Academic or General Training: which IELTS should you take?

There are two versions of IELTS, and candidates regularly sit the wrong one. The result is not transferable, so the mistake costs a full test fee and several weeks.

The rule

You do not choose. The organisation reading your result chooses. Check their published requirement and take the version it names. If you are applying to more than one place and they disagree, you need the version each one asks for — a General Training result will not satisfy a university that specified Academic.

Broadly: Academic for higher education and professional registration; General Training for work visas, migration and secondary education. But treat that as a rule of thumb, not authority. Read the requirement.

What is identical

Listening and Speaking are exactly the same in both versions — same format, same timing, same marking. Practice for these is completely interchangeable, which is worth knowing because most free material online does not distinguish them.

What differs

Reading. Academic uses three long passages from academic or journalistic sources, and the language is denser. General Training uses shorter, more practical texts — notices, advertisements, workplace documents — building to one longer passage at the end.

Writing Task 1. This is the biggest difference. Academic asks you to describe a chart, graph, table, map or process. General Training asks for a letter. These are entirely different skills, and preparation for one is close to useless for the other.

Writing Task 2 is an essay in both, marked on the same four criteria. The General Training topics tend to be slightly less abstract, but the task type list is the same.

A consequence worth knowing

Bands are not directly comparable between versions in Reading. General Training Reading is scored on a stricter raw-score-to-band scale than Academic, because the texts are easier — so the same number of correct answers gives a lower band. Candidates sometimes take General Training expecting an easier band and are surprised.

If you have a genuine choice — and most people do not — take the version that matches the skills you already have.