<p>Do they have different standards for international students? Just curious...</p>
<p>Well, since obviously English is not their native language, of course. If you had to take the SAT entirely in Chinese or Spanish after studying in high school, how well do you think you’d do? Now add the fact standardized tests aren’t necessarily done in foreign countries (many countries are still essay-only) and they have no prep available…
Some schools expect a good math score and replace the SAT Verbal Reasoning with the TOEFL score to demonstrate English proficiency. However because many foreign schools “specialize” their students early, some students may not be allowed to take math past 9th or 10th grade so this has to be taken into account too.
Finally, schools typically look at scores from within the context of the applicants’ area: i.e., all Chinese applicants together, all European applicants together, etc. and within opportunities available: teaching yourself English in a slum of Mumbai does not represent the same type of achievement as going to the best British-patterned school in Mumbai and expecting the same from someone who works as from someone who goes to cram school doesn’t make sense. Typically, thus, International students don’t compete with Domestic students, sometimes they are “bonus students” for the college (it depends how the college is ranked of course).
However for almost all schools but 8, financial need is taken into account, meaning that between a lower-scoring student who can pay and a higher-scoring student who can’t, they’ll take the lower-scoring student who can pay, something that is seen as quite unfair for brilliant but very poor applicants who often had to compromise the family’s daily food supply and get a loan just to take the SAT and apply.</p>
<p>Great question, as an International Student I thought they would be more strict, thank god the TOEFL exists.</p>