If the High School accepts middle school foreign language towards graduation, does Texas A&M.

Does foreign language have to be completed in high school, or could it be completed in 7th or 8th grade?

Yes, those credits count toward your high school degree plan and requirements for college. For VERY selective colleges, you may consider taking three or four years of a foreign language.

How selective are we talking? Ivy, UC System, Vandy, Northwestern?

Seems it would be great to get that out of the way…particular fir a student in sports and in band with not a lot of free time/electives.

Quito said:

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How selective are we talking? Ivy, UC System, Vandy, Northwestern?

Seems it would be great to get that out of the way…particular fir a student in sports and in band with not a lot of free time/electives.

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Sure thing. This website has an excellent article about their expectation.

Ivy League Course Requirements

A good general rule of thumb is to take at LEAST three years of a foreign language for schools with less than 25% selectivity.

Quito said:

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How selective are we talking? Ivy, UC System, Vandy, Northwestern?

Seems it would be great to get that out of the way…particular fir a student in sports and in band with not a lot of free time/electives.

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Also, if your student is pursuing those schools, are they hooked or unhooked? It makes a difference to how aggressive you need to be in your college preparation.

As mentioned, the rule of thumb for selective schools is at least 3 years. Not sure if all Texas districts are required to do it this way, but for us (Plano ISD), it took 2 full years of middle school foreign language to get 1 year of HS credit. Both my kids then went on to take 2 more years in HS, so 3 years of credit on their transcript while still leaving some extra flexibility in their 11th and 12th grade schedules. That said, it kind of stunk to take 4 years and only get credit for 3

Good to know. Sounds like I need to talk to a High School councilor in our district. I'm asking because our oldest is entering 6th grade and has several electives to choose from. Unfortunately (really fortunately) he wants to do band (elective), and is in GT program (elective), and wants to do engineering as well.

He will most likely play baseball and football in high school and I'm thinking getting foreign language out of the way will be beneficial.

I had inquired about this a few years ago and was told that junior high foreign lang credit can be counted as high school credit and included in the high school gpa. The two foreign lang courses must be consecutive. For example: Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 (as opposed to something like Spanish 1 and German 1).

I always wonder why some colleges want so many years of foreign language in high school. I took three years of Spanish, but I am very far from fluent. It just seems like other elective courses could be more useful (and fun!) for the kid. I think learning another language is great, but I don't think a high school class is really the way to learn one.

Rev03 said:

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I always wonder why some colleges want so many years of foreign language in high school. I took three years of Spanish, but I am very far from fluent. It just seems like other elective courses could be more useful (and fun!) for the kid. I think learning another language is great, but I don't think a high school class is really the way to learn one.

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The most selective college want to see the student pursuing the most rigorous course load available to them. Foreign languages included in that. Also you be very surprised by how many students do develop some fluency (conversational, writing) and also pursue volunteer missions in those languages.

I just think there are other rigorous courses they could choose to take (like more sciences or computer type courses or other technical courses to allow them to explore different fields, while they're young) but instead they all have to take a language, even if it doesn't necessarily interest them. I just find it weird.

I'm also coming from my experience of three years of language where I learned to conjugate verbs and that's about all I remember. If I actually came away fluent, then I would support having to take a language. I think people mostly learn through immersion, and the students just aren't immersed in typical high school language classes.

Rev03 said:

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I just think there are other rigorous courses they could choose to take (like more sciences or computer type courses or other technical courses to allow them to explore different fields, while they're young) but instead they all have to take a language, even if it doesn't necessarily interest them. I just find it weird.

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Oh, I totally get it and they want you taking those courses too.

Agree 100% that it is overkill. It's a missed opportunity to explore other courses that may be of interest as a college major. It's also a missed opportunity to require a personal finance course.

The only folks I know who actually speak a foreign language (even just semi-functionally) learned it by full immersion, i.e. they have family that speak it at home or they spent up to a year+ in a country where it was the primary language. The typical HS experience is to take 2-3 years and know essentially nothing useful a short time after.

This aggravates the hell out of me as a parent (3-4 years of foreign language for selective schools). My boys want to take ALL the math courses available at their school (including calculus and statistics) which means they'll have to burn an elective on math. They were all set to knock out two years of Spanish early (getting credit for high school Spanish in 8th grade), but now they might have to burn ANOTHER elective to get a third year of Spanish?! They could have used that scarce elective on something like computer science or another STEM class.

My kids are both at A&M currently, senior and a freshman. They both took Spanish in 8th & 9th grade & got the two years of credit needed to graduate. They are both STEM majors electrical engineering and (hopefully) computer science.

They used the rest of their high school electives for AP Chem and Physics, Calculus, Computer Science & coding experience etc. They did not apply to any colleges requiring more than two years of foreign language credit (A&M, Auburn, Georgia, UT Dallas). I suggest talking to a counselor at your high school and also looking at what schools your child will potentially apply to. Neither of mine had Ivy, Rice, Duke or Stanford aspirations. They both graduated from a giant competitive 6A high school in Texas. Good luck!

Let me clarify what qualifies as a VERY selective college, which are those with an admission rate under 25%. Texas A&M is not among those sets of schools.

I hope this alleviates some the angst or discussion about this topic.