Would taken chinese lower my chances of going into a good college?

Applying to College
1

<p>I'm chinese, but my native language is cantonese. I don't know anything about chinese. I can't speak it, write it, read, understand it etc... Would taking chinese in high school make colleges think I'm not challenging myself?</p>

2

<p>I don’t think that should be a problem. And if it makes you feel better, you can put under “additional information” on the common app that chinese is NOT your first language.</p>

3

<p>isn’t like really hard to learn to write in Chinese? I think i read an something once that said Chinese kids have to keep learning o write throughout their middle school years.</p>

4

<p>Spoken Cantonese and spoken Mandarin are at least as different from each other as spoken English and spoken Russian. Any admissions office that doesn’t get that, is at a place you wouldn’t want to attend.</p>

<p>If you want to study Mandarin go ahead and do so. If you’d rather study another language, do so. Please, please, please, stop worrying about this one!</p>

5

<p>I was wondering if there was a spot on your app. where you can put the number of languages you know?</p>

6

<p>You’re exactly like me, Cantonese, and know nothing about Mandarin.</p>

<p>I’m taking it, I asked the same question before.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/963274-chinese-american-taking-chinese.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/963274-chinese-american-taking-chinese.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>And my doubts are cleared.</p>

7

<p>On the common application they will ask you what languages you speak and what languages are spoken at your home. They will clearly be able to see that your native language is Cantonese and not Mandarin.</p>

8

<p>Take the language that interests you and is most useful to you. There are some times when you have to consider how a college will view rigour of classes, where you want to take a core instead of an elective (sometimes vice versa.) but this is not one of those cases, formal language training 3 and preferably 4 years is good. Going after what inspires and interests you is good. Fluency in speaking, reading and writing is more important than just getting by. That’s why they encourage not switching between 2.</p>

<p>My daughter took 4 years Spanish because I insisted, but she was more interested in French. She didn’t do great until she got a chance to visit Argentina in a Spanish immersion program. She always wanted to know a Chinese language because we lived near a Chinatown. She took an intensive year of Mandarin in college. She might be suprised to find that Cantonese was the language spoken in our city. But she can talk to people in our new city and they are surprised she can. She also took Russian and that helped when she travelled through former USSR states semester abroad.</p>

9

<p>

</p>

<p>I would disagree. It will certainly be easier for you as a Cantonese speaker to learn Mandarin, but that doesn’t mean that a college is going to somehow penalize you because of it or that you can’t “challenge” yourself. If you have an interest, then do it.</p>

10

<p>There are 300 kids in our Sunday Chinese school. Most of the students are American born, a lot of them take more than 10 years of Chinese to attain HS level of proficiency in China standards. And our advanced courses have been accredited in Colleges. So don’t worry about it and go ahead.</p>