Test-takers at or just above the entry-tier floor for internationally-recognised universities.
A TOEFL iBT score of 80 sits at band 4.0 on the new 2026 scale and lines up with CEFR B2 (independent user). At this level, you have cleared the published floor at a small group of internationally-recognised universities, including the American University in Cairo, the University of Melbourne, KU Leuven, ANU, HKUST, and NUS. Below the headline number, two practical questions matter more than the floor itself: which sub-section minimums you cleared (several 80-floor universities still require 18 in each section), and whether your TOEFL sits anywhere near the admitted-student averages at the universities on your list, which usually sit several points above the published minimum.
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.
The published minimum is a filter, not a target. At entry-tier universities, the admitted-student TOEFL average for international applicants typically sits 5 to 10 points above the published floor. A TOEFL 80 application is plausible at universities that publish an 80-floor, but if the median admitted score is 85 to 88, the rest of your application (academic record, statement, references, test-day sub-scores) has to compensate for the gap. A retake that lifts your score by 5 to 8 points is usually a better investment than tightening other parts of the application from "good" to "slightly better".
A TOEFL iBT of 80 is band 4.0 and CEFR B2. It is enough to clear the published minimum at a handful of internationally-recognised universities (Melbourne, ANU, HKUST, NUS, KU Leuven, AUC). It is below the floor for most US top-50 universities, most Russell Group UK universities, and almost every Ivy League and Oxbridge program.
From our verified directory, the universities accepting an undergraduate TOEFL iBT score of 80 or below are: American University in Cairo (76), University of Melbourne (79), KU Leuven (79), Australian National University (80), HKUST (80), and NUS (85 for undergraduate, but 80 for several postgraduate programs). The list of qualifying universities is below.
Most top-50 US universities set a published TOEFL minimum of 90 or 100. At 80 you are below their floor, so your application is unlikely to be reviewed unless you request a waiver and provide other evidence of English proficiency (e.g. a degree from an English-medium institution, or a higher score on IELTS or Duolingo). Some regional universities (state schools, smaller liberal arts colleges) do accept 80, but they are not in our top-tier directory.
If the universities on your shortlist publish minimums above 80, retake. A jump from 80 to 88 (band 4.0 to band 4.5) opens roughly 10 additional universities in our verified directory. The retake interval is 3 days from your previous test date, so a focused 2 to 3 week revision plan around your weakest section often produces an 8 to 10 point lift.
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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