- GRE and TOEFL increasingly central to Indian students’ plans to study abroad, aiding admissions, visas, scholarships, and employability.
- TOEFL evaluates English proficiency for academic success, while GRE tests quantitative, verbal, and analytical skills for graduate and MBA programs.
- TOEFL is being revamped for bias reduction, better real-world relevance, and dual scoring; students are exploring destinations beyond the traditional USA, UK, Canada, and Australia.
Nowadays, with borders growing more permeable and education more international, standardised tests such as GRE and TOEFL increasingly find themselves at the center of students' dreams to study overseas. These exams not just assist in gaining admissions to leading universities across fields ranging from STEM to business but also support visa approvals, campus scholarships, and employment in foreign environments, says Sachin Jain, Country Manager of ETS India and South Asia.
The TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) continues to be a major measure of English competence, assessing the student's skill in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Not only is its function beyond just testing language proficiency but also to make sure that students are prepared to succeed in English-language academic programs.
The test is accepted at more than 13,000 colleges and universities in more than 160 nations. For most nations, proof of English proficiency is a requirement by law in order to get a student visa. In India, for instance, 85 % of students who had presented TOEFL scores got student visas successfully pointing to its dual function as an academic and immigration qualification. Aside from admission, good TOEFL scores can assist students in securing on-campus jobs like Teaching Assistantships (TA) or Research Assistantships (RA), many of which necessitate documentation of excellent oral and written English capabilities. In contrast, the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) tests more generically in quantitative reasoning, verbal reasoning, and analytical writing.
All the same, it is particularly germane to graduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. programmes in STEM, social sciences, and increasingly in business and management. Whereas GRE's historical strong point has been STEM and other research areas, it is now making inroads even into MBA admissions at the 'top 10' U.S. MBA schools, 37.2 % of applications that were submitted also presented GRE scores, up from 31.1 % only two years prior. In India, elite institutions like ISB (for its one-year PGP) and several IIMs (for Executive MBA) admit GRE scores, boosting the rate of GRE adoption among Indian applicants.
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Overall, GRE and TOEFL are not simply scores they are enabling mobility. They bridge linguistic and academic gaps, opening access to institutions worldwide for candidates from non-English speaking backgrounds. GRE scores last for five years, giving students the flexibility to choose when to apply; TOEFL scores last for two years. More significantly, TOEFL itself is changing.
ETS revealed in May 2025 a revamped experience of the TOEFL iBT, including improvements to the at-home test experience (e.g., in-house proctors and accelerated identity verification) and suggested adaptivity for reading and listening sections from January 2026. In addition, a dual scoring scale (0-120 and a 1-6 band that maps to the CEFR framework) will enable institutions to better interpret results.
It seeks to make the test less biased, more representative, and more in alignment with how students employ English in classroom and everyday contexts. At the same time, students are broadening their choices beyond the erstwhile 'Big Four' countries (USA, UK, Canada, Australia). New countries such as Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, and Singapore are becoming popular, fueled by price competitiveness, lenient visa and work requirements, and high-quality education. GRE and TOEFL, through their widespread acceptability, offer test-takers the choice of pursuing opportunities across this broadening base.
