Strongly convinced or benefit of the doubt? Area and language choices by first year students 2023-24
It is always an exciting moment when we see the results of the area and language choices of our new cohort of first-year students. This year, there are some interesting developments.
Area choice
The diagram below shows the overview of the area choices. The areas East Asia (26%) and Europe (23%) are the most popular areas, followed by Latin America (18%), Africa (11%), Middle East (8%), Russia/Eurasia and South-and Southeast Asia (both 5%) and North America (4%).
To gain an insight in the development of the popularity of the areas, we took a look at the registration numbers for the courses History by Area and Culture & Language by Area in the past years. You can see that the both Europe and East Asia have been popular in the past years as well. In addition, the interest in the areas does not change a great deal over a longer period of time. The most noticeable development this year is that we do not have one smallest area anymore, since that a shared honor between the regions North America, Russia & Eurasia and South and South East Asia; all three with about 25 students. The most popular regions, Europe and East Asia also have a similar number of students.
Language choice
Most students of the current cohort chose Spanish as their language (25%), followed by French (15%), Arabic and Mandarin (10%). 8% chose either Japanese or Korean and 6% Portuguese. The smallest languages amongst our current first year students are Russian (4%), Dutch, Indonesian, Swahili (3%) and Hindi (2%). Modern Hebrew, Berber, Persian and Turkish could unfortunately not be offered this year due to a lack of interest. We hope we will be able to attract more students to those languages in the coming academic year, so we can continue to offer a diverse range of languages.
Finally
Compared to other years, many first year students kept doubting their area choice until the very last minute. Hopefully the current area and language courses convince all students that they have made the right choice!