All I’ve heard is it shows English proficiency but I do not see any requirements of taking it like SAT / ACT for college admissions.
Who should take it and what real benefit does it give to the student?
Is English your first language? Are you an American applicant? If so, then you don’t need to take it.
Not for me but a few of my friends have moved here in the last few yrs and are in high school – SAT would be brutal for them and they’d be lucky just to break 500 on the english portions. Just wondering if the TOEFL would bypass something>?
They’d need to check each school’s policy. For example, MIT says, “For non-native English speakers: You have two options: 1) take the tests required for native English speakers (see above), or 2) you may take the TOEFL and two SAT Subject Tests, one in math (level 1 or 2) and one in science (physics, chemistry, or biology e/m).”
Thanks! Do universities have English requirements such as # of years of english taken at high school? I’m guessing TOEFL would not help if they do not meet that requirement, then, in terms of admission?
MIT’s position of allowing TOEFL to be used by internationals as a substitute for the SAT (or ACT) is the exception and not the norm. For international applicants for whom English is not the native language, most colleges require both TOEFL and either the SAT or ACT. You can with some escape taking TOEFL if you attended an English speaking school, such as by doing high school in the US, but you usually cannot escape the requirement of submitting an SAT or ACT
For US citizens and permanent residents, colleges generally require four years of English which consists not of learning to speak the language but courses in English literature and writing. Most colleges then have a foreign language requirement or recommendation from two to four years.
International students from countries where English is not the native language usually don’t need to meet those two requirements but do need to demonstrate English proficiency such as by a TOEFL score.
Some schools allow the TOEFL instead of the SATs which is outrageous. The result is that US residents are often excluded from schools on the basis of criteria not even required of international students. I suspect the reason for that is that at some schools the admissions counselors don’t understand testing or psychometrics and they assume that the SAT and the TOEFL are equivalent and they assume it is just a minor detail when the College Boards says explicitly that they are not equivalent. At least some SUNYs exclude NYers on the basis of scores on tests that are not even required of International applicants (not to mention the fact that they accept tons of students from counties where it is known the majority have faked credentials).
While I’m sure exceptions exist, every university I’ve seen recommends 4 years of English. For that matter, most US HS’s have 4 years of English as a graduation requirement.