TOEFL Tips for Prospective International Students
ENTRY INTO AMERICAN colleges and universities is determined by various factors, and one of the most important aspects for international students is their grasp of the English language.
Savvy students who excel in their home countries need to be prepared for a classroom and campus environment where they will live and learn almost entirely in English. Their understanding of the language will be the foundation upon which their academic success is built.
Enter the Test of English as a Foreign Language, best known as the TOEFL test and one of several exam options used by colleges to gauge a student's English language skills. The exam is designed to measure how well a student understands English communication in an academic context, per Educational Testing Service, which offers the exam. According to the ETS website, more than 35 million students have taken the TOEFL since it was first administered in 1964.
"Colleges and universities use the TOEFL to determine if a student can use and comprehend English well enough to understand professors, do the coursework, contribute to group projects, and succeed at school," Mandee Heller Adler, founder and president of International College Counselors, a Florida-based admissions consulting organization, wrote in an email.
Though initially created as a paper-based test, the TOEFL internet-based test, or TOEFL iBT, has become the standard since launching in 2005.
What Students Should Know About the TOEFL
According to the ETS website, the TOEFL takes three hours, though students should arrive at the test center about a half-hour early to check in.
Students should also expect strict security measures, which are in place to prevent cheating on the exam.
"The TOEFL has four sections: reading, listening, speaking and writing," explains David Recine, a verbal test prep expert at Magoosh, an online tutoring and test prep company. "The names of the sections pretty much indicate what you're going to be studying for."
According to the ETS website, the timing of a section may vary with longer reading or listening portions containing some additional questions. For example, students may have an elongated reading section that lasts 54 to 72 minutes with 30 to 40 questions plus a listening section of normal length, or an elongated listening portion that lasts 41 to 57 minutes with 28 to 39 questions plus a reading section of normal length.
Students get a 10-minute break afterward, followed by the speaking and writing sections. The speaking section is comprised of four tasks that must be completed in 17 minutes, compared with two tasks in 50 minutes for writing.
"Most items that you will encounter on a TOEFL test tend to be drawn directly from university-level textbooks, from the courses that students would typically encounter in a first- or second-year liberal arts class," says Srikant Gopal, executive director of the TOEFL program at ETS.
Total TOEFL scores range from 0 to 120. Each section is scored on a scale of 0 to 30, with the "advanced" level in the 24 to 30 range for reading and writing, compared with 22 to 30 for listening and 25 to 30 on the speaking portion.
But what is a good TOEFL score? The answer, experts say, is whatever it takes for a student to get into his or her target school.
"Each school or scholarship sets its own score requirements," Adler says. "Students scoring in the 90-100 (range) on the TOEFL will be accepted into most universities. Students looking to get into a highly competitive college or program should score at least 100."
Gopal offers a similar thought. "There is no universal measure of a good or bad score."
Recine adds that the baseline is about 65, which will open doors at many American universities, particularly less-competitive colleges.
"If you've got below 65 on (the) TOEFL you're probably not going to get in anywhere except perhaps on conditional acceptance," Recine says. Conditional acceptance, he explains, means that international students may get into a college with the requirement they take English classes first.