Hi everyone, I’m setting myself up to get into an elite/ivy league college. I need some advice on whether or not I should take 4 years of Spanish. I’m already fluent in one other language that isn’t offered at my school, I recently took the AP test and am expecting to get at least a 3-5 on it. I’m already taken 2 years of Spanish and was previously thinking about going on to AP span lang., but I would much rather take other APs I’m interested in, such as human geography and such. The thing is I’m taking span 3 over the summer to room up my schedule, and my school says there is only a tiny chance i’ll be able to jump to AP after, in which case I’ll want to take it. If I am unable to do so, should I continue with Spanish four? Will it make much difference whether I take that class or take another class that I’m more interested in, keeping in mind I have another language already? I should also mention that I’m already taking all the sophomore ap classes the school lets me, so should I take Spanish 4 or take a different non ap course? I know that schools highly recommend 4 years of one language.
what do you think?
What are the pros and cons of both options?
why do elite colleges want to see 4 years of a single language? Is it to see that the student is proficient in two languages or more to see that I can stick to something all the way through?
If I’m proficient in three languages how much better would that make me look? or should I clear space for other ap courses I’m interested in? Will that hurt my chances?
thank you
Spend as much time investigating non-ivy schools as you do thinking about ivy schools.
Contact an ivy and ask if AP test proficiency in a second language is sufficient for FL requirements.
Does colleges of choice give you credits for AP Human Geo? Don’t just take that because it is an AP.
It will have absolutely no effect on your application. Many international applicants are proficient in 3+ languages, and their odds are worse just be virtue of them being international.
As for your non-Spanish/English language, contact some of your potential schools and ask them. If you have some type of proficiency certificate, it would probably bolster your case.
Complete Spanish 3 and take the October subject test. If you score 700+, you’re good. If you don’t, take a semester of Spanish (college Spanish 3) at your local community college.
If thee years of Spanish meets the requirements/recommendations of the colleges you plan to apply to then you are fine stopping there.
but between Spanish 4 and another class like journalism or debate(non ap), which should I take? wouldn’t Spanish 4 show im consistent?
what do you mean by investigate non-ivy schools as well as ivy schools? and also, wouldn’t another ap help boost my gpa? my school gives 1 extra point
@golden12 he means you need match and safety schools. You can set yourself up all you like, but the odds are not in your favor.
Adcoms do NOT weight GPAs. An A is an A.
They DO look at curriculum rigor, and would expect 6-8 AP’s by the time you graduate (3-4 each of Junior and senior year, or 1, 1, 3, 3 if your high school offers AP Human Geography and a Sophomore AP.)
IB, AICE, DE, PSEO all count the same as AP in terms of rigor.
Finding dream schools is easy. The REAL work is finding safeties and matches.
A Safety is a school with 50% admission rate for your category (ie., if you’re instate vs. OOS), where you’ve run the NPC and found it’s absolutely affordable from an automatic scholarship or financial aid, where your test scores and GPA place you in the top 10% students (or at least the top 25% students), a school that shares some characteristics with your favorite colleges and where you can see yourself spend 4 years. You need 2.
A Match is a school with 40% acceptance rate, where you’ve run the NPC and found it’s absolutely affordable with a college-based scholarship or financial aid, where your test scores and GPA place you at or near the top 75% threshold, a school that shares some characteristics with your favorite colleges and where you can see yourself spend 4 years. You need 3-5.
Once you’ve found those, you can add as many reaches as you want.
If you don’t know where you find those, borrow the following books from the library OR buy them (used 2013+is ok) - the first two would be essential, the other ones complementary:
- Colleges that Change Lives
- Fiske Guide
- Princeton Review’s Best Colleges
- Colleges that Pay you Back
- Insider’s Guide to the Colleges
“what do you mean by investigate non-ivy schools as well as ivy schools?”
Exactly what it says. The Ivy League is simply an athletic league that consists of 8 schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell). They are NOT “the top / best 8 schools in the country” - they are merely 8 OF the top schools in this country. Cast your net more broadly – there is no reason on earth to fetishize those 8 schools as if they offered something appreciably different from the top 20 - 30 schools or so in this country.
Taking Spanish may not be the big issue here. In another thread the OP wrote
It is open to question whether the OP will be able to finish HS and show the academic potential/achievement the “elite/ivy league college” expect given the record so far.
And is is perhaps another sign of ability here that a rising 10th grader did not realize she/he could compute “How much more can I raise it” by simply assuming A’s for the remaining HS years and calculating the resulting average.