<p>What do colleges look at more? </p>
<p>Because Ive heard for some tests, like Chinese 800 is actually only 54%.</p>
<p>For SAT II, score is key not percentile. They are looking for proficiency in the subject which is determined by score.</p>
<p>For example, the average score on the Chinese SAT II is a 764, but that’s due to a lot of native speakers taking the test. Even though it’s only the 50th percentile, It would still look extremely impressive if got that score as a non-native speaker, because the score demonstrates a high level of proficiency.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say the percentile doesn’t matter on SAT IIs. Some tests are harder than others. The hardest is SAT II Lit: among 2008 college-bound seniors, only 6% of those who took it scored 750 or higher, and the 50th percentile was 590. For Chinese, 77% scored 750 or higher, and the 50th percentile was 790. Undoubtedly that’s because most of the people taking it were native Chinese speakers. But if you were an admissions officer comparing the two scores, which would you find more impressive—a near-perfect score on a test on which almost everyone who takes it gets a near-perfect score, or a near-perfect score in which a tiny fraction of all the people taking it get that high a score? True, a high score on the SAT II Chinese shows basic proficiency in Chinese—something you’d expect most native speakers to have. But it doesn’t necessarily show academic achievement in the subject, except for non-native speakers (who would probably be foolish to take the test in the first place, as they’d be competing mainly against native speakers). But probably a strong majority of people taking the SAT II English Lit are also native speakers of English. Clearly something more than basic proficiency in the language is required to get a high score, becqause even among native speakers only a tiny fraction do extremely well. I think the strong score in Lit is clearly a more impressive feat than a native speaker doing well on Chinese. Not to downgrade the importance of that language or the value of being functionally bilingual, but colleges are looking primarily for academic achievement here.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the percentiles for SAT IIs can be extremely misleading. Remember, only a small fraction—fewer than 300,000—of the 1.5 million or so who take the SAT I each year take any SAT IIs at all. Since SAT IIs are required only for certain elite colleges and the UC system, the SAT II-takers as a group will generally be stronger students. And further self-selection goes on for the various SAT II tests; by and large, those strongest in math and science will take Math 2 and Chemistry or Physics; those strongest in Literature and History will take those subject tests, and so on, skewing the universe of test-takers toward the the stronger students in each subject. Consequently, being at or above the 50th percentile on any SAT II subject test is going to be a more impressive feat than scoring at or above the 50th percentile on SAT I.</p>