Will not taking Spanish 4 hurt my chances for admission?

Colleges and Universities A-Z College of William and Mary
1

<p>These are the courses I have taken so far:</p>

<p>9th Grade: Communications Wheel (two periods), AP Human Geography, HOPE (Gym), English 1 Honors, Geometry, Biology 1 Honors, Spanish 1</p>

<p>10th Grade: Algebra 2 Honors, Chemistry 1 Honors, Spanish 2, Creative Writing 1 and 2, English 2 Honors, Film 2 Honors, AP World History</p>

<p>11th Grade: Film 3 Honors, Creative Writing 3 Honors, AP European History, AP English Language and Composition, AP Statistics, AP United States History, Physics Honors, Precalculus Honors, Spanish 3 Honors</p>

<p>Summer Before 12th Grade (at local community college): Survey of Calculus, Environmental Conservation</p>

<p>Courses I will have completed for 12th grade: AP Art History, AP Psychology, AP US Government/Economics Honors, Financial Apps, AP English Literature and Composition, Creative Writing 4 Honors, Collaborative Film 4 Honors, and possibly AP Biology</p>

<p>Will not taking Spanish 4 Honors really hurt my application? It's not that I don't want to take it/am not interested in Spanish, but there were a lot of other classes, like AP Bio and Psych, that I wanted to try for senior year.</p>

2

<p>Oh, and I had Algebra 1 Honors in 8th grade.</p>

3

<p>AP Art History, Creative Writing, Financial Apps, and Collaborative Film are likely to be viewed as less rigorous than Spanish 4 Honors.</p>

<p>“Survey of Calculus” also doesn’t sound like a complete Calc class, but that is just from the name.</p>

<p>Most students applying to W&M will have 4 or 5 years of a foreign language (at least, that is my impression; W&M Admissions can correct me, of course).</p>

<p>Another thing to consider is that if you don’t have 4 years of a language in HS, you will have to take it at W&M, and taking time off from languages and them trying to jump back into them is not the best strategy.</p>

4

<p>Thank you for your input. I have to take Creative Writing and Film because I am a communications major at an arts school and need two classes in my art area. As for the other two, I agree (I kind of took Financial Apps just to have the background for marketing- not because I wanted to slack off in math; I have a lot of math credits already). I hope the lack of Spanish 4 doesn’t seriously damage my application, because I don’t know how I would take it at this point :/</p>

5

<p>We would recommend you take either AP Calc or Spanish 4 if possible in place of a class financial apps. Will not having Spanish 4 make you an automatic deny? Absolutely not. However, the fourth level of a foreign language is one of the benchmark courses we look for (along with calc and physics) as components of a most challenging high school curriculum. </p>

<p>If you do not take AP Calc this year be sure to submit a transcript of your summer calc course (or see if it can be placed on your high school transcript). Guessing survey of calc is not as rigorous as AP Calc but it is a calc course.</p>

6

<p>Thank you very much, W&M Admission! I’ll see if my guidance counselor will allow me to make the change.</p>