Do I need to take the TOEFL?

Test Preparation
1

<p>I was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1992 and came to America when I was 4 years old. At that age, I spoke Ukrainian and Russian. When I started Kindergarten, I spoke barely any English. About a month later, I spoke English better than the rest of the kids so my school told me I could skip ahead to 2nd grade. For some reason my mom thought I would be a sociopath if all of my friends were two years older than me so she only let me skip ahead to 1st grade. Since I started school, English has always been my best subject. I’ve participated in writing competitions, won spelling bees, taken Honors/AP courses and electives in English throughout high school, my highest Reading/English scores on the ACT were 34/32 (10 on writing), and my PSAT scores for reading and writing were in the 700s. Linguistics has always been a talent of mine, and I do not struggle with English whatsoever. But that doesn’t make me a native speaker… </p>

<p>Do I REALLY need to take the TOEFL?</p>

<p>(I thought about just saying that I AM a native speaker, but I feel like that takes away an important and unique element of my application… and I already wrote an essay about being bilingual that I really don’t want to rewrite.)</p>

2

<p>Nope. The TOEFFL is more used to explain a CR score in the 400s. Most of the kids I know who take it moved here in after 9th grade, so you’re all good. :)</p>

3

<p>But does it matter that I only have PSAT scores? I’m worried… I was filling out the Carnegie Mellon supplement on common app and when it asked what my first language was it said that any non-native speaker has to take it. I really would prefer to keep my $150.</p>