Hi everyone,

Just finished the TOEFL today, and I reckon I will receive anywhere in the 115–119 range. However, I’m killing myself over possibly (but slightly) underperforming in one section I previously scored 30 in. I realize breaking the minimum for the top schools is good and all, but I was wholeheartedly hoping for my TOEFL-score to be a highly competitive factor in my application – now I fear I might just fall in the ”average” pile.

To try and gauge my competitiveness to that end, and in my hysteria, I have found myself trying to get hold of some average scores for the schools I will be applying to in the year of 2023–2024 – but I only seem to find discussions on minimum/borderline scores. So, anyone know of TOEFL average scores for Harvard, Yale, Columbia and/or Stanford? Any input is appreciated.

All the best!

Uni admissions do not really give toefl/ielts any more weight than whether you pass their english requirements or not. And why would they care any more than that, if you think about it? They want to assess students based on their legal potential, not whether they adequately managed to answer correctly all questions about what Louise is doing after school in a listening test under usually substandard conditions or whether they made a few spelling mistakes on a 20 min essay about the building of beaver dams in Canada. Your toefl score won’t be a highly competitive factor in your application, even at 120/120. It will only make you uncompetitive if you fail it, so relax.

I don’t know where people got the idea that these tests matter beyond completing the minimum requirements, but I suspect whoever are selling the pricey language test courses/aids are making good money on it.

[Edited by Gobbledygook on Aug 10, 2022]