I know this comment may seem very late considering I passed my application in for the Nov. 1 deadline, but I was wondering if choosing to take another course instead of foreign language for senior year is looked down upon. This year I chose not to continue on with Spanish 5 Honors and instead take an AP Statistics course. I was iffy on the matter when making my decision but that was what I ended up with. Would colleges rather see the Spanish Class?

Hi Allison:

Generally speaking, students who are most competitive in our applicant pool have taken four years of the five core subject areas (English, Math, Science, History, Foreign Language) and taken on a strong senior year schedule.

To answer your question specifically, we really do want to see students complete four years of (the same) foreign language. In your case, the Spanish 4 course you took junior year would count as your 4th year of language (we would count the Spanish 1 class students have taken in 8th grade). Therefore, while we certainly love to see a student continue with the 5th year of language, taking a different class (and in your case, a very legitimate class with AP Stats) is not a problem at all... especially if the AP Statistics class is more in line with what you might be looking to major in. Since you are taking an AP course in place of the 5th year of Honors Spanish, we (speaking for PC, obviously) would not "penalize" you in the review process for this decision (unless you wanted to be a Spanish major... then we would say, "Why didn't she take the Spanish 5??")

Thank you for replying. I look forward to hearing from PC (my number one school)! Thanks for the help!