<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>This is my first ever post on College Confidential, so please forgive me if I am not "doing it right." </p>
<p>My concerns are regarding the sending of SAT II Chinese and AP Chinese scores, particularly to highly selective colleges. </p>
<p>I am a Chinese-American, but I was born here, in the United States. Numbers wise, I scored a 5 on the AP exam and an 800 on the Subject SAT. But I was only able to achieve these scores after not only attending more than a decade of Chinese school--2 hours of class every weekend, plus hours of homework, but also preparing comprehensively for the exam for 9 months throughout one school year. If you don't have any background on the AP Chinese exam, let me make this clear: even if you are fluent in Chinese, and can read, write, and speak very well, you still need to spend a lot of time preparing for this exam. It is much more than just a language proficiency exam--you need to have in-depth (talking more detailed than what my Chinese parents can recall themselves) knowledge of culture and history.</p>
<p>Many of my Chinese-American peers never persevered through those admittedly tortuous years of Chinese school, and most did take standardized tests for Chinese. The premise of this long-winded background is that I want to convey exactly how much work I have put in in order to reach this level of Chinese proficiency (to which I can pass off as a native while traveling in the country alone) and achieve those scores. </p>
<p>Here's the problem: Because I am of Chinese heritage, I worry that these scores might, well, MEAN LESS, in the eyes of an admission officer. So my question is--are my concerns valid? Should I even bother sending the scores at all? Will it even help my application? Would it be better if I sent a different language score, for example SAT II Spanish, instead of Chinese? </p>
<p>If you've read this far, thank you for your time. And many thanks in advance to anybody who replies. </p>