The Commitment

UM Chinese Flagship Requirements

Accepting our admission offer constitutes an affirmation on your part that you intend to persist in your study of Chinese through the Capstone year of the program and to achieve Superior proficiency in Mandarin Chinese as rated on an ACTFL-certified exam. This commitment involves

  1. Taking the prescribed Chinese courses in each semester that you are enrolled in the University
  2. Participating in the eight-week summer study abroad component of the Flagship program*
  3. Completing a second summer studying Chinese abroad directly before junior year*
  4. Completing the Capstone academic year program in China, which often takes place immediately after your senior year, but in some circumstances may be possible to complete earlier
*Some students may place beyond one or more of the summer sessions

Important Notes

  • Committing to Flagship as an incoming freshman does not “lock you in” for 5 years; you must simply complete all required steps each term in order to advance to the next Flagship-designated course. If you determine that the Flagship curriculum is too rigorous for your purposes, you can switch to UM’s non-Flagship Chinese track and still pursue a major or minor (note: study abroad is usually required for the major, regardless of Flagship status).
  • For access to upper level courses, students must not only abide by our probation policy but also hit each course’s proficiency benchmark. The program reserves the right to bar a student from taking a course for which the student is linguistically unprepared.

NSEP Requirements

The National Security Education Program also requires that all students in the Chinese Language Flagship Program adhere to the following requirements:

  1. Sign a student contract formally agreeing to all of the terms and conditions involved in being a Flagship Undergraduate student;
  2. Agree to the use of their personal data and acknowledge that their linguistic progress will be tracked and monitored for the duration of the Flagship program and beyond, which will require registration in the national Language Flagship student database;
  3. Demonstrate substantial progress, by Flagship Center standards, toward professional level language proficiency in Mandarin Chinese;
  4. Commit to completing all components of the domestic Flagship program; and
  5. Commit to completing the required overseas Flagship Capstone program, consisting of a semester of direct enrollment at one of the Capstone sites, followed by a semester-long internship.
X