Should I take SAT II Chinese or not?

adelikat
Wed, 04 Oct 2006 23:52:02 +0000

On November 4th I’m going to be taking several SAT Subject Tests / SAT IIs. I’m taking Literature, Biology, and Chinese with Listening. It’s that last one I’m not so sure about. I’m fairly certain that on Literature and Biology I can get a score in the high 700s, but on Chinese I think I would get a score more in the 550-650 range. The reason for that is that while I do very well with the listening section and the section written in Pinyin romanization, I’m very bad at reading characters. While I’m hoping that with a month of hard studying I can raise my reading ability, I’m preparing for the worst.

The only reason I’m considering taking Chinese is that a few of the schools I want to apply to (Yale, Princeton, and Georgetown) either require or recommend three subject tests. So, my question is this: will a poor score on my Chinese test hurt my chances at the many other schools that only require two SAT IIs? If it makes any difference, my SAT I scores are 610 math, 790 verbal, 800 writing. Thanks.