English Language Proficiency Requirements
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All applicants who are not native speakers of English, must demonstrate English language proficiency by attaining a satisfactory score on one of the approved proficiency tests.
Admitted students may be required to take a test of English proficiency soon after arrival at the university and may be obligated to take course work in English as a Second Language (ESL). New international students appointed as teaching assistants are required to take an oral proficiency test regardless of their TOEFL scores. Such competence is ordinarily assessed by the Rutgers ESL program.
First year teaching assistants (TA) in the mathematics department often only have grading duties, and no classroom duties. After the first year, almost all TAs have teaching duties. Students will not be reappointed cannot be made until ESL has certified that the candidate possesses adequate competence in oral English (both speaking and understanding the spoken language). In some cases ESL will grant provisional certification conditioned on continuing work in their courses.
Our qualifying exams are given in English, and it is the language of instruction at Rutgers. A student with a low level of competence in English may find that this affects their performance on these exams. Thus non-native speakers of English are urged strongly to talk about mathematics in English with other students! Constant practice in conversational English in and out of class will eventually ease the difficulties some non-native English speakers may have.