<p>Hi!</p>
<p>Ok, so I got my German with Listening SAT II back: 680. A bit disappointing.
I thought I did better, so I was pretty sad when I got the result. But then someone passed me the "percentile rank of students who took this subject in high-school", here I was around the +/- 86%. But now I look at my Score report and I am in the 65% rank, which sucks. But, I am not a Native German and I only had German for 0.5 year 3 years ago! I studied my butt off to get a good score, but the 65% is really bad for me, really.
Is this the rank of ALL the people who did this subject test? Cause the natives obviously score higher. </p>
<p>My question is: is a 680 REALLY bad? I mean, I am applying to good schools, will these scores really lower my chances? </p>
<p>Thanks in advance,
Steven</p>
<p>You only had a half a year of German three years ago and got a 680? That's fantastic. How did you pull that off? I have been taking German since my sophomore year (I am a senior now), and I just didn't bother to take the German test out of fear!</p>
<p>Ah you make me feel a little bit better, thank you for that!
Well, I just studied really hard. I am from Holland, so the languages may seem quite similar, but really, they aren't. The grammar was killing me!
So, is it a good idea that my counselor states in her letter that I didn't do extremely well because of my non-german? :)</p>
<p>German grammar is extremely difficult. The vocabulary, however, can be quite facile with the numerous cognates and such (although watch out for those false cognates!). No, don't bother mentioning it in your counselor recommendation as an excuse, although your counselor could write something like</p>
<p>"Despite the fact that StevenHilton comes from Holland, he did extremely well for a non-native on the German SAT Subject Test..."</p>
<p>However, I think a 680 is a fine score on a foreign language exam. Das wird sich alles finden. ;)</p>