Should I take AP Chinese??

Student Lounge International Students
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<p>I am a freshman and I have to choose AP courses next year. I have been in China for a few years. I have a few questions...</p>

<p>1) Is AP Chinese recognized or accepted in good universities?
2) Do we actually get college credit for taking AP Chinese test?
3) What is the level of AP Chinese Test equivalent to HSK course?</p>

<p>Thx in advance!!</p>

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<p>Hey! Yay China buddy! I’m residing in Shanghai currently, haha. I took AP Chinese my freshman year, self-studied. Chinese is my second language, so I took it with the mindset “Might as well.” I got a 5. If you think you can score high, I say definitely take it, it shows your language capabilities. </p>

<p>1) It really depends on your major. If you’re going into something communication/international based, it looks good to have taken AP language courses and scored high on them.
2) Once again, it depends.
3) I don’t know about the HSK specifically, but AP Chinese is relatively easy to that of IB levels, if that helps. compared to IB, AP Chinese is pretty easy, a 6 to IB’s 10.</p>

<p>answer mine? <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1498314-chances-ed-upenn-please-help.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1498314-chances-ed-upenn-please-help.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>My son is currently studying in an international division of a Chinese school in Beijing. He will taken the AP Chinese exam on Wednesday. He recently took the HSK 4 and said it was easy. He’ll take the HSK 5 in June. I’ll let you know what he thinks of the AP test after he takes it (but obviously no results for either AP or HSK 5 until July).</p>

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<p>Son reported that the difficulty of AP Chinese was between HSK 3 and 4 -mostly 3 but with a few higher level vocabulary words. He said he took the test in a room with 5 Americans and 30 native Chinese speakers. The challenge to the native speakers was understanding the questions, directions and answer choices given in English!</p>

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<p>Yes, Chinese is a growing language worldwide. It will look good on college applications, just make sure you’re ready to take on the coursework and exam for the AP class.</p>

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<p>is it difficult? cuz im a half-native…</p>

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Not quite (given that you are a half-native), as long as you understand beforehand what the question types are and what the time limits are. Also, there IS a speaking section on the exam, which reminds me of the kind of silly TOEFL speaking section. You basically speak to the microphone and they record what you said.
I’m a 100% native and plan to apply for US colleges and I’ve seen the exam questions, although there was no good for me to take it. I don’t know whether native-speakers or non-native college professors or whoever make the test, but the way the questions perceive the usage of Chinese is not exactly the way natives really do. The questions are grammatically correct, of course. The problem is with the answer choices. We don’t usually say things that the testmaker put in the choices.
Anyway, if you are gonna take the exam, take a quick look at the course description and free response questions in previous exams posted on the CollegeBoard AP website. They’re gonna help.

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