Today’s entertainment is a list of which tests are accepted for undergraduate admissions in the United Kingdom. I’ve looked at the 20 mainstream universities with the most non-UK students per HESA.

This is a trickier exercise than examining American and Canadian schools. Here tests from the SELT list are widely accepted (but sometimes with exceptions), as well as a surprisingly large grab bag of non-test qualifications.

As Nicholas Cuthbert highlighted in the PIE news last year, 28 percent of students in the 23/24 cycle bypassed an English test thanks to previous qualifications and 7 percent were exempt from testing for some reason (per data from Enroly).

The point of this exercise was to see which non-SELT tests were explicitly mentioned as acceptable by the 20 universities. According to Enroly’s data, such tests were used by about 13 percent of international students in the 23/24 cycle. I imagine that the figure is higher this year, and higher yet when undergraduate admissions are isolated.

Anyhow, the cited tests were:

• DET: 5 universities
• Oxford ELLT: 4 universities
• Oxford Test of English: 3 universities
• Kaplan Test of English: 3 universities
• Password: 3 universities

The DET was listed as acceptable in a subset of cases by the University of Westminster, but I haven’t counted it above.

The full list (sloppy) is after the break.

Continue reading “Who Takes What: UK Undergraduate Admissions” →

It appears that the at-home TOEFL will soon require the use of a secondary camera. LanguageCert and Duolingo have had this requirement for a little while.

The requirement will begin rolling out in select countries on April 18 2025. New countries will be added in blocks between then and May. Affected test takers have received the above email.

For instructions, you can check out this animation (with a transcript) on the ETS website.

Here’s the text of an email that is being sent to test takers:

We’re writing to tell you about important updates to your TOEFL® test.

These updates will begin April 18th, 2025, and apply to your upcoming test scheduled for [date].

On or after April 18:

1. *NEW* – In addition to your laptop camera, bring your phone to enable it as a second camera during the test. To see if this applies to you, check the country list below.

2. On April 18th an email with additional instructions will arrive in your inbox with all the information you’ll need on test day.

3. On test day, login to ets.org/mytoefl, which will have the link to start your test.

Good luck!

The TOEFL Team

Below is a list of when the requirement will be rolled out in each country.

Some troubling news via the Hechinger Report for the brave few still following the story of ETS and its involvement in the NAEP.  Jill Barshay reports that:

“The contractor building this platform, ETS, gave DOGE a demonstration of its features last week. But according to former education officials, DOGE staffers are seeking additional places to cut costs and were less than impressed.

The digital platform is also needed to complete behind-the-scenes paperwork for states to participate in the 2026 assessment. Those steps are supposed to be completed in May. As it stands now, funding for the digital platform runs out again in June.”

And:

“…funding ran out on March 31 for an even more critical task: the creation of the NAEP exams, according to four people who had direct knowledge of this paused contract. That “content development” work is carried out by ETS, and the nonprofit testing organization told its employees who oversee the writing and review of NAEP test questions to take a leave until funding resumes.”

This week I looked at what tests are accepted at the twenty Canadian colleges that received the most study permit approvals in 2023. Obviously these guys took a big hit in 2024, but they are still bringing in huge numbers of students. More than most of the major Canadian universities. They remain very important to the bottom lines of our favorite test companies.

I originally intended to list only 10 schools, but this was such an amusing exercise that I kept going. Just keep in mind that most of these schools have dreadful websites with information that is sometimes contradictory (and possibly incomplete). On top of that, they frequently claim to accept tests that are no longer offered. St. Lawrence College wins the grand prize in that regard: they still list the TOEFL CBT, which was discontinued 19 long years ago.

So please forgive me for any errors. This was sometimes tough going.

Here’s a list of which tests are accepted, and how frequently. Scroll down for a few observations.

• TOEFL: 20 schools
• IELTS: 20 schools
• DET: 18 schools
• CAEL: 17 schools
• PTE: 17 schools
• Cambridge exams: 14 schools
• MET: 5 schools
• LanguageCert: 4 schools
• iTEP: 4 schools
• Password: 2 schools
• Oxford ELLT: 2 schools
• OOPT: 1 schools
• CELPIP: 1 school
• TOEIC: 1 school
• EIKEN: 1 school
• CLBPT: 1 school
• CLBA: 1 school

In addition, Conestoga and George Brown have in-house tests students can use.

A few observations are worth making:

1. The mighty Conestoga College stopped listing the DET as an acceptable test sometime in February of 2025. I bet there’s a story to be told. Could it be that Conestoga prefers that its in-house test be the only low-cost option?
2. Lambton College says that Indian students can ONLY submit IELTS scores.
3. Algonquin College accepts the TOEFL, but not the home edition.
4. St. Lawrence college accepts the EIKEN, MET and DET… but not from Indians.
5. I can’t find a single scrap of information about the in-house Conestoga test. But if I can crowdsource $95, I’ll take the frigging thing myself.

Find the complete list in this LinkedIn post.

More standardized testing ephemera! I spotted these in the collection of a stamp and postcard dealer. They are envelopes used to mail in TOEFL registration forms and fees from Kenya (1977) and Hungary (1992). The reverse of each contains instructions for the sender.

I also 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).  I’ve also tracked what tests they accepted in 2022 and 2019. 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 full data after the jump.

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.

Continue reading “Use of English Tests for Undergraduate Admission in the USA” →

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.

I spent some time researching which English tests are accepted for undergraduate admissions in Canada, based on the websites of those schools.  The results of my research are strikingly uninteresting.

I selected the 15 largest universities (by total enrollment) and identified which English tests they accept today, which tests they accepted in 2022, and which tests they accepted in 2019.  I’ve pasted that data into the article below.  Note that I couldn’t get 2019 data for a few schools.

All 15 schools accept the TOEFL, IELTS, CAEL, PTE and Cambridge C1/C2 tests.  All 15 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.

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

Complete details after the jump.

Continue reading “Use of English Tests for Undergraduate Admissions in Canada” →

I added this neat item to my collection of standardized testing ephemera. It’s a postcard inviting the recipient to visit the newly opened offices of the Educational Testing Service at 4640 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. I don’t know exactly when the card was printed, but it was probably in the late 50s or early 60s.

ETS no longer operates an office in LA, but Google Maps suggests that the building still stands.