While both PTE and IELTS have academic tests, IELTS General Training is mostly preferred by applicants for immigration purposes.
Operational difference: The major difference between IELTS and PTE lies in the way they are administered. Candidates can choose between a Computer-based or Paper-based test with IELTS while The PTE exam is conducted via a computer only. Thus, applicants who are not proficient in using a computer may choose to give IELTS.
While both PTE and IELTS have academic tests, IELTS General Training is mostly preferred by applicants for immigration purposes.
For speaking assessment, candidates taking the PTE exam talk into a microphone while IELTS candidates demonstrate speaking skills in front of an examiner. The reading and writing sections of the IELTS exam are marked physically by an examiner while it is machine-marked in the case of PTE.
IELTS exams take 3.11 hours to complete, which is less than the PTE exam, which takes 2.50 hours.
Many questions on the PTE exam are integrated. Thus, reading, writing, speaking, and listening to questions could be intertwined. This is not the case with IELTS, where each section is assessed separately.
Different universities may prefer either PTE or IELTS based on their policies. However, to help students who have invested considerable time and resources preparing for one type of exam, it was decided by test organisations to accept a converted score. Additionally, most universities believed that since the format and grading methods of the two exams differ in testing the same proficiency (knowledge of English language). It would be in the interest of students to accept converted PTE to IELTS scores.
