Dear applicants,

I just thought I could start a thread for those, like me, who need to sit either the TOEFL or the IELTS test in order to shed some light on which one would be better for our purposes.
Those of you who have already undertaken any of them... please, give us some advice!

Thanks

Both are accepted pretty much everywhere, so that's not the defining criteria.
The TOEFL is better known, so when you put your score on your CV, people know what you are talking about (though of course, and decent recruiter also knows about IELTS).
Most of it is a matter of cost too. I think the TOEFL is a bit less expensive, but you sometimes have to cross half a country to take it, so travel costs have to be counted too. Also, TOEFL will ask you for 17$ for every report sent out, and it's only valid two years. I'm not sure about IELTS, they might have similar conditions... highly annoying...

The TOEFL is required if ur looking for an LLM from the US. The IELTS is needed if ur to hit UK or other common wealth countries for your LLM. The validity of IELTS is 2 yrs. Universities generally consider these scores as a necessary criteria for qualification.In general, U need to obtain above 7 in order to enter a University for ur llm. however it is highly variable. Make sure when you do your ielts and toefl considerin the validity period

I did the TOEFL in June 2011. Does this mean I can apply for university until June 2013 or do my TOEFL scores also have to be valid when I have already started with an LLM ?

I guess that you need to have a valid TOEFL at the moment of the application, not the moment when classes start. This would be the most reasonable.

Both TOEFL and IELTS are recognized almost everywhere, both of them in the US and UK. However, TOEFL is in fact cheaper than IELTS, but the exact price depends on the country where you are presenting it.