<p>I heard that the US college look at International SAT score with a bit more tolerance.
Is that true?</p>
<p>i have never heard of that.</p>
<p>no you're expected to have a better score because of the extra competition</p>
<p>There's no clear answer to that.</p>
<p>If you are not a native speaker of English, you might be given a little bit more tolerance on the English section if the rest of your application passes muster. That being said, there are a lot more factors that come into play: your English and writing scores are expected to meet certain standards if you apply for writing-intensive majors. If you apply as a physics major, your math score will be more important. A very selective college that receives many applications from e.g. China might actually hold Chinese students to a higher standard than domestic students while giving Nigerian students a little bit of a break, etc.</p>
<p>Top-end colleges do not give any lee-way to international students with regards to their SAT scores, and some regions (for example, China/Korea or South East Asia) might even have higher average SAT scores for both the application and the admit pool than the US.</p>
<p>As an anecdote, the 4 people from my school that got into Stanford as internationals in the previous admissions cycle all had SAT I scores >= 2300, and 3 800s for their SAT IIs.</p>
<p>Adcoms expect you have higher math scores, but lower verbal scores than american applicants.</p>
<p>OP: Bottom line is, just try your best and apply regardless of your scores. There's nothing definitive or certain, even for the Americans, and it certainly doesnt hurt to try.
Someone I know (non native speaker of English) got into Columbia WITH financial aid with <2000 SAT I, SAT II >1500 but not 1600
Another guy (bilingual, but one of the languages he speaks is English. I think he registered E as the primary language spoken at home) got rejected from Stanford with low 2300s SAT I, 2400 SAT II.</p>