unfairness of SAT II language tests.

imhkim
Fri, 23 Aug 2013 22:52:31 +0000

Yeah, I totally feel you. I want to take SAT II Chinese, since Chinese is one of my best subjects at school. However, I am discouraged by the fact that many native Chinese take this test and ruin the curves for non-Chineses. (Not blaming the Chinese, but just used Chinese since it relates to me; this happens to other nationalities too).

But then, colleges don’t care if a native gets an 800 on his/ her own country’s language test. For example, I’m Korean but I don’t even want to take the Korean test. I’m perfectly fluent in Korean, but I took a practice test for fun and didnt even get an 800 (lol yeah, it’s sorta embarrassing but I made a few stupid mistakes here and there). In fact, it’s a negative if I get a 760 on Korean.

TL;DR- A 700 for a non-native is much more impressive than an 800 for a native. Don’t worry too much, and just keep up the good work. Good luck :)