<p>Including race, school, sex, academic scores, extracurriculars, essays and etc… </p>
<p>Lets say both of them are chinese</p>
<p>Except.
Person A- Takes SAT II chinese and scores an 800.
Person B- Takes SAT II spanish and scores an 750.</p>
<p>Which applicant would in theory be the stronger one.</p>
<p>they would probably both get in or both get rejected. You are not competing against others, you are searching for a fit.</p>
<p>If you’re Chinese and take the SAT II Chinese test, you’d be pretty much expected to get an 800. In fact, schools don’t want you taking SAT IIs in your native language if English isn’t your native language, because that’s pointless (I have heard that some won’t consider them). So I wouldn’t even take that test if I were in that situation. The Spanish score would be more impressive.</p>
<p>Hmmm, am I the only one who believes that regardless of whether or not you’re a native speaker that an 800 on a language test is impressive, because think about it, if people are complaining that Chinese students keep getting 800’s on their language test, then why aren’t native English speakers getting 800’s left and right on their critical reading and writing tests. So, if you have a reasonable response to this I would greatly appreciate hearing it. Nonetheless I find both applicants to be equally impressive since the 50 point difference is marginal especially considering it’s a subject test as opposed to a section on the SAT I.</p>
<p>Tony I’ve come across this argument before, but I think we have to look at things in perspective. English exams tend to be more difficult even for native speakers because the level of difficulty is increased. I’m not sure whether you’ve noticed this or not, but if you were to take the SAT II for English, that equivalent would probably be the Literature subject test. It’s a pretty comprehensive and in-depth type of exercise that would be many times more demanding than, say, the French SAT II. For that reason, it is much easier for a Chinese native speaker to have an 800 on the Chinese test than it is for a native English speaker to have an 800 on the English test.</p>
<p>The foreign languages test proficiency, whilst the English language tests look for higher levels of thinking, going beyond just being able to communicate with the language. I am very sure the French tests won’t ask you difficult french vocabulary (difficult relative to a native french speaker, since we are comparing the english exam with a native english speaker as well) nor will it ever ask many of the questions that you will see on the AP English or SAT II Lit exams (vs. AP French & SAT II French).</p>
<p>*Note: I used French here as an example. I’m sure this applies to Spanish and all other languages respectively.</p>
<p>The Chinese exam is actually harder than many ppl expects… it is after all equivalent to like 3-4 years of a language… and plus many Chinese students who take it don’t exactly get an 800, so I say an 800 is an 800, it can’t hurt…</p>