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Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 9:00 am
by satyad18
Hi everyone,
I'm an international applicant. My TOEFL-iBT score is 93. I tried mailing some of good universities and got reply that my admission is risky or not possible as my TOEFL is below 100. Should I retake the exam or go for universities in the relatively lower rankings.? What are my chances in each case.?

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 9:28 am
by Mataka
You can try to retake the exam, or maybe take the IELTS instead of the TOEFL, some people find it easier.

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2009 9:06 am
by Dream
Oh. Really? Do schools consider 100 as the minimun requirement? What schools are you talking about?

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2009 4:01 pm
by Mataka
Well I think it's an unofficial cutoff. I think most universities have an actual real cutoff at 92 (they won't even consider your application if your score is below that cutoff), but there is also an unofficial cutoff around 100. Essentially this just means that the rest of your application will have to be really strong to balance out a TOEFL score of 93.

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 8:35 am
by Dream
I want to know why the cutoff is 92. On UCSB website, it is clearly stated to be 80. And I think most schools pay more attention to the speaking score than the overall score.

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 12:05 pm
by Mataka
Yes some schools like UCSB have a minimum of 80. It's true that the speaking portion is probably the most important one, but that's because it is usually the ''hardest'' one (if you can't listen-read-write in english, chances are you don't speak english very well either, but the other way around may not be true). Moreover, those are just cutoffs, if you want to have a fighting chance to be admitted at a school like UCSB then it is very advisable to have some decent score.

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 7:14 am
by Ekaterina
My TOEFL-iBT score is 69. I asked professors from 3 Universities what to do and only one advised me to retake the test.

What schools wrote you that 93 most likely wasn't enough?

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 10:08 pm
by mike164
Dream wrote:Oh. Really? Do schools consider 100 as the minimun requirement? What schools are you talking about?
Mataka wrote:Well I think it's an unofficial cutoff.
The official minimum required score for schools like Harvard, Columbia, Texas Austin... is 100.

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 1:59 pm
by grae313
Ekaterina wrote:My TOEFL-iBT score is 69. I asked professors from 3 Universities what to do and only one advised me to retake the test.

What schools wrote you that 93 most likely wasn't enough?
You're going to have a hard time getting into even the worst US schools with a 69. You need to retake the test. The best schools have minimums of around 100, second and third tier schools have minimums around 80, but the better you do the easier it is for a school to justify admitting you.

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 12:30 pm
by satyad18
University of Chicago and SUNY-Stony Brook specifically told me not to even think about appying there with a TOEFL score of 93!! Others were kind of okay with my score, but said that importance would be given to the speaking section.

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 7:36 pm
by admissionprof
grae313 wrote:
Ekaterina wrote:My TOEFL-iBT score is 69. I asked professors from 3 Universities what to do and only one advised me to retake the test.

What schools wrote you that 93 most likely wasn't enough?
You're going to have a hard time getting into even the worst US schools with a 69. You need to retake the test. The best schools have minimums of around 100, second and third tier schools have minimums around 80, but the better you do the easier it is for a school to justify admitting you.

I'm an admissions director at a second tier school. We generally like to see scores over 100, but will not immediately exclude a lower score. Actually, we have found that students from Indonesia and Russia with somewhat lower scores end up speaking pretty well, whereas students from India and China do not. This is based on knowing about admissions for the past 20 years. I have no idea why this would be the case--it may be a function of the method of English study in those countries.

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 4:23 am
by Richwest
you can retake it, if the desired school doesn't want to admit you. but if you don't mind going somewhere else why not do that?

Re: Toefl score & admission..

Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 1:53 am
by mikelynn77
Well, guys that’s good news for you that you scored 93 in first attempt. I must say that when I took TOEFL test last year than only got 70 in first attempt but after than I took TOEFL study guides and online courses which prepare you for the test and these guides asses different methods of getting a good score, I got around 150 in second attempt. So, don’t worry about it now if you getting good college than take admission otherwise with the help of TOEFL test study guides you will make better than this. Now choice is yours.