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Who Takes What: Canadian Undergraduate Admissions

I spent last week researching which English tests are accepted for undergraduate admission to the 15 largest universities in Canada (based on their websites). I learned:

• All 15 universities accept the TOEFL, IELTS, CAEL, PTE and Cambridge C1/C2 tests. All 15 also accept the DET, but the University of British Columbia only accepts it in cases when no other test can be taken.

• One school (Queen’s University) accepts the LanguageCert test. One (University of Ottawa) accepts the TOEFL Essentials test.

• The MELAB was still widely accepted in 2019, but nowadays none of the 15 biggest schools accept its successor test, the MET.

You can see my raw data (as well as the tests that were accepted in 2022 and 2019) in this sloppy LinkedIn article. If you can’t access LinkedIn just let me know - I can email you the full list.

I didn’t look too closely past the largest 15, but I think you have to go all the way to the 19th biggest school to find one (the University of Victoria) that doesn’t accept the DET. UVic does accept the MET, though – and they are likely the largest school in Canada which accepts that test.

Who Takes What: American Undergraduate Admissions

Here, I examined which English tests are accepted for admission to undergraduate programs at the 20 universities in the USA with the most international students at any level of study (per Open Doors). To make the list more interesting, I’ve only listed one school from a given university system (this means I skipped UCLA, UC San Diego and UT Arlington).

Access the data over here.

A few things are worth mentioning:

• TOEFL is accepted at all 20 schools.

• IELTS is accepted at all 20 schools.

• DET is accepted at 19 schools (but at University of Southern California only when other tests are not possible).

• PTE is accepted at 8 schools.

• Cambridge C1/C2 are accepted at 8 schools.

• TOEFL Essentials is accepted at 3 schools.

• MET is accepted at 2 schools.

• ECPE is accepted at 1 school

• iTEP is accepted at 1 school

• SAT/ACT scores can be used to meet language requirements at 8 schools. Some other high school type tests are accepted here and there, but I haven’t listed them.

Also noteworthy:

• Columbia, Johns Hopkins and Northeastern all accepted DET before the pandemic (and still do).

• University of Michigan dropped acceptance of DET sometime after the pandemic.

• I believe that Cornell dropped acceptance of PTE and iTEP after the pandemic.

More to Come

Next up, I will examine which tests are taken at the Canadian colleges (Conestoga, et al) still pulling in massive numbers of students. In the coming weeks I hope to find time to look into graduate programs and schools in the UK and Australia.

TOEFL Price Changes

The cost of taking the TOEFL was adjusted in some countries this week. As was announced earlier, test takers in Japan now pay just $195 to take the test (a $50 decrease). That adjustment is due to the declining value of the Japanese Yen. Meanwhile, their neighbors in nearby Korea must now pay $228 (an $8 increase). Tough luck for Korean test takers, who are also dealing with a declining currency.

The price hike in Korea is the only increase I've been able to spot so far.

Prices have been adjusted downward in some (but not all) EU countries so that changes related to VAT collection no longer make the TOEFL wildly more expensive than other tests. I complained quite a lot about that when ETS first started collecting VAT in Europe some months ago, so I am happy to see this course correction.

TOEFL Access

ETS has launched a new product called “TOEFL Access.” This is meant to be a replacement for the ETS Data Manager which many score users currently use to receive and access TOEFL scores. There will be two versions of TOEFL Access - a free version and a paid version.

According to ETS's announcement of this product, the free version of this service will contain much of the same stuff currently found in the ETS Data Manager. The paid version will contain new things including analytics and tools that assist in the recruitment of students. This may be considered a sort of replacement for the "TOEFL Search Service" which was eliminated last year.

You can read more at the official announcement. One small detail is worth highlighting here. According to the announcement, TOEFL Access lets score users “easily access audio and video samples of the speaking and writing sections.” While I’ve always been aware that ETS provides access to some test takers responses (one speaking + one writing) I’ve not been aware that ETS provides access to video taken during test sessions.