<p>I personally think that sat ii subject language tests are very subjective. I mean, seriously, so what if i take spanish in school? the native spanish speakers will always have an advantage since its their home native language.... anyone just frustrated over this? I'm pretty sure some students will use some stupid excuse: "i never learned spanish in my life before". SUCH BULL CRAP. do admissions officers even take in consideration of your ethnicity and the sat language test you take?</p>
<p>I’m sure admissions will take into account your background when evaluating your command of a language. You report your languages and level of proficiency on the CommonApp. Next to that, there’s a box to check it’s spoken at home. I think there’s also a box to check if it was your first language.</p>
<p>But instead of complaining about the perceived “unfairness” of the tests, why not just do the best you can and leave the grading up to the administrators?</p>
<p>If you read the Harvard’s website, they don’t consider subject test of native speaker as the SAT2 requirement. Admission officiers are not that stupid. They all aware of this.</p>
<p>If someone has a non-English first language, wouldn’t that make English his/her second language?</p>
<p>Of course, some people grow up in truly bilingual or multilingual homes, learning more than one language from infancy. Supposedly, this tunes their brains to learn languages much more easily, an lifelong advantage that goes far beyond an SAT subject test.</p>
<p>Yeah, I totally feel you. I want to take SAT II Chinese, since Chinese is one of my best subjects at school. However, I am discouraged by the fact that many native Chinese take this test and ruin the curves for non-Chineses. (Not blaming the Chinese, but just used Chinese since it relates to me; this happens to other nationalities too). </p>
<p>But then, colleges don’t care if a native gets an 800 on his/ her own country’s language test. For example, I’m Korean but I don’t even want to take the Korean test. I’m perfectly fluent in Korean, but I took a practice test for fun and didnt even get an 800 (lol yeah, it’s sorta embarrassing but I made a few stupid mistakes here and there). In fact, it’s a negative if I get a 760 on Korean. </p>
<p>TL;DR- A 700 for a non-native is much more impressive than an 800 for a native. Don’t worry too much, and just keep up the good work. Good luck :)</p>
<p>
Yeah, but English could hardly be considered a “foreign language”. That might result in a double standard being applied to someone who grew up in a bilingual home - having to learn another language besides their native one and English.</p>
<p>what if the students lie about what they speak at home or what their native language is? then that would make it 2x the unfairness.</p>
<p>Then you’re talking about a case of integrity. Presumably, one could also lie about their ECs and the hours spent on each. Point is, if somebody wants to cheat, they will always cheat and make things unfair. We’re talking about people who have some sense of integrity here.</p>
<p>really? i never knew you can lie about the hours. i thought they were listed out at where you volunteered or how many years you were enrolled in an EC. i don’t think this holds true 93tiger16</p>
<p>How many volunteer organizations actually list hours? Their human resources departments aren’t nearly big enough to keep track of every single volunteer. It would have been nice if volunteer hours are logged. For instance, I spent countless hours with ACS and don’t have anything to show for it. </p>
<p>Besides, one thing that really bugged me when I volunteered was people asking if their volunteer hours would be recorded or if they would get something out of volunteering. I really don’t see the point in recording volunteer hours in the first place. I never recorded how many hours I spent working on ACS stuff. As a result, I probably drastically underestimated how much work I did. A volunteer experience should be just that - something that makes you feel better inside, knowing that you’ve done your due diligence as a contributing member of society.</p>