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TOEFL Score Requirements for Grad School on the New 1–6 Band Scale

Graduate programmes that used to ask for TOEFL 100 now ask for band 5.0, 90 became 4.5 and 80 became 4.0, following ETS's own mapping. Enter your four section bands below and every published requirement in the matrix turns green, amber or red against them.

Bands run 1.0 to 6.0 in half steps. Leave all four blank to browse the matrix without colour.

Verdict Your overall band –.–

Enter your scores to colour the table. Until then every row stays neutral and nothing below is judged against you.

Which graduate programmes does my TOEFL band already clear?

Every requirement below was read off the institution's own graduate admissions or English language page on 8 September 2026 and is quoted in the school's own words. Rows sort alphabetically by institution. No ranking order is implied anywhere on this page: an alphabetical list is the only order that does not smuggle in a judgement about quality.

Country
Level
Scope
Published TOEFL requirements for named graduate programmes, with band equivalents, section minimums and MyBest acceptance.
Requirement as published Section minimums Status Source

  • Clear: overall and every published section floor met
  • Within half a band: total shortfall is exactly 0.5
  • Short: total shortfall is more than 0.5
  • Neutral: not judged, or no figure entered

A band shown in italics with a derived tag was calculated by this page from a 0–120 figure using the ETS concordance. It is an estimate. Only the school's own published number is authoritative.

Add a programme that still publishes a 0–120 number

If your target department's page still says “TOEFL 100”, type that figure here. The page converts it with the official ETS ranges, marks the result as derived, and scores it against your bands alongside everything else. Entries stay in this browser only.

Give the row a short label so you can recognise it.

Enter a whole number between 0 and 120.

Section minimums must be whole numbers between 0 and 30.

What is the graduate school TOEFL minimum now that scores are bands?

ETS replaced the 0–120 total with a 1–6 band scale in half steps for tests taken from 21 January 2026. Your overall band is no longer a sum. It is the average of your four section bands rounded to the nearest half band: ETS gives 5.125 rounding down to 5 and 5.25 rounding up to 5.5.

For institutions, ETS published a direct translation. A programme that required 100 should now require band 5.0, one that required 90 should require 4.5, and one that required 80 should require 4.0. ETS also warned institutions off rounding up: setting 5.5 where 100 was previously required “will increase the chances of not accepting qualified candidates with an equivalent score of 100 or even higher”, because band 5 covers the whole range 95 to 106.

That last sentence is the single most useful thing on this page for anyone sitting on a 100. Under the old scale you cleared a 100 requirement exactly. Under a badly set 5.5 requirement you would not, and neither would anyone who scored 106.

The official concordance, reproduced from ETS

This table is the ETS score scale update chart. Every derived band on this page comes from it and from nowhere else.

ETS concordance between the 1-6 band scale, the 0-30 section scale and the 0-120 total scale.
Band Reading 0–30 Listening 0–30 Writing 0–30 Speaking 0–30 Total 0–120 CEFR
629–3028–3029–3028–30114+C2
5.527–2826–2727–2827107–113C1
524–2622–2524–2625–2695–106C1
4.522–2320–2121–2323–2486–94B2
418–2117–1917–2020–2272–85B2
3.512–1713–1615–1618–1958–71B1
36–119–1213–1416–1744–57B1
2.54–56–811–1213–1534–43A2
234–57–1010–1224–33A2
1.522–33–65–912–23A1
10–10–10–20–40–11A1

Source: ETS, TOEFL iBT Score Scale Update guide for institutions, read 8 September 2026. The 0–120 column is stated as an open-ended floor by ETS (“95+”); the closed ranges above are what those floors imply, and ETS states in prose that band 5 runs 95 to 106.

The 0 to 120 scale divided into 1 to 6 bands, showing that band 5 spans 95 to 106 and band 5.5 spans 107 to 113 07286 95107114 120 4.04.55.0 5.56.0 a 100 sits here, inside band 5

How do I read this matrix against my own scores?

  1. Pick your four section bands in the strip at the top of the page. All four are needed, because your overall band is their average, not a separate number.
  2. Read the verdict card. It states your overall band and counts how many rows in the current filter you clear outright, how many you miss by exactly half a band, and how many are further away.
  3. Filter to the countries and degree level you are actually applying to. The counts recalculate on the filtered set, so the number you read is the number that matters to you.
  4. Open the source link for any row you care about and confirm the figure yourself before you decide anything. Requirements move during a scale transition.
  5. Treat any italic band with a derived tag as an estimate only. It is arithmetic on the ETS table, not a promise from the school.

Two worked examples, using the twenty rows shipped with this page and no filters:

Reading 5.0, Listening 5.0, Speaking 4.5, Writing 5.0
Reading 4.5, Listening 5.0, Speaking 4.0, Writing 4.5

Sum 19.5, mean 4.875, doubled 9.75, rounded to 10, so the overall band is 5.0.

Sum 18.0, mean 4.5, doubled 9.0, so the overall band is 4.5.

Clears 15 of the 20 rows. Two land in amber: UCL Level 3 wants 5.0 in every component and this Speaking is 4.5, and the Illinois teaching assistantship floor is Speaking 5.0. Three are further off: Cornell's Tier A, which wants Speaking 5.5, and UCL Levels 4 and 5, which want 5.5 overall.

Clears 9 of the 20 rows, including UBC, whose Speaking floor of 4.0 is exactly met. Four land in amber, among them Wisconsin–Madison and Illinois full status, both at 5.0 overall. Seven are short.

Notice what the second column shows: an overall band of 4.5 clears UBC, which asks for 4.5 overall, even though UBC also sets a Listening floor of 5.0. That reader happens to have Listening 5.0. Drop their Listening to 4.5 and the row flips to amber while the overall band does not move at all.

Does a TOEFL requirement of 100 always become band 5.0?

No, and the rows above prove it. ETS mapped ranges, not points, so a school converting its own numbers has room to choose. Among the requirements checked for this page, four different conversion behaviours are visible.

Schools that converted mechanically

Cornell's Graduate School moved Speaking 27 to 5.5, Reading 20 to 4.0, Listening 15 to 3.5 and Writing 20 to 4.0. Every one of those is the exact band the ETS section table assigns. UBC did the same with its old 90 overall and its 22 and 21 component floors, which is why its published band floors are uneven: 22 in Listening is a band 5, but 22 in Reading is only a 4.5.

Schools that flattened the sections

Delft's MSc requirement was 100 overall with 22 in every section. It is now band 5 overall with 4.5 in every section. Flat numbers look tidier, but they move the bar: 22 in Speaking was a band 4, so Speaking got harder by half a band, while 22 in Listening was a band 5, so Listening got easier by half a band. King's College London made the same flattening choice for Band B, where the old 25 Writing floor (a band 5) became 4.5.

Schools that raised the bar

Wisconsin–Madison's old minimum was 92, which the ETS table puts in band 4.5. Its published band minimum is 5.0. Illinois's teaching assistantship floor was Speaking 24, a band 4.5 on the ETS table; the published band floor is 5.0. Neither school is doing anything improper, and neither has to explain itself, but if you were counting on a mechanical conversion you would have guessed wrong on both.

Schools that lowered component floors

UCL's Level 1 previously asked for 24 in Reading and Writing, both band 5 territory, alongside a 92 overall. The band version asks for 4.5 overall and only 4.0 in each component. On the old numbers a strong overall with a weak Reading could fail; on the new ones it passes.

What this means for your planning. Do not assume your target programme rounded the way ETS suggested. Two schools that both said “100” in 2025 can be a full band apart in 2026 once section floors are counted. The only safe move is to read the current page, which is why every row here carries a link and a date.

Which TOEFL section minimum should grad school applicants worry about?

Section floors, not the overall band, are what actually reject people now. The overall band is an average, so one weak skill is diluted by three strong ones. A section floor is not averaged with anything.

Two patterns show up repeatedly in the requirements checked for this page:

  • Speaking floors attached to teaching. Illinois separates admission from teaching: band 4.0 gets you admitted with limited status, 5.0 gets you full status, and a teaching assistantship needs Speaking 5.0 on its own. Cornell does the same thing with tiers: Speaking 5.5 puts a research student in Tier A and approved to teach, Speaking 4.0 puts them in Tier B, admitted but required to sit an on-campus English Language Assessment first. If your funding is a TA line, the Speaking floor is your real requirement, not the admission floor.
  • Component floors that outrank the overall band. UBC asks for 4.5 overall but 5.0 in Listening. UCL Level 5 asks for 5.5 overall but 6.0 in Speaking, the top of the scale. In both cases a candidate who comfortably clears the headline number can still be blocked by one section.

The planning consequence is concrete. If a floor sits half a band above your weakest section, raising your other three sections does nothing for that row. Retesting is the only route, and TOEFL scores are valid for two years from the test date, so a retake taken now covers most application cycles you are likely to be in. Work backwards from your deadlines using the grad school application timeline before you book.

Do graduate programmes accept TOEFL MyBest scores?

MyBest is the section of your ETS score report that presents your best section results across your valid tests rather than a single sitting. Institutions describe it in exactly those terms: UBC calls them “MyBest composite scores”, Wisconsin–Madison says it “does not accept scores compiled from multiple tests”, and King's College London says “we cannot take a combination of your scores across two tests”. ETS itself is neutral on the question and tells applicants that “each institution sets its own requirements”.

Among the rows on this page, refusal is the norm and acceptance is the exception. Cornell's Graduate School accepts MyBest but warns that individual fields may not. The University of Washington accepts it under the policy in force now, and its revised policy, effective for admissions decisions for Winter 2027 enrolment and later, removes it. Delft, Illinois, King's, UBC, UCL and Wisconsin all refuse it outright, several of them in the same sentence that also requires every section score to come from one sitting. None of the twenty verified rows leaves the question unanswered, which means a department page that says nothing about MyBest at all has probably not been updated since the scale changed.

The reason schools refuse it is not suspicion of the applicant. A MyBest set can pair a Speaking score from March with a Reading score from November, so it does not describe any single day's performance, and a school setting section floors for classroom readiness wants those floors met together. If a programme is silent, assume the single-sitting reading of its requirement and ask. The wording for that email is below.

Does the graduate school or the department set the TOEFL requirement?

Both, and the higher one wins. Almost every row in the matrix is a graduate school floor: the university-wide number below which the central office will not admit anyone. Departments then set their own, usually higher, and they are allowed to.

Illinois states the trap plainly: its admissions minimums “are not equivalent to minimums required for holding a teaching assistantship”, and not all of its exemptions apply to assistantship holders. Cornell says the Graduate School accepts MyBest while individual fields may not. Wisconsin–Madison's lower tier is available only “with program approval”.

So there are two pages to read for every application, and they live in different places. The graduate school floor is on the central admissions or graduate studies site, usually under “English language proficiency”. The departmental figure is on the programme's own admissions page, often buried in an FAQ or a PDF, and it is the one that is still most likely to say 100. That gap is exactly what the derived row feature above is for: type the department's 0–120 number, get the band it implies, and compare it directly against the central floor you already have.

A department may also waive the test entirely if you studied in English. The triggers and the paperwork are set out in the guide to TOEFL and IELTS waivers for grad school, and it is worth checking before you pay for a retake.

What happens if you are half a band short of a TOEFL requirement for masters or PhD entry?

The amber rows are not automatic rejections. Four routes appear in the policies checked for this page, and they differ in how much they cost you.

  1. A second admission tier. Illinois admits below its full-status band on “limited status” at band 4.0 and requires the English as a Second Language Placement Test before enrolment, with placement-based coursework after it. You are a real admitted student from day one.
  2. Provisional entry with an on-arrival placement test. Wisconsin–Madison may admit at band 4.5 rather than 5.0 with programme approval, subject to the ESLAT assessment on arrival and any recommended ESL course completed in the first semester. The University of Washington's structure is similar: its minimum band 4.0 makes you admissible, its recommended band 4.5 is what satisfies the requirement without conditions, and below the recommended level you take one or two Academic English Program courses.
  3. An assessment gate rather than an admission gate. Cornell's Tier B admits you and defers the language question to an on-campus English Language Assessment, which is what stands between you and teaching. Nothing about your admission is conditional; your funding route may be.
  4. A conditional or pathway offer. Some universities issue an offer contingent on a language result or a pre-sessional course. Read what a conditional offer actually commits you to before you accept one, because the conditions are enforceable and the deadlines are short.

One route that is often assumed and does not always exist. The University of Washington Graduate School states that it “does not offer conditional admissions to students who have not yet met the minimum English language proficiency requirement”. Below its floor there is no provisional path at all. Never assume a bridge exists because other schools have one.

If your shortfall is on the overall band rather than a section floor, work out which single section is cheapest to move. Half a band on one section shifts the average by 0.125, which is often not enough to change the rounded overall band on its own. Our TOEFL score calculator lets you test section combinations before you book a retake, and what TOEFL score you need covers the undergraduate and general-admission side of the same question.

How do I verify my own programme's TOEFL requirement in five minutes?

  1. Search the institution's own domain, not a third-party aggregator: put the programme name and the phrase english language proficiency together with the university's website, and open only results on that university's domain.
  2. Look for a January 2026 date on the page. A page that lists a single 0–120 number with no reference to the band scale has probably not been updated, whatever it says.
  3. Check whether the number you found is the graduate school floor or the department's. If the URL sits under a central graduate studies section, it is the floor, and the department may ask for more.
  4. Look separately for section minimums and for a Speaking figure tied to assistantships. These are frequently on a different page from the overall requirement.
  5. Add the figure to the matrix above using the derived-row form, so it sits next to everything else you are comparing.
  6. If anything is ambiguous, email admissions. During a scale transition a short, specific question gets a straight answer; a general one gets a link back to the page you already read.
Email template · graduate admissions, transition period 
Subject: TOEFL requirement on the 1-6 scale for [[Programme name]], [[Term and year]] entry

Dear Graduate Admissions,

I am applying to [[Programme name]] for [[Term and year]] entry and I want to
confirm the English language requirement for a TOEFL iBT taken after
21 January 2026, when the score scale changed to 1-6 bands.

Your page at [[URL you actually read]] states [[quote the exact figure, e.g.
"a minimum TOEFL score of 100"]]. Could you confirm three things:

1. The overall band required for this programme on the 1-6 scale.
2. Any minimum band required in individual sections, and whether a different
   Speaking band applies to applicants who want to be considered for a
   teaching assistantship.
3. Whether MyBest scores are accepted, or whether all section scores must
   come from a single test date.

I also want to check whether the figure on that page is the Graduate School
minimum or the departmental requirement, in case the department sets a
higher one.

Thank you,
[[Your name]]
[[Application ID, if you already have one]]

Rewrite this in your own words before sending. Quoting the exact page you read and the exact figure it gave is the part that gets a precise reply, because it tells the office which of their pages is out of date.

How was each row in this matrix sourced?

Every row was read directly from the institution's own graduate admissions or English language requirement page on 8 September 2026, and each row carries a link to that page. Nothing here comes from an aggregator, a ranking table or a forum post. Where an institution publishes several requirement tiers, each tier is a separate row, because a student comparing programmes is comparing tiers, not universities.

Rows sort alphabetically by default and there is no ordering on this page that could be read as a ranking. If you want a neutral, published way to group US institutions by type rather than by prestige, the American Council on Education's Carnegie Classifications, whose 2025 edition is the current one, describe institutional type and research activity without ranking anything. Accreditation is a separate question and a check worth doing before you apply anywhere unfamiliar: the US Department of Education's Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs lets you look up any US institution and see which accreditor recognises it.

CampusBreeze makes free study tools and guides. If a figure here no longer matches the school's page, the school's page is right and this one is wrong. The comparison is only as current as its last check, which is why the date is printed on every row rather than only at the top of the page.

What is deliberately not here

  • No rankings, and no institutions listed because they are prestigious. Coverage reflects which graduate admissions pages were readable and unambiguous on the day of checking.
  • No guesses. Where a page does not state whether MyBest is accepted, the row says “not stated” rather than inferring an answer.
  • No claim that this list is complete. It is twenty verified requirement tiers, not a census. Use the derived-row form for the programmes you actually care about.

Converting a transcript is a separate problem with the same structure, and the same warning applies to it: see the GPA converter for why only the receiving institution's own evaluation counts.

Common questions about TOEFL band requirements for graduate admission

Is band 5 enough for graduate admission?

Band 5 is the level ETS tells institutions to set if they previously required a total of 100, so it clears most programmes that used to ask for 100 or less. It is not universally enough. Among the requirements listed on this page, UCL Level 4 and Level 5 both ask for 5.5 overall, and several programmes set section floors that a band 5 average can still miss. Check the section column, not only the overall band.

My target programme still says TOEFL 100. Which number applies to me?

If you tested on or after 21 January 2026 your report shows a 1 to 6 band, a CEFR level and a comparable 0 to 120 total, so you can be assessed against either format without converting anything yourself. ETS provides all three on every report for two years, until January 2028. Send the official report and ask the admissions office to confirm which figure they are applying, because a page that still says 100 may simply not have been updated.

How is my overall TOEFL band calculated from my section scores?

It is the average of your four section bands rounded to the nearest half band, not a sum. ETS gives two worked cases: an average of 5.125 is reported as 5, and an average of 5.25 is reported as 5.5. So Reading 5.0, Listening 5.0, Speaking 4.5 and Writing 5.0 average to 4.875 and are reported as an overall 5.0.

Do graduate programmes accept TOEFL MyBest scores?

Some do and many do not, and ETS leaves the decision to each institution. Of the programmes listed on this page, Cornell's Graduate School accepts MyBest while warning that individual fields may not, the University of Washington accepts it under its current policy but removes it in a revised policy taking effect for Winter 2027 enrolment, and Illinois, UBC, King's College London and Wisconsin–Madison all refuse it. If a page is silent, assume single-sitting scores and ask.

How long is a TOEFL score valid for a graduate application?

TOEFL iBT scores are valid for 2 years from the test date, and ETS will not report or send scores after 2 years. Some graduate schools tighten this further by requiring the score to be valid at a specific point: Illinois requires scores dated within two years of the start of the proposed admission term, and Wisconsin–Madison requires them to be less than two years old on the first day of the enrolment term.

Why would a programme set 5.5 instead of 5.0 if it used to require 100?

It can, but ETS advises against it. Band 5 covers the 0 to 120 range 95 to 106, so a 5.5 threshold excludes everyone who would have scored 100 to 106 under the old scale. ETS states that setting 5.5 where 100 was previously required will increase the chances of not accepting qualified candidates with an equivalent score of 100 or even higher, and recommends band 5 instead.

Sources

Every figure on this page was read at the link below on 8 September 2026.