Quick question about language selection (incoming freshman HS):
My incoming HS freshman is faced with 2 choices:
-Take Spanish or Latin, and only reach Honors level IV by senior year
-Take Italian, which allows for doubling up midway and leads to AP Italian V senior year.
He wants to be really competitive (Ivy dreams as of now), and thinks that the Italian is the only way to go because it leads to an AP credit senior year.
I think that a more widely-spoken language like Spanish/German (or a useful one like Latin) would be better, even though he would only be able to get up to the Honors level by senior year.
I’d go with Spanish. First of all, it’s a lot more widely spoken than Italian is–as much as I love anything Italian–and learning the language is also one of the main reasons you take the class (aside from AP credit). Also, I’m sure he’ll have other APs that will help him be competitive; doubling up on anything doesn’t sound like fun to me, and I wouldn’t want him to be overwhelmed. Of course, I may not be the best person to ask, considering I don’t know the exact workload we’re talking about here; my school’s Spanish program had AP credit by junior year, so it’s a different system.
I think Spanish is far, far, far more useful. Especially if you are going into healthcare.
I think you get some brownie points for Latin because people perceive it as difficult, though my younger son thought it was easier because you didn’t really have the spoken component and all the emphasis is translating from Latin into English not English into Latin. He went into International Relations and wished he’d had a more useful language. He ended up studying Arabic in college and did pretty poorly in it until he spent his junior year in Jordan. The other issue with Latin in his school was that fewer people took it so it often led to scheduling issues as there were not multiple sections of Latin to choose from.
Really though for a high school language your best bet is to go with whichever class has better teachers.
@Belkcom My dad’s friend is in healthcare, and when I asked him about it back when I thought I wanted to go into medicine, he said that while Latin is useful in certain places–maybe in anatomy class–Spanish is still much much much more useful. In health care, Latin deals with the more scientific terms, but everyone can learn all those terms; not everyone, however, can speak Spanish, and that gives you an advantage in the field. Communication with patients is a big part of medicine, after all.
Thanks for sharing your son’s experience with Latin, mathmom - that’s what I suspected would be the case unfortunately - not very useful outside of the basic vocab. Thanks for bringing the scheduling issue to my attention - great point and wasn’t even on my radar. I understand that Arabic is one of the hardest languages to perfect, so difficult to do well in without immersion - good on him! Did the Arabic help him in his career?
Also, my only concern with Spanish is that it doesn’t really set one apart as it once does - so many native English speakers can speak it fluently now… Does anyone think that is a valid concern?
Does anyone know if learning a less-useful language like Italian or Rus would be detrimental to a college app? I tend to think it would make the person’s application a bit more interesting.
Is he more interested in Italian? Can he handle doubling up later on? Does the HS rank?
How motivated is he in his ambitions?
On the side of Italian -> higher GPA, some scholarships are available only to valedictorians, or to top 3%, and if I recall correctly, one college (Pitt) offers guaranteed admission to medical school for a very small group of enrollees who, among other criteria, must have the highest possible GPA achievable in their HS.
So if he’s thinking of becoming a doctor, that’s one of those things where GPA is a big deal.
My personal opinion is that for language, interest is the important thing (as well as a good teacher).
Italian would be a poor choice IMO, he can do the Spanish and work on his own for the AP test if he really wants to. The language skills are the important issue, not a far off credit potential. Health care is a bit generic, but if he is doing actual health care provision, SPanish is going to be a necessity IMO.
Doubling up, I am not sure what that means (in place of a spare elective maybe?) but if it negates the potential for double science or/and math, then that is a loss in the long run.
If there’s any chance of budget cuts in your school system that might affect the language offerings – or if there’s any chance your family might move – Spanish is the safest choice. It’s available everywhere, and it’s the last language that a school system would ever consider cutting.
Let’s see. He is most interested in Italian, yes, definitely. His 8th grade counselor told him that that was the only language he could double up in, though, so I don’t know if that colored his preference, though I suspect it did.
However, would the other languages be available for doubling up, though? Is it usually just a teacher recommendation issue, or is it exceedingly difficult to double up in a language if it isn’t structured that way (to do so)? As I said his 8th grade counselor said that Italian was the only one available to double up in, but not completely sure of his knowledge base…
Yes, the high school does rank students - would non-AP lower his class rank, then? I confess I don’t know if the weighted or unweighted GPA counts/matters or which is involved in rank more.
Wow, thanks for the tidbit about Pitt! It does seem that GPA is huge - but, is that weighted or unweighted GPA?
Agreed about interest, definitely, especially when the going gets tougher around the 3rd year! My question is this - how would you find out about the quality of the teacher until it’s ‘too late’?
Hi there @alfonsia and @Marian Doubling up, in this case, implies taking two consecutive foreign language courses at the same time (instead of consecutively). He’d like to be a physician, and is trying to make the language choices based on that + GPA/AP considerations, etc.
Also thankfully budget cuts won’t be a problem - this school is a lottery-based-admissions IB/AG Magnet school, so, whew! It was nationally ranked within the last 10 years.
If you know any parents ahead of you in school don’t be afraid to ask them how their kids found the teachers. Our high school Latin teacher was great - a real character, but my younger son would take Spanish if he had to do it over. My older son was a whiz at languages, but very shy and hates to travel so Latin was great for him. Tiny classes, same teacher year after year, and no need to speak.
I have to say, I don’t understand why you can double up in one language and not the other. Though a million years ago I skipped French three at my school to avoid a teacher I despised. It meant I ended up floundering in AP French as a senior, but then I took a gap year in France and learned to speak it fluently so it all worked out in the end.
IB? Frankly he will want his HL load to be doubled on science with this third science as an AP anyway, if he can knock off his language reqs as an SL by the end of jr year, it would be to his advantage anyway. IB HL languages are really for the pure love or the native/bilingual speaker.
@mathmom Thanks for your insight. You have a great point: personalities do influence which foreign language ‘fits’ the best. I don’t really know any parents ahead of us - since it was a magnet (lottery admissions), it’s sort of an unknown quantity.
Very interesting about your sons’ completely different experiences with the same language! Well, now at least I think I know about help choosing a bit more. Do you know the emphasis/importance given to weighted vs. unweighted GPA?
Thanks @Alfonsia, good to know. Definitely the higher level languages - you have to have a love for them, which he might not be able to anticipate now!
When we toured an Ivy last year, one of the anecdotes from an adcom was that they have a great Slavic Studies Dept that rarely gets any interest from incoming freshmen, so one time they had an applicant who had studied Czech (I think) and wanted to pursue it they took note.
At another college (not Ivy, but selective) they talked about how they like to create an incoming class with different interests so they can learn from each other.
So yeah, being different is good.
You have a great point: personalities do influence which foreign language ‘fits’ the best. I don’t really know any parents ahead of us - since it was a magnet (lottery admissions), it’s sort of an unknown quantity.