Average IELTS Scores for Immigration, Employment, and Grad Programs (2024-2025)
I wrote about average IELTS scores for immigration, employment, and grad school a while back, and they've recently released updated numbers for 2024-2025 (spoiler: not many changes, but a few small shifts worth noting).
The collective of organizations that publish IELTS released two types of reports: one with mean scores by country/demographics, and another with percentile distributions by reason for taking the test (immigration, employment, grad school, etc.).
For 2024-2025, the global averages for IELTS are basically unchanged from last year, so my statement from last year holds:
Once you hit 7.0 you're doing better than ~half of all test takers. Once you hit 7.5+ you're among the top ~15-20% of all test takers, and once you hit 8.0+ you're in single-digit, pretty elite territory.
Here's the table updated for grad school, immigration, and employment (note please apply same assumptions as last year):
| Purpose | Typical Required Band | % of Test-Takers Achieving That in 2023-2024 | % of Test-Takers Achieving That in 2024-2025 | Change YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grad School | 6.5+ | ~43% | ~43% | 0 |
| Immigration | 6.0+ | ~74% | ~79% | +5 |
| Employment | 6.5+ | ~58% | ~60% | +2 |
There's been a slight uptick in immigration and employment numbers, with almost 8 in 10 applicants meeting the 6.0 band that you'll see for many PR/citizenship tests around the world. I just wrote about Australia increasing their band scores requirements, and I imagine we'll see similar measures as countries focus on assimilating their current immigrants versus taking on new ones.