Though the number of colleges is dwindling from a bigger picture perspective, students applying to postsecondary institutions know better than anyone just how many schools are out there. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2021 there were approximately 4,000 Title IV degree-granting institutions in the United States.

Due to the confluence of historical advantages and the power of cultural prestige, some colleges have more name-brand recognition than others that are equally successful at educating their student bodies. There are, for example, a mere 8 schools in the Ivy League and (commit this to memory for future trivia trick questions) and only 14 in the Big 10, but those universities are hardly the only academically competitive or athletically exciting schools out there. In fact, this paragraph proves that those actually make up less than 1% of all Title IV degree-granting programs.

Why does this matter? Well, it’s maddening trying to cut through the noise (or bombardment of marketing campaigns) coming from the higher education industry when it comes to assessing the value of a school or an individual program within a larger university. How do you find out whether a school has an “elite” reputation overall but doesn’t actually have the curricula to back it up in your desired major to back it up? Conversely, how do small schools — or particular academic tracks within bigger colleges — become well-known for the strength of their individual programs?

That’s where we come in. Our deep dive series answers the common question “Is This School Good for That?” so you can learn whether you’ll be getting the biggest bang for your buck. We’ve been in the college counseling game for a long time, and over the years we’ve learned the ins and outs of assessing different majors within the same school and comparing programs at competing institutions. In addition to providing individual counseling that helps students get into the top programs in their field every application season, we like to share what we know here on the blog. In this post, we’ll be breaking down Middlebury’s reputation as a premier destination for gaining linguistic and cultural fluency in a foreign language.

The History of Foreign Languages at Middlebury

Middlebury’s preeminence in teaching foreign languages is unique for a few reasons. Some people are surprised simply to realize that a school with less than 3,000 undergraduate students located in rural Vermont is leading the charge on the acquisition of global languages, but for us it’s Middlebury’s origin story.

Lots of collegiate programs we’ve mentioned in the deep dive series so far — Neuroscience at UMich, Computer Science at Dartmouth, Creative Writing at University of Iowa, Business at Penn, and Aeronautics at Rice — rose to prominence in specific disciplines because they were the first to establish academic programs that took an emerging field seriously, invested in research, and attracted students and faculty responsible for key innovations. Understandably, this is not the case at Middlebury’s notorious Language Schools; Middlebury isn’t inventing language or the study of it, the history of which precedes ancient times.

Basically, Middlebury got on the foreign-languages map, not for being the first to do it, but for doing it really, really well. Depending on the proficiency level and program style of a language course, the course protocol and curriculum will differ, of course, but Middlebury is renowned for its pedagogical rigor and policy of complete immersion across the board.

Middlebury has been at it for over 100 years, founding its first language school in 1915 and, as of today, offering programs in Abenaki, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. They are perhaps most famous for the Language Pledge® (yeah, it’s proprietary) all students must sign which is “a formal commitment to speak, listen, read, and write the language of study as the only means of communication” for the length of their time in the program or else reach expulsion.

The State of Foreign Languages at Middlebury Today

While the language pledge may sound unorthodox as educational contracts go, Middlebury’s approach clearly works. For a relatively tiny school, they have an outsized cultural impact on the study and teaching of foreign languages. A round-up of recent headlines turns up quite a few testaments to this:

The U.S. News and World Report currently ranks Middlebury as #3 in the country for its study abroad programs.
FluentU recognized Middlebury as the Best Foreign Language Program in 2022.
The U.S. State Department recognized “the Middlebury Institute’s Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages program (TESOL)...for a second year in a row as a top English Language Fellow (ELF) producing institution” in 2020.
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) once again in 2023 determined Middlebury to be a “Fulbright Top Producing Institution,” a commendation which affirms Middlebury’s contributions to “the flagship international educational exchange of the United States Government.”
Middlebury frequently features past students who have passed the United Nations Competitive Examination for Language Positions (CELP), an infamously challenging test that even the most ambitious interpreters often struggle to pass for years.

So we’d say that Middlebury’s Language Schools are the real deal. Or, as the French folk would say, c'est la vraie affaire. (Candidly, though, we don’t parlez vous the français and that’s that on that.)

If you’re ready to start your foreign language and cultural immersion adventure at the top programs, reach out to us for help.