TheologyWonk

Hey all. I am applying next year (2021) to PhD programs with a Social Ethics focus (some have slightly different names, but looking at Chicago, Union, Yale, Vanderbilt, and BU). Yale's program is highly specific about language req's (French and German); the others specify that modern language is the expected standard, and most allow a student, at least theoretically, to swap a language for a 'method,' ie stats, if it's relevant to their line of study. Has anyone here successfully done this? The programs I'm looking at are structured major/minor and I'd like econ to be my minor--my prospective focus is social-gospel critiques of capitalism in the context of industrialism. Given that, I feel less need to read Barth in his native language and more need for, say, calculus. Which in an ideal world would contribute to progress toward degree rather than just adding more req's.