The US academic year programs included in LinguaVista were chosen on the basis of requirements for programs in less commonly taught languages to reach the ILR 3/ACTFL Superior level. In the absence of testing data due to the fact that universities do not normally test language proficiency at the end of the program, LinguaVista established a set of criteria for program inclusion:

• National Flagship Language Initiative award from the National Security Education Program to promote target language proficiency at ILR 3/ACFTL Superior level;
• Affiliation of a National Resource Center (US Department of Education Title VI/Fulbright-Hays) with the university, in a related world area;
• Size of the program; specifically, number of language courses offered and enrollments in those courses, according to the latest available data;
• Level of language courses offered; in particular, whether courses at or beyond third-year are offered;
• Degrees offered; in particular, whether undergraduate degrees in the target language are offered, at the minimum;
• Courses and programs in relevant world areas;
• Content courses in relevant disciplines, offered in the target language.

It is important to note that few of the included programs meet all of the criteria. Particularly in the case of some least commonly taught languages, some exceptions from the criteria were made in order to be able to include programs offering courses in those languages.

The domestic summer programs in LinguaVista were included on the basis of affiliation with US institutions with strong programming in the target language, or on the basis of a consortial relationship with such institutions (for example, the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute at the University of Wisconsin draws students from a number of institutions with strong programming in languages of this world area).

The overseas programs in LinguaVista were included on the basis of affiliation with US institutions with strong programming in the target language, or on the basis of a referral by a US association of teachers of the target language (for example, the American Association of Teachers of Arabic, or the American Association of Teachers of Korean).