If you are disappointed with your IELTS result, you have 2 options:

1. Take the IELTS test again or

2. Ask for re-marking.

Many people were asking me about option # 2 and here is an explanation of what’s involved.

If you believe that you deserve a better score than you were awarded, you can ask for re-marking of your results. You can ask to re-mark the whole test or any part of it (Listening, Reading, Writing, or Speaking). Of course there is a fee, which is roughly a half of the normal IELTS test fee. If your result is changed to a higher score, the fee is refunded.

If you decided to go for remarking, here is what you need to do. Within 6 weeks of your test date, get a form called “IELTS Enquiry on Results Form” from your test center, fill in your name, address, the tests you want to have remarked, sign and date it. Pay the fee and expect your answer back within 6 weeks from the day they receive it at Cambridge or from IDP.

Here is what happens next: your test paper, your writing or your tape recorded during the Speaking test will be re-marked by a different examiner – not the one in your local test center, but by a trained clerical marker (for Reading and Listening answers) or a Cambridge ESOL-appointed Examiner, employed by the British Council or IDP.

In my opinion, unless you are very sure they’ve misread your answers, in the Reading and Listening there isn’t much of a chance to get a higher score. On the other hand, in the Writing and Speaking your chances are much better, because the score does depend on who marks the work, to some extent.

Let me tell you a true story of A from Romania. She took the IELTS test and was very confident and positive about her results, however… the results arrived and she got only 6.5 in Speaking. A immediately appealed, because she was confident that she deserved more (and her scores in the other sections were also much higher, Bands 8 – 7.5).

Later on she got really pessimistic, after talking to people who assured her that IELTS folks will never give her a higher score because of some kind of conspiracy, that by giving her a higher score, IELTS organization will admit to their guilt and they are never going to do that.

Two months later, a very happy woman friend me a letter about her score being raised from 6.5 to 7 and her money was refunded. Apparently the examiner at Cambridge disagreed with the local Romanian examiner and thought it was a Band 7 candidate.