IELTS

For those of you who are planning to take the IELTS exam but don't really know what it's about. Here's a brief overview:

IELTS stands for: International English Language Testing System

IELTS is administered by: the British Council; IDP: IELTS Australia and the University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations.

Approximately 6000 institutions worldwide recognise the exam for education, immigration and professional accreditation.

The IELTS test score is valid for 2 years.

Various companies in Istanbul encourage their staff to take the IELTS exam every 2 - 3 years.

Around 3000 American universities and organisations accept the IELTS exam.

The IELTS exam has 2 parts to the exams: Academic and General.

The Academic exam is for students who would like to enrol at universities and further education establishments. Generally, for a Master's program the accepted score is 6.5 for the majority of universities worldwide but you will need to check with the respective university's website as some, universities require 7.0 such as Bogazici University in Istanbul.

The General exam is usually for people who would like to immigrate or go for work experience to countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. Some companies in Istanbul accept the General exam opposed to the Academic exam.

Both the Academic and General exam formats are the same and are divided into 4 sections:

Listening
Reading
Writing
Speaking

The listening, reading and writing sections are generally held on one day with the speaking component held on a different day. On occasion it has been known that all four components have been held on the same day.