PTEA to Replace TOEFL and IELTS?

PTE Academic ( Pearson Test of English Academic) is an innovative and engaging way to demonstrate your English language proficiency to international institutions.

TOEFL is mandatory requirement for International students apply for US Universities. PTEA is new exam which will be offered from October, 2009 to gain some share in standardized English Proficiency testing market. Before students can take the test, PTEA must be accepted by Universities.

Right now about 50+ Universities in US accept PTEA exam for Graduate School  Admission, whereas TOEFL is accepted by almost all the colleges and universities. So, it will take huge effort for Pearson to market this exam to the Universities and then get them to accept the test.

PTE Academic vs TOEFL

When an International student thinks about applying to Universities in America, by default GRE and TOEFL exams comes to mind. For Australian and UK universities, IETLS comes to mind.

There are small group of students applying to US Universities using ITELS. But, those group of students should be planning to apply for admission in UK or Australia. Also, students taking TOEFL are planning to study in America. It will take lot of time, effort (many years) to make students take PTEA.

IELTS exam is know to all the students, but majority of those students applying for colleges to US from India go for TOEFL.  So, PETA has tough challenges atleast in India.

In the next article we will do a comparison of PTEA vs TOEFL vs IELTS.