<p>When you put another language other than English as your first language, do colleges understand low verbal performance in addition to the diversity you can bring to the school by that quality?</p>
<p>yes but they still have a lot of applicants who manage to score excellently on verbal</p>
<p>I agree with smartmind. When it comes to the most competitive colleges, they have plenty of applicants who came to the US in middle school or even h.s., not knowing English, and score in the mid 700s on the verbal part of the SAT. I have interviewed students like this.</p>
<p>Unless you've come to the country recently enough that you're eligible to take TOEFL (test of english as a foreign language), ESL is not a good enough excuse for a poor verbal performance, sorry. Many new immigrants do well at English tests (see Stuyvesant - school of immigrants - placement test is half English)</p>
<p>once upon a time, poor english can excuse your low verbal score, but not now. if you're trying to be competitive, you just have to work your bottom off to score high/</p>