Half of IELTS does not change when you pick Academic or General Training. The official wording is blunt:
"The Speaking and Listening tests are the same in both the Academic and the General Training tests, but the Reading and Writing tests are different." — ielts.org
So the choice only decides two of your four papers. The part almost nobody tells you is what happens at marking time: on General Training Reading, the same number of correct answers earns you a lower band than it would on Academic Reading — and that is not a rumour, it is printed in ielts.org's own score tables. Two papers differ; one of them is graded harder.
The failure
The classic mistake runs in both directions. Academic candidates hear "GT is the easy one" and assume the grading is the same — then discover their 30/40 practice scores mean less on GT than they thought. GT candidates practise with Academic materials because there are more of them online — then sit a paper full of notices, contracts and workplace documents they never rehearsed, marked on a stricter conversion. Know which test your receiving organisation requires, practise that test's Reading and Writing, and read the GT conversion table before you set a target raw score.
Which test do you need?
State of the official guidance — and note it is guidance, so confirm with the organisation that will actually receive your score:
- Academic, per ielts.org: "Choose the IELTS Academic test if you wish to study at undergraduate or postgraduate levels, or if you are seeking professional registration, e.g. doctors and nurses."
- General Training, per ielts.org: "Choose this if you wish to migrate to an English-speaking country, (e.g. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK) or if you wish to train or study at below degree level."
- Canadian Express Entry is explicit — IRCC (canada.ca, modified 2026-06-22): "You must take the IELTS General Training option." Canadian citizenship applications also use GT, and only the Listening (4.5+) and Speaking (4.0+) scores.
- The UK has separate UKVI variants: IELTS UKVI (Academic), IELTS UKVI (General Training) and IELTS Life Skills. Per ielts.org, "IELTS tests are accepted by the UKVI as proof of English proficiency for those wishing to live, work, or study in the UK", and UKVI tests "must be taken in person at an official IELTS test centre". A UKVI test is a distinct booking — an ordinary IELTS certificate is not automatically a UKVI one.
Do not choose from a blog post, including this one. Check the exact requirement on your university's admissions page, IRCC's language-test page, or the relevant government site before you book — requirements are theirs, not IELTS's.
What actually differs on the two papers
GT Reading keeps the same shell as Academic — 40 questions, "60 minutes (including transfer time)", total text length 2150–2750 words, one mark per correct answer — but swaps the three long academic texts for, in ielts.org's words, "three sections of increasing difficulty":
| Section | Texts | Content (official wording) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "two or three short texts or several shorter texts" | Everyday topics — "notices, advertisements and timetables" |
| 2 | "two texts" | "Work topics, for example, job descriptions, contracts, staff development and training materials" |
| 3 | "one long text" | "A topic of general interest" from "newspapers, magazines, books and online resources" |
GT Writing Task 1 is a letter, not the Academic chart/graph description — at least 150 words in about 20 minutes. Task 2 is an essay of at least 250 words in about 40 minutes on both versions, and ielts.org states "Task 2 contributes twice as much as Task 1 to the Writing score."
The paragraph nobody quotes — and the 30/40 example
Here is the official grading statement, in full, from ielts.org's understanding-your-score page:
"The IELTS Academic and General Training Reading tests are graded on the same scale. The Academic Reading test may contain texts which feature more difficult vocabulary or greater complexity of style. It is usual that a greater number of questions must be answered correctly on a General Training Reading test to secure a given band score."
The tables on the same page put numbers on it. ielts.org describes them as average marks that "will vary slightly from test version to test version" — anchors, not guaranteed cut-offs:
| Marks /40 | Academic Reading band | GT Reading band |
|---|---|---|
| 35 | 8 | 7 |
| 30 | 7 | 6 |
| 23 | 6 | 5 |
| 15 | 5 | 4 |
Walk one row through. You answer 30 of 40 questions correctly. On Academic Reading, 30 marks is the published average for band 7. On General Training Reading, 30 marks is the published average for band 6 — a full band lower for the identical raw score, at every anchor the tables publish. The logic is fair enough: GT texts are easier, so more of them must be right to prove the same level. But it means a GT candidate chasing band 7 in Reading is aiming at roughly 35/40, the score that would be band 8 territory on Academic.
What is not official
- There is no full 0–40 conversion chart from any official source — only the anchor rows above, with the "vary slightly from test version to test version" caveat. Complete charts on prep sites are reconstructions.
- The official harder-grading statement covers Reading only. We found no equivalent official statement comparing how Academic and GT Writing are graded — do not assume one either way.
- ielts.org does not publish how many of the 40 questions fall in each GT Reading section.
- Neither test is officially "easier" overall. The one paper with published evidence of a grading difference is Reading — everything else is the same test or the same scale.
What actually costs you
- Booking Academic when your immigration stream demands GT, or vice versa — the scores are not interchangeable, and Express Entry names GT specifically.
- Setting a GT Reading raw-score target using an Academic conversion — you will land a band short.
- Practising Task 1 charts for a paper that will hand you a letter.
- Assuming any IELTS booking works for a UK visa — UKVI variants are separate tests.
- Trusting a full 0–40 chart from a prep site as if it were a guaranteed cut-off.
Try one
[Try a Reading task →] — one full task, marked, no card required.