IELTS comes in two versions and they are not interchangeable. Book the wrong one and the certificate is valid and useless.
Academic is the one universities ask for. General Training is for migration and for some work and school-entry purposes — Australia, Canada, the UK's visa routes. If you are applying to study a degree, you need Academic unless a university's own page says otherwise in writing.
What is identical in both: Listening and Speaking. Same tasks, same length, same marking. Practice for these transfers completely between versions.
What differs:
- Reading. Academic gives three long passages from journals, books and newspapers, written
- for a general but educated readership. General Training gives shorter workplace and everyday
- texts — notices, advertisements, handbooks — plus one longer passage at the end.
- Writing Task 1. Academic asks you to describe a chart, table, diagram, map or process.
- General Training asks for a LETTER — formal, semi-formal or personal — and that is a
- completely different task with its own conventions of greeting, purpose and sign-off.
- Writing Task 2 is an essay in both, and the topics in General Training are usually a little
- more everyday. The structure and the marking criteria are the same.
The scoring is the same 0–9 band scale, but the two versions are calibrated separately: a band 6.5 in General Training and a band 6.5 in Academic are not treated as equivalent by institutions that specified one of them.
One more version worth knowing about. IELTS for UKVI is the same test taken at a centre approved for UK visa purposes, in both Academic and General Training. If your university names UKVI, book UKVI — a standard Academic certificate will not satisfy it, and this is one of the most expensive booking mistakes an Indian applicant can make.
So: read your university's page, note the version and whether UKVI is named, and only then book. Everything on this track applies to both versions except the Task 1 lesson, which is written for Academic.