L&S undergraduate are required to fulfill a non-English requirement.  Students pursuing a BS degree in the College of Letters & Science need to complete three (3) units of a single non-English language (e.g., ASL, French, Hebrew, Spanish, etc.) either via high school units or coursework taken at the college/university level.  Students pursuing a BA degree in L&S need to complete at four (4) units of a single non-English language or the 2/3 option.  For more details regarding the L&S undergraduate language requirement, please refer to the requirements tab in the Guide.  See the section entitled Language.

• A unit is one (1) year of high school work and is equivalent to one semester of college work.   This requirement may be met entirely through high school work, entirely through college work, or through both high school and college work. This will allow a student the opportunity to make full use of high school work in more than one foreign language, or will facilitate the study of a second foreign language that may not have been available in high school.
• Language coursework taken in middle school (7th and 8th grades):  Two (2) years of middle school language counts as one (1) unit.
  • Students are only permitted to receive up to four (4) units of world language by submitting their middle school transcripts to the Office of Admissions and Recruitment if the primary language of instruction was not English.  
    • For instance, if the language spoken in a student’s school through grade 7 was Italian—in all courses (including their mathematics and science courses) then the student would be awarded two units of Italian. If the language of instruction for all coursework through grade 8 was Italian, the student would receive four units of Italian. 
• Language courses taken prior to 7th grade do not qualify as language units for the purpose of satisfying the L&S language requirements.  Thus, students can only use language courses taken starting in 7th grade and later toward the L&S language requirement if these courses/credits get evaluated and approved through the Office of Admissions and Recruitment at UW-Madison.
• Questions concerning high school and middle school language units should be directed to the Office of Admissions and Recruitment.