Canada has raised the IELTS requirement for the SDS category to IELTS 6 band each for international students from India.
This has created a lot of confusion in the student community in India, especially the Punjab area.
Should you now go to study in Australia? Or the UK? Or Cyprus, Singapore, Latvia? Are they suddenly better places than Canada just because they have a lower band requirement/ no IELTS requirement?
Let me tell you right away – they are not. But more on that later.
In order to understand the reality of the IELTS 6 band problem, we retrieved 2017 test data from Cambridge and compiled it in a graph that is easy to understand.
What we want to understand is this: what bands were our students getting in 2017 before SDS? How far off is our average student from IELTS 6 band?
Lets look at the results.
- It is evident from the “Academic – India overall” graph that nearly 50% of the academic students in India get 5.5 – 6 bands overall.
- The Hindi (as first language test takers) and Punjabi (as first language test takers) students show a similar story. Over 60% of test takers got 5.5 – 6.0 bands overall.
This means that 70% of the students were always getting over 6 bands. So, for the majority of the students, this new IELTS 6 band each requirement does not change anything.
SDS has only made it better for the students since the number of colleges has gone up to about 130. And these are all colleges that have a DLI number, which means that you will be able to get a Post Graduate Work Permit after studying here. WIN.
Lets look at the results for IELTS GT candidates now.
The story is a little different here.
70% of the potential immigrants (that take the GT) score less than 7.5 bands.
From this, we can say that the IELTS 8777 band requirement to get high CRS points remains to be a much more challenging task.
Good news: For academic students, there is no need to panic. Don’t listen to unscrupulous consultants and change the country you want to go to, to one that has lower band requirements. They will convince you that you should go to Australia, since Australia is accepting students with lower bands. But then, Australia is EXPENSIVE. Australian PR is difficult. Australia does not have the US as a neighbour, so it does not have the same economical advantage.
Mind you, Australia is a great country. And, Australia does have nice weather! Definitely go to Australia if you want to go to Australia. But don’t go to Australia only because you can’t raise your IELTS band by 0.5.
Canada remains one of the best places in the world to study, work and live. Low crime rate, highly accepting local population, beautiful outdoors, laid back attitude and world class facilities for families and young people.
Meanwhile, we continue to understand the science behind the IELTS.
We are developing techniques to help IELTS academic students and GT students raise their bands. The impact of IELTS scores on their lives is huge and they deserve higher scores.