<p>One day I got bored and thought "Wouldn't it be cool to learn Japanese?" Fast-forward through time and it is still quite cool. It is, however, quite a time commitment (minimum seven hours a week, often closer to 21), and as such I would like to put it on my college app. I'm going to take the AP Japanese exam and the SAT II Subject Test for Japanese. I may also take the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam. In what other ways can I show colleges that I love, and am rather good at Japanese? I was going to take the National Exam (similar to Latin's) but it is only available to students in formal classes, whereas I have never opened a textbook. Does anyone know of any sort of competitions or other activity I can do to help "quantify" my Japanese to colleges?</p>
<p>The AP exam and SAT subject tests should be sufficient to demonstrate your mastery.</p>
<p>My daughter listed her self-teaching of language as an extra-curricular activity. She did have a teacher who she checked in with, so she called it “supervised independent study.”</p>
<p>Those standardized tests will do it just fine. If you have Japanese families in your area, you can offer to provide English tutoring and homework help for those who want it. Make a few bucks and it makes for a great meaningful activity as well as giving you practice with your Japanese.</p>
<p>You might write your essay on how you were determined and taught yourself a language. If your AP and SAT II scores are good they’d make a great compliment to it.</p>