<p>weird question... but, i'm chinese. and i do a lot of community service for the chinese community in my area, teaching the elderly english, organizing events, etc. i sincerely love doing this but im still wondering if me being Chinese makes all this less impressive to colleges? i definitely won't stop doing this if it does seem less impressive, im just wondering.</p>
<p>and also, a stupid question: i take mandarin in school..... im assuming colleges wont really like this since im chinese? and even though they dont know that im already pretty fluent, they'll still think that oh, she's not challenging herself enough, right??</p>
<p>im not completely fluent. i just speak it fluently. and besides, we were required to take a language and my only option was mandarin… unless i wanted to do a lot of work and catch up with a more advanced french class.</p>
<p>Colleges won’t be less impressed by your community service, but taking Mandarin if you are already fluent doesn’t really look good. I go to a school where many students take “foreign language” classes in a language that is actually their first language. While this won’t necessarily look “bad” to colleges, don’t expect them to be impressed by straight As and an 800 on the SAT 2 if you’re already fluent.</p>
<p>If you’re doing it because you like to and it’s what you care about, I really don’t think they care where you do your community service.</p>
<p>Taking Mandarin perhaps won’t be as impressive as if you had started and excelled at a new language, but I don’t think that should discourage you from taking it. There were many “fluent” speakers in my AP Spanish class that really benefitted from the course. They were already able to speak it fluently and communicate well with Spanish speakrs, but their grammar improved a lot and they were able to feel more comfortable speaking with their relatives in their native tongue instead of being embarrassed by their fluent-but-still-not-obviously-perfect spanish.</p>