjoyed his language courses. And son was not required to take any language, as that requirement was fulfilled by other courses, so this was really fun for him to have that learning experience at Bama, thanks to their generosity with AP credits so he had time to take classes just for fun! Besides the free ride and CBH, I think the variety of courses offered is what really led him to choose Bama over the other schools that were offering generous scholarships at that time to NMFs. As for NMF, my son’s school also gave the PSAT to sophomores. It was high pressure for them because if they scored well enough, the school placed them in an English class taught by a wonderful man who prepared his students for the PSAT in their junior year. I am proud to say that this school produces between 25 and 35 NMFs every year. From my son’s HS graduating class, about half of the NMFs went to Bama, and that’s not a small feat from a state where Purple and Gold reigns supreme!</p>
<p>@Mom2aphysicsgeek it depends on which language(s) she wants to learn. Individual tribes are spending lots of money to preserve their languages and cultures and one of the best ways to do so is to offer language classes at little to no cost. At UA, one would contact the department of Modern Languages and Classics to see if they could find a native speaker to help one learn that language.</p>
<p>Is she considering a career with the federal government? The FBI and CIA love hiring people who can speak multiple languages. Learning a Native American language is very helpful if one wants to become an FBI agent as various treaties require the FBI, not the state police, to investigate all major crimes which occur on tribal lands.</p>
<p>@sea_tide, your post made me laugh bc this dd has never talked about the FBI or the CIA, but a few months ago she was also rapidly advancing in kickboxing and we teased her about being recruited. </p>
<p>I mentioned the Native American languages to her yesterday morning and last night she told me wasn’t sure. She wants to think about where she really sees her future going. I also showed her the classics page for UA. </p>
<p>We live less than an hr from a tribal center, so if she decides she is interested, I might use this summer to make some contacts.</p>
<p>On the NA lang/languages thing…there was a Slate map going around a few weeks ago with the third most common languages in each state (after Eng and Spanish) and it was fascinating. Several states registered NA languages including mine. </p>
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