Before applying for graduate studies abroad, one of the most important requirements is having a valid English proficiency certificate, such as TOEFL, IELTS, or TOEIC. Fortunately, when I applied to the University of Tsukuba for the 2020 intake, they accepted TOEIC scores. This was quite different from many other universities, which generally do not consider TOEIC as sufficient proof of English proficiency.

Seeing this opportunity, I decided to take the TOEIC exam for the first time in 2019. My goal was not only to prepare for the University of Tsukuba application, but also to apply for the National Institute for Materials Science Graduate Research Assistantship (NIMS-GRA).

For my TOEIC preparation, I didn’t review too much grammar or foundational English. Instead, I bought a TOEIC practice book and studied directly from the practice tests. Since it was my first time, I was a bit confused when doing the first full test—especially in the listening section. But after completing one full set, I started to get used to the format and recognize the common question patterns.

After working through several practice sets, I realized that TOEIC isn’t actually difficult—it’s simply tiring. You have to answer a total of 200 questions (100 listening and 100 reading) within a limited time. Because of this, I strongly recommend regularly exposing yourself to English before taking the exam. The key is being able to understand natural, everyday English sentences, since TOEIC questions focus more on daily-life scenarios rather than technical or academic topics like TOEFL or IELTS.

With roughly two weeks of preparation, I managed to score 940/990 on my first TOEIC attempt—445 in reading and a perfect 495 in listening. I was quite proud of this result, especially because a score above 900 is considered high. As it turned out, I was lucky: this score gave me the maximum number of points for the English section when applying for the master’s program at the University of Tsukuba.

According to the admissions guidelines from the Graduate School of Science and Technology (where I applied in August 2019), a TOEIC score of 860 or above is automatically converted to the highest point category. I’ll share more details about the application process for the master’s program at the University of Tsukuba in a separate post.