The NYU Abu Dhabi Class of 2023 will be the most polyglottic in history. Ratcheting up their standards, NYUAD has refused to admit any applicant fluent in fewer than four languages. Future cohorts will no longer be contaminated by the uncultured masses who have yet to escape their trilingual-dom.

In an official press release last week, NYUAD Admissions announced that “moving forward, our classes will only have the most diverse, dynamic and lingually gifted students. We regret to inform all applicants who do not meet our selective standards that they will have to settle for Yale-NUS.”

Students speaking only one or two languages drag down discussions and inhibit dialogue. Understanding the same language is essential for cross-cultural communication. Indeed, how can students be expected to learn from each other unless they already spent several years developing a deep understanding of each others’ vernacular and idioms?

A small — but very vocal portion of the student body — endorsed the new decision.

“Seriously, what use are you to the world if you can't converse in five languages simultaneously?” questioned Datwent Overyurhed, Class of 2020, after learning about the new admissions policy. “We don't want backward, close-minded, monolingual scum at this school, all they're good for are neuroscience studies.”

Other students, however, take issue with the new policy.

“Europeans rigged the game,” complained Posca Lonial, Class of 2021.

“Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, they’re all just dialects of each other. Meanwhile I had to move between three different language families growing up since they drew my country’s borders in completely nonsensical places! This policy only serves to perpetuate the neo-imperialist order.”

One anticipated side effect of the policy change is that students will become even more generous with their definition of the word “fluent”. While now most respectable students need to at least have watched a soap opera without subtitles to boast fluency, in the future, standards may dip. Preempting the issue, Admissions has stated that, “No matter how often you use a fun phrase, you need to know more than one to know the language. Saying ‘Yalla Habibi’ means you know Arabic like being an orchestra conductor means you know Italian. You’re not wrong, but you’ve got a ways to go.”

To attract students fluent in as many tongues as possible, the registrar has also announced a change in grade calculation. For every additional language you speak, 0.3 will be added to your cumulative GPA. For example, incoming student Marcy Park — fluent in six languages — can get all Cs and still boast a 4.0.

With the university still only offering programs in Arabic, Mandarin and French, it means that Admissions now expects each student to know more languages than there are in the NYUAD Languages Division. As José Idiotma, head of the non-existent Spanish Department, explained, “University is for showing off how much you already know — not trying to develop yourself more. Learning should stay in United World College, where it belongs. If you’re really that desperate, download Duolingo.”

While many students seek to expand their cultural toolkit, escaping their inferiority still isn’t worth the elective credits. If you don’t dream in three languages simultaneously, it's impossible to fit in at NYUAD. We didn’t come to a global university to put up with ignorant masses. Our sentences span three continents and our meme feeds use alphabets from four different scripts. We can’t let the lingually challenged degrade the diversity we treasure.