Foreign language qualifications

Hello,

I want to ask if it is common for students studying FL at university to obtain a language qualification for instance Sorbonne for french, CELI or CILS for italian, HSK for Chinese etc.

I think it's more common for students of Asian languages. JLPT (Japanese) and HSK are often asked for as job requirements and I think students feel it's a good addition to prove that they actually achieved good fluency in what are considered hard languages that are usually started from beginner's level at university. I don't think people really expect the same level of fluency from Japanese graduates as they do from French ones. Plus courses for smaller languages can vary massively so it's nice to have a standardised qualification.

For the main European languages however, I don't think it's very common as it's usually not needed. A degree in the language ought to be enough to satisfy language requirements for jobs - or you'll be assessed by an interview process.

I'm a final year language student and I've never heard of any students doing other proficiency tests for Fre/Ger/Spa, just for Japanese and Chinese

Thank you very much for your reply. May I ask if those qualifications are requested from employers when somebody has not studied towards a language degree (in case of european languages) ?