I’m an IB student not studying in the US therefore would i need any english proficiency tests to get into US colleges
You need to check each school’s requirements, but typically you would need to submit TOEFL, etc. scores if you are not a US citizen, even if you are in an IB program.
Are you doing the IB through English? Many (most?) US colleges specify that if your HS is taught through English TOEFL or IELTS is not necessary. But- as @tkoparent notes- it is important to check the policy for each of the colleges you are applying to.
Yes, please, do check EACH college and university website. They set their own policies about this. If you have any questions about your specific situation, don’t be afraid to contact the international admissions offices at each of the colleges and universities and ask them directly.
The response from @tkoparent is not exactly accurate. US citizenship doesn’t matter as far as language proficiency testing goes. What does matter is the primary language of instruction in the schools you have been attending, and the length of time studying in those schools. Often the test requirement is waived if the student has been studying for a certain number of years in schools where English is the language of instruction. Also, some institutions will waive the requirement if the student has a sufficiently high score on the SAT or ACT.
I went back and looked at the requirements for some of the schools my S applied to - he was an IB student in an international school and also a US citizen. All of the schools he applied to have English proficiency requirements that apply only to “international students,” meaning he avoided having to deal with them because of his citizenship. If you are an international student, different schools will have different criteria, so you need to look at them individually.
@tkoparent - Thanks for that information. I wasn’t aware that for some places US citizenship was enough to waive English proficiency exams. Usually the wording is designed to cover US citizen applicants (usually from international schools, but also occasionally recent immigrants) who don’t have full HS-level English fluency and so will need to take a proficiency test, and international applicants who have full HS-level English fluency (because of studying in the US for many years or having attended schools in other countries where English is the medium of instruction) and so won’t need to take a proficiency test. The point of proficiency testing isn’t necessarily to keep the students out of that college or university, but rather to determine which students are ready for a full academic load, and which need to spend some time in ESL for Academic Purposes classes.
@happymomof1 , maybe it depends on how the schools use the term “international student.” The English-language proficiency requirements tend to appear on pages discussing “international students,” so we interpreted this as meaning non-US citizens - in some cases this was stated expressly, in others not defined. What I remember is being surprised that so many of my son’s classmates, who had all gone through the exact same English-language based schooling that he had and had similar language skills, had to take the TOEFL (or similar) exam simply because they were not US citizens. It seems that, with some schools, you can argue for an exemption by claiming English as a first language or the primary language of instruction, but many have a fairly rigid test requirement. International applicants just need to be careful about checking the specific requirements for the schools they are looking at.
One thing I meant to mention for the OP - you can quickly get a handle on what different schools will require by googling “[school name]TOEFL”, which will usually pull up the website page outlining the English proficiency requirements (even through schools may accept other evidence of proficiency, the term “TOEFL” will almost always be there somewhere).
^ re post #6. US colleges define an international student as those who are not citizens or green card holders. Some have fluidity whether DACA are included. All “local” students on visas are classed as international. FYI.