Toefl ibt 68 -- minimum for UCB?

[amec]

For TOEFL score, it seems that no requirement is given by the econ department, and the minimum ibt score set by the Graduate Division is 68? Is it really the case? incredible?

[Gerter]

I've seen similar minimum scores for other schools. I highly doubt that many applicants with only ~70 get accepted. It would at least raise some question marks. If you know basic English your score shouldn't really be below 100. I believe that the average TOEFL score of accepted graduate candidates at Princeton is roughly 110-115 which sounds about right.

[Jaminli]

Originally Posted by Gerter

If you know basic English your score shouldn't really be below 100.

I think this statement is incorrect. Are you an international student? If someone knows just "basic" English, it is hard for him/her to score above 100. The topics covered in TOEFL are about campus converstions and also academic lectures.

[Gerter]

Yes, I'm an international student. I thought that everyone who takes the TOEFL is an international student.

Anyway, the academic lectures and campus conversation don't really assume you know technical terms from specific fields. The campus talks are very stiff conversations along the lines of "Do you know where the school library is? Yes, friend, it is next to the student union building".

I'd say that this is very different from the verbal part of the GRE where you're asked about many unusual words and many international students who get a high score (>700) probably used one of those awful 10.000 word list books.

[amec]

"If you know basic English your score shouldn't really be below 100."
In that sense, I am afraid many people around me even don't know the basic english.

[Gerter]

What I mean by basic English is being able to carry out a normal conversation. I.e. talking to someone relatively easily without a sophisticated or field related (econ, physics, whatever) vocabulary.

However, I doubt the TOEFL matters a lot regarding admissions. Almost all the other criteria are more important but I can't imagine someone scoring a 68 on the TOEFL being an efficient TA in English speaking schools.

[MYCCTV]

To be honest, as a part of my experience, although T does not tell your everything about someone's English skills, it does mean something. I.e., just in my experience, international students who scored above 100 or 110 usually have somehow good English communication. For those who scored 80 or 90 above, they will not be too bad. But it still depends on individual cases. However, for those who got score below 70, I think it really depend on what they got for each section.
Anyway, I think T is a better measure of int students' English skill than G.

[tm_guru]

T and G? Are typing the acronyms TOEFL and GRE that arduous that you have to shorten them to a single letter?

Low TOEFL scores may not exlcude you from admission but will almost certainly remove you from consideration as a TA/GA in the first two years.

[MYCCTV]

Originally Posted by tm_guru

T and G? Are typing the acronyms TOEFL and GRE that arduous that you have to shorten them to a single letter?

Low TOEFL scores may not exlcude you from admission but will almost certainly remove you from consideration as a TA/GA in the first two years.

That is maybe bothering you; however, that is way we call it in my country. I was first not sure their meanings, but I got used to it.

[JBDonges]

Originally Posted by Gerter

If you know basic English your score shouldn't really be below 100.

I think that depends on where you're from. People from Scandinavia usually score between 110 and 120, people from Germany are often in the 100-110 area and I've heard from a lot of students from India scoring 80-100 (don't want to generalize this for anyone from specific regions).
What I want to say is that it might be easier for you to score well if your native language is somehow related to English, like it is the case for Germans, Italians or Spanish. And of course it depends crucially on what you learned during school. In Scandinavia you learn English at elementary school, whereas in France it is possible to have no English at all...