<p>I was wondering if anyone could help with this question.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<p>Assuming an applicant has great grades (4.00 UW w/AP classes), High SAT and ACT, great EC's, top class rank, etc.</p>
<p>What affect would being bilingual have on admissions? Would that help tip the scales at all?
Or, would it not matter at all? (I'm talking about someone who's first language is English, but they can also read, write, and speak fluently in another language - specifically Spanish).</p>
<p>D is bilingual in Spanish and has tutored ESL (English as Second Language) in our local elementary school for 2 years. She also tutors current high school students in Spanish. (She does this as part of her community service).</p>
<p>Does this even make any impact or not?</p>
<p>I really appreciate any opinions! Thanks! :)</p>
<p>Lots of kids who apply to top colleges are bilingual, so it isn’t that special. If your daughter could speak, say, four languages fluently, then that would be more impressive, and even then it wouldn’t be a hook. So being bilingual really won’t have much weight in admissions, but it’s still a very good trait to have. However, being able to tutor other students in the language is worth mentioning on her application as an above-average extracurricular activity, and can only help.</p>
<p>It sounds as though your daughter has a strong application. The second language rounds out the application because she is using it to help other people. Language skills for high school students vary considerably based on the student’s interest and the high school language teacher. However, a good number of students have strong second language skills. Some have parents who speak the second language and some have proven their skills through national testing. The second language is interesting. What she is doing with it is good.</p>
<p>There have been a number of threads about multilingual students - there are plenty just here on CC! Personally, I speak English (obviously), Spanish, Hebrew, and Chinese with varying degrees of fluency. I think it’s become more common for high school students to know many languages these days.
As others says, it depends more what she does with it - the tutoring sounds great!</p>
<p>I also think it’s what you choose to do with the extra languages that you learn that makes multilingualism a plus.</p>
<p>For example, almost all ABCs (American-born Chinese) claim to speak Chinese to a certain degree of fluency, but how many do you see put their Chinese-speaking skills to use in a practical manner, by, say, helping out recent Chinese immigrants who do not speak English at the local social security center, for example? I think that if you are able to put your language skills to a practical use (like your D does by tutoring in Spanish), it really shows the applicational side to learning a language and it helps to portray that you’re not just one of the people who learn a bunch of languages just to include a laundry list of languages in your resume.</p>
<p>But re: # of languages, I think if you just evaluate number of languages spoken/studied, there’s plenty of tri-quad-quint-lingual people applying to colleges right now, especially international students or students who have lived abroad to some extent. However, the students amongst these that actually put their language abilities to use in an EC like your D did is probably still quite small.</p>
<p>I think it makes you sound more unique, and its good if youre like majoring in business or something like that. I mean its not really gonna do much to your app but it will make it look better. Especially since youre tutoring-thats good</p>
<p>Like if there were two applications which were basically the same… but if one app has languages on it, they would probably choose that person over the other one.</p>
<p>I might be wrong, but I believe most of the students to top schools are bilingual. Knowing “only” two languages is nothing special that would make an impact on decisions.</p>
<p>Bi-lingual in the sense of equal to that of a native in the “second” language, with a currency in the culture and literature of the “second” language is a strong credential.</p>