Test-takers above almost every published floor, at the level where sub-section minimums and admitted-student averages set the real bar.
A TOEFL iBT score of 110 sits at band 5.5 on the new 2026 scale and lines up with CEFR C1+ (advanced proficient user). At this level, you have cleared the published floor at every internationally-recognised university in our verified directory, including Cornell graduate (which publishes a 110 floor in several engineering and life sciences departments). 38 of 38 universities qualify at this threshold. The list below is comprehensive, but the more useful framing on this page is what specific programs (Cornell engineering at 110, MIT Sloan MBA at 105+, top journalism schools at 105+) treat as an informal threshold even though they do not publish 110 as a floor.
Sorted by published TOEFL minimum (highest first). Each entry is one of 84 verified universities in the TOEFLMock directory; the linked page lists the program-level details and the official admissions URL.
Graduate program floors. Individual departments (especially in engineering, medicine, law, and journalism) may publish higher program-specific minimums than the university-wide floor.
At a TOEFL 110, the question is no longer "will my application be screened in". The question is "is there any university where my TOEFL is genuinely the differentiator". The honest answer is rarely. Among admitted international students at the very top of the rankings, the modal TOEFL is 108 to 112; the difference between 110 and 115 is barely measurable in admissions outcomes. If your TOEFL is 110 and you are still deciding whether to retake, the best use of preparation time is almost always shifting effort from TOEFL to the GRE/GMAT/SAT, the statement of purpose, or extracurricular and research signals. The single exception: if a specific Cornell or Penn engineering program publishes a 110 floor in your target department and your sub-section minimums are below the required 22 in each, a targeted retake to fix the sub-section is the right move.
A TOEFL iBT of 110 is band 5.5 and CEFR C1+. It is above the published floor at every internationally-recognised university in our directory, including programs that publish higher informal thresholds (Cornell engineering, MIT Sloan, top journalism schools). At 110, no university in our directory rejects your application on TOEFL grounds.
Yes. At top-10 US universities and Oxbridge, admitted-student averages sit at 105 to 108. A 110 sits just above that average and is competitive at any institution where TOEFL is one of several rationing signals. It is not exceptional, since the highest-ability international applicants commonly score 115 to 118, but it is unambiguously inside the admitted-student distribution at every top-tier program.
From our verified directory, Cornell University publishes a 110 graduate-level floor in several engineering and life-sciences departments. Specific programs at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale also publish 105 to 110 floors for particular schools (Wharton, Yale Law, Yale School of Management). Always check the program-level requirements page rather than the university-wide minimum, since program-specific floors are often 5 to 10 points higher than the university floor.
In our verified directory, Cornell's 110 graduate floor is the highest university-wide minimum. Several individual programs (top engineering departments, journalism schools, specific MBA programs) set 109 to 110 floors as well, even when the university-wide floor is lower. There is no public floor above 110 in the directory.
Every published TOEFL minimum on this page comes from the universities' own admissions pages, last verified 2026-06-16. We do not aggregate user-submitted data, do not crowd-source numbers, and do not include any university whose published minimum we could not independently verify. Each link goes to a detail page that includes the official admissions URL and the verification date for that specific institution. See our editorial standards for the full sourcing and update policy.
See where your current TOEFL score sits relative to the universities above. Score reported on both 1-6 band and 0-120 scales.
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