It’s a dream for many Nepalese students to pursue their higher education in foreign countries. However, on the road to abroad study, you are faced with various unknowns. What exactly do you have to do to start towards your dream? In the midst of the unknowns, starting an English preparation test might be the first step towards your goal.
IELTS and TOEFL are the two most popular English tests that are considered by most of the foreign universities. IELTS, the International English Language Testing System, is a language proficiency test jointly managed by British Council, IDP; IELTS Australia and Cambridge Assessment English. TOEFL, Test of English as a Foreign Language, is a standardized test conducted by ETS. Most of the US-based universities accept TOEFL whereas the British and Australian universities consider IELTS for their applications.
In the context of Nepal, IELTS (Academic) is the go-to go option for most of the students. The basics are pretty simple. Get enrolled in an institution where you can get the general idea of the sections that you have to prepare for the test. You can get into any institution of your convenience, they only teach you the basic guidelines and the formats of the test. How you get a good score is up to you and your preparation. You will have four sections; Listening, Reading, Speaking, Writing, all judged on a score of 40. As per your score out of 40, you will be graded with numbers ranging for 0-9, 9 being the highest you can achieve. Your overall band score will be an average of your performance in all the four sections. You can take either the Paper-based test or the Computer-delivered test in Nepal, at a total cost of Rs. 21,500.
TOEFL, on the other hand, is mostly the choice for students targeting post-graduate studies in the US along with GRE (Graduate Record Examinations; will talk about this in another article). The basics of TOEFL are similar to IELTS, with sections Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking. The major difference is in the scoring system. You are scored out of 30 in each of the sections, with a combined score out of the total 120. For academic purposes, I am talking about the TOEFL Internet-based Test. The formats of the test differ from that of IELTS as TOEFL consists of entirely multiple-choice whereas the IELTS has short answer questions as well. The TOEFL is the lengthier of the two, the test-taking 4 hours and costs 180 USD.
Once you take any of these two language proficiency tests, you are eligible to apply for any universities in the world that require a language test as a criteria. The score requirement differs in different universities. Take any of the tests and you open the first gate towards your dream of abroad studies.
Best of luck guys!!