Colleges with Foreign Language Requirements for Graduation

What’s Covered:

• Benefits of Taking a Foreign Language in College
• Colleges that Require a Foreign Language for Graduation
• How to Find the Right College For You

In high school, you’re probably required to take a foreign language. Perhaps you love learning French, Spanish, Mandarin, German, or whatever you’ve chosen to pursue. Or maybe you’re not a big language fan and can’t wait to head off to college where you never have to touch another language again.

Either way, there are plenty of benefits to learning a foreign language, both business and personal. But that doesn’t mean it’s everyone’s cup of tea. If you’d prefer to stick to English, it is possible to avoid taking a language in college. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the colleges with foreign language requirements.

Benefits of Studying a Language in College

1. It can open the doors to some careers.

For some career paths, it’s mandatory to know at least two languages, including translation and diplomacy, to name a couple. But even if you’re not considering pursuing a career that requires foreign language skills, they can still be useful for certain other jobs, such as teaching, customer service, journalism, medicine and many others.

2. It’s useful for study abroad and other travel experiences.

Love to travel? Dreaming of studying abroad in college? (Post-pandemic, of course.) Studying a foreign language will expand your options and be enormously helpful when you get to your destination of choice. That’s what I found when I studied abroad in Florence in my junior fall semester after taking two years of Italian. (Sure, I still ended up getting lost — a lot — but that was more due to my terrible sense of direction than my language skills.)

3. You never know when it might come in handy.

There are countless ways knowing a foreign language could prove useful to you in the future. It may not seem directly applicable to your career path, but it could help you in your everyday life, whether you make friends who aren’t native English speakers, or want to be able to order your favorite meal at an ethnic restaurant. Knowing another language also connects you to another culture and helps you be a more understanding and open-minded person.

Colleges that Require You to Take a Language

Some schools have a core curriculum with a set of mandatory courses or distribution requirements. Other schools have an open curriculum that allows students to take any courses they want, as long as they fulfill their major requirements. Only 11.5% of colleges surveyed from over 1,000 had a foreign language requirement, according to the 2020 American Council of Trustees and Alumni study.

The below institutions have a foreign language requirement (bear in mind that many colleges have foreign language requirements for particular majors and programs, even if they’re not included on this list). We also recommend double-checking before applying, as these policies are subject to change.

How to Find the Right College for You

Foreign language requirements are one factor to consider when you’re searching for the college for you, but they’re not the only one. From the programs offered to the location, there are many angles to take into account when you’re looking for the best fit for you.

CollegeVine’s free school-search tool will help you find the right matches based on your preferences, such as size, type, programs offered, and more. And once you find those ideal fits, check out our chancing engine, which will estimate your odds of admission to your dream schools based on your academic and extracurricular profiles. Both tools are free to use!