International students who do not meet Bradley’s English proficiency standard will no longer be automatically turned away from enrollment, as collaboration with Illinois Central College will create a training program to offer language courses until the requirement is met.
Before acceptance into Bradley, international students take one of two English proficiency tests, the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), on which they must score a 79 out of 120 or a 6.5 out of 9.0, respectively.
“In the past, if students did not meet our minimum English language requirements, all we could do was tell them to try to take the test again in hopes that they would do better,” Graduate School Dean Jeffrey Bakken said. “Now, we have another option for them: English language training at ICC.”
According to Bakken, Bradley began having conversations with ICC in November of 2014, and after about a month, an agreement was made.
The program will only accept students who barely fail to meet university requirements with a TOEFL score between 70 to 78 or an IELTS score between 6.0 to 6.4, according to Director of International Admissions and Student Services Kayla Carroll.
“They’re already pretty good at English, but [they] just don’t quite meet our standards,” Carroll said. “We are hoping that one semester or just a summer of them being immersed in the English language in the U.S. and taking formal classes will be enough.”
International undergraduate and graduate students who fall in the aforementioned ranges can apply to ICC and enroll in the four-course English as a Second Language program. After completing the training, students will retake the proficiency tests and can start schooling at Bradley if the requirement is then met.
While students are attending the ICC language courses, they are advised to live on or near Bradley campus, according to Carroll.
“They will be encouraged to participate in Bradley events and start to get the feel of the community here,” Carroll said.
The program has the potential to bring diversity to campus, as it opens the doors to international populations that we currently do not have access to. Bakken said, the university will be able to recruit students from countries such as South Korea, China, Saudi Arabia and many more where the university believes there is a need for additional language support.
“This will provide a greater diversity of students to enroll at Bradley and will increase our enrollment at the undergraduate and graduate levels,” Bakken said.
The program will also have an effect on the surrounding area.
“It’s good for the Peoria community all together when you have diversification,” Shabeer Amirali, director of recruitment and student success, said.
Also bringing diversity to ICC’s campus, the program has added to the collegiate relationship between ICC and Bradley.
“We’ve had a good collaborative relationship in the past, and I think this will bring opportunities for more collaboration,” Barbara Burton, director of international education at ICC, said.
Currently, Bradley is reaching out to students that were denied admission for fall or spring of the current school year but would be able to enroll in the language training. According to Carroll, this list includes 105 students from the fall and 89 students from the spring as of Dec. 11.
“Those are students we automatically denied, so we are going back and looking at those files to see [if] they have the right GPA and the right test scores to come back,” Carroll said.
According to Carroll, they hope to have the first group of at least 20 students enrolled in the program this summer.
