Will Lack of Foreign Language be Detrimental to My Application?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Grinnell College
1

<p>I am a rising senior with a few questions about the highschool foreign language requirements at Grinnell and other top LACs and Universities.</p>

<p>I'll begin by just placing my stats so that, if you would like, you can read over them to get an idea of where my application would stand. If you don't need to do this, feel free to skip over this part of the post.</p>

<p>GENERAL INFO
-Sex: Male
-Race: White
-Location: Public highschool in Oklahoma (don't know if the state matters)
-Will be applying for financial aid</p>

<p>ACADEMICS
-Prospective Major: Physics
-GPA: 4.0 unweighted; about 4.5ish weighted
-Rank: top 5% of class; not really sure actually, about 10 out of 550ish I think
-ACT: 33 sophomore year; 30E, 32M, 35R, 36S (I've always wondered if they care what grade you were in when you got your score)
-SAT: 780M, 710CR, 730W; 2220 or 1490 total
-SAT II: Math II - 760, Physics - 800
-AP: Calc AB - 5; English Language - 4; Physics C Mech. - 5
-APs for next year: Calc BC, Euro, Lit, Physics C E&M, Chem, possibly Psych
-I recently attended a summer class entitled "Cosmology, Anti-Gravity, and the Runaway Universe" on full scholarship at Colorado College and recieved an A.
-National Merit Finalist (going to be)
-Valedictorian (My schools has a strange system so I can be Valedictorian even though I'm tenth in my class)</p>

<p>EXTRACURRICULARS
-President and Founder of Philosophy Club
-Head Programmer and Captain of Award winning and World Championship Finalist FIRST Robotics Team
-President of Mu Alpha Theta
-Paid TA in robotics summer classes for middle schoolers
-Paid TA in vocal music, comedic acting, and commercial acting summer classes for elementary schoolers
-Homeland cashier (represent)
-Math tutor
-Acting outside of school for 7 years and leads in summers musicals for the past three years
-soccer for 12 years including highschool soccer freshman and sophomore years
-Cross Country Letterman freshman and sophomore years
-There's a little bit more but it's mostly lame stuff so I'll leave it out.</p>

<p>OTHER ADMISSIONS TOPICS
I feel like my essays will be strong but an interview will be the strongest non-academic portion of my application. I have shown interest in Grinnell over the past few months by asking for tons of information and plan on visiting in Sept. or Oct. of my senior year.</p>

<p>That's all about me, but if you skipped it, you can probably still answer my questions. Here they are</p>

<p>1) Will only having two foreign language classes (Latin) hurt my application very much?</p>

<p>2) If I talk about how I would have liked to have taken more but was unable to due to my schools strange scheduling system in the extra info section of the common app., would that help?</p>

<p>3) Are there other LACs or Universities that I should know about that would look down at my lack of foreign language credits? Here is a list of other schools I'm considering applying to:</p>

<p>Carleton
Tufts
Macalester
Williams
Beloit
Hendrix
Dartmouth
(this list gets changed frequently so few of these are certain)</p>

<p>Thanks for your help!</p>

2

<p>No one can tell you your actual chances, but I think you are in a very good position for most of the schools on your list, if not all (never want to count on all!)</p>

3

<p>Two years is fine. They are looking for academic rigor and some indication of well-roundedness academically. Two years of a language vs. three is not going to make a difference. You like like a good prospect for merit aid from Grinnell.</p>

4

<p>Thanks for the responses. I just wasn’t really sure what to think when I saw that three foreign language credits are “recommended” for admissions; that can mean many different things.</p>