<p>Just a couple of quick notes - first of all, some colleges will allow exemptions based on AP or SAT II score, but there are unfortunately no SAT II or AP tests available for Russian. (My daughter studied Russian in high school so that was a problem for her – she was in a group that was part of a pilot for AP testing, but that was almost 10 years ago and nothing seems to have come of it).</p>
<p>So that leaves the exemption being something that would be available only if the college offers Russian language and offers placement testing for that purpose. My daughter’s college offered a placement exam in Russian, but I don’t think it could have been used to place out of the language requirement – I think the purpose of the exam was merely to determine class level for incoming students.</p>
<p>Also, the ability to speak and understand conversational Russian might not be sufficient for a college-placement exam. My daughter studied Russian for 4 years in high school, and also spent a semester living with a host family and attending high school in Russia – but she was not able to place into 2nd year Russian at her college. She came close, and her adviser would have allowed her to attempt a 2nd year class – but despite an excellent vocabulary and decent speaking ability, her grasp of the nuances of Russian grammar was too weak. She ended up repeating 1st year Russian, where she earned an A+ grade - which probably was a good choice because it was a nice boost to her GPA – but she still had to study another year of Russian to meet her college’s language requirement. Perhaps a native speaker like your son may have a better innate sense of the grammar – but the point is, the college placement exam is geared to college-level ability. I have a sense that if there had been an AP or SAT II exam available to my daughter, she probably would have scored well enough - I might be mistaken, but I do think that she was given an unofficial score of 4 or 5 for the pilot-AP exam she took – but that didn’t count. </p>
<p>Maybe her particular college had stricter expectations (she took the exam at Columbia U.) – but my point is that even a heritage speaker might find that their day-to-day knowledge of the language isn’t the equivalent of a college course. (The flip side is that when my daughter was attending her Russian high school, she learned a lot more about English grammar in her English class there than she ever learned in all of her years growing up and attending school in America - I remember her sending me text messages with comments such as, “Did you know that English has a nominative case?” I learned a lot that year too.)</p>