IELTS Exam Cancellation

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If you’re taking the IELTS, there are two types of IELTS exam cancellation that you should be aware of: cancelling test dates and cancelling test scores.

Rules for Cancelling Your IELTS Test Date

There are a few very different reasons you might cancel an IELTS test date. Maybe you need to reschedule your IELTS for a different time due to schedule conflicts. Maybe you’ve fallen ill or had some other emergency shortly before the test. Or perhaps you’ve simply decided not to take the IELTS anyway.

The IELTS has rules that cover these varied reasons for cancelling an IELTS test date.

First, if you want to be guaranteed a refund on your IELTS, you need to cancel your testing session at least five weeks before its date. If you cancel a scheduled IELTS exam at five weeks (or longer) in advance, you will get your money back…. Or you’ll at least get back 75% of your IELTS booking fees. IELTS will still keep the remaining 25% of what you originally paid as a cancellation fee.

If you give the IELTS less than 5 weeks notice when you cancel, you aren’t guaranteed a refund. However, you may still be able to get a refund with short-notice cancellation if you cancelled due to illness or injury. To apply for a short-notice refund on a cancelled IELTS, you’ll need to provide acceptable documentation of your health problems.

One additional important policy to know: the rules for cancellation and refunds are the same whether you are cancelling and rescheduling, or are just cancelling. Rescheduling your IELTS doesn’t make you any more eligible for a refund. Moreover, you can’t simply transfer the fees from your cancelled session to your new, postponed IELTS registration.

How to Cancel Your IELTS Test Date

Cancellations of test dates are handled by local IELTS testing centres. As a result, you need to go to your regional IELTS website to download the IELTS exam cancellation forms and get instructions on where to send the forms. To give just two examples of regional web pages for this, here is the IELTS exam cancellation page for IELTS Toronto, and here’s the IELTS exam cancellation page for the British Council in India. If you’re not sure where to find your local IELTS cancellation instructions online, contact the IELTS centre where you booked the exam.

The IELTS Exam: Cancellation of Scores

A different kind of cancellation need can arise once you’ve actually taken the IELTS test. Sometimes, your scores are much lower than you had hoped, and you don’t want universities to see them.

While most standardised exams let you cancel disappointing scores, the IELTS does not. Here’s the good news, though: generally, universities only care about the highest score you get. So if your score is far too low, you can simply retake the IELTS for a better score and still get accepted to university.