Thank you for choosing Mera career guide and writing to us. I appreciate your interest in studying abroad and also congrats on getting a very good score in your Engineering. A 75% in an Engineering degree at a Bachelors level will be definitely pleasing foreign universities to consider you as a potential prospective candidate.

I understand you have scored a 5.5 in IELTS and are worried about that. A 5.5 score is definitely less if you want to study abroad wherein universities usually have a benchmark for students to score 6.0 or above. Having said that, what are all your individual band scores? I know IELTS test contains four bands known as reading, writing, speaking and listening. Whilst it is necessary for students to get a minimum of 6.0 over all, foreign universities might be strict to say each band should also have a minimum score of 5.5. If there is any band that got you scored 5 or even less than 5.0 then with no other option universities will tell you to retake the IELTS test.

There is a safe way to tackle this problem and this is only applicable if you have studied all your education years since school to college only in ENGLISH MEDIUM. While applying to Universities, try emailing the admission officers that you have studied in an English medium school and college and also write to them the percentage you scored in English exams. For example, you can write to them saying you have a xx% in 10th English subject and a xx% in your 12th English subject. Please email them only if you have scored above 80% in English language. In case you had a 75% in 10th English and 85% in 12th English, then email them stating only your 12th score (do not mention anything on the 10th score). Apart from this, email the Universities that your college education was also taught in English. Perhaps, you can put up a line like this, "I have scored xx% in English 12th standard examination. My Bachelors of Engineering degree was also taught in English where I score 75%. I would be very pleased if you could consider these qualifications as the required nominal and waive my IELTS or other English language requirement". Based on this statement, lots of Universities will come forward to accept you without an IELTS score but definitely not the top universities. Only medium and low ranked universities would be flexible whereas the top ranked would not be pleased with an overall score of less than 7.5 or 8.0

To definitely mention, if you are considering studying in Australia, IELTS is mandatory for the visa purposes so this requires you to defintely retake the IELTS test and score a minimum of 6.0 overall. If you are considering the UK, requiring IELTS or not is solely dependent on the Universities and their admission officers. If they admission officer is convinced to grant you an offer without the IELTS test, you can still enter the country and the visa officer wouldn't demand you IELTS test for visa purposes. And yes, it depends on the admission officer's mind whether or not to admit you without an IELTS test score.

In case, you are forced to retake, then you need to do it at least for visa purposes (to keep you safe from visa refusal). But dont worry, do a little more of preparations and I am sure you will hit a minimum of 6.0 overall. Give yourself at least 2 weeks to prepare and concentrate on the band that pulled your score down. As this is the second attempt, you can most probably do well and get .5 extra overall. You can also take support of the IELTS coaching centres as with the help of coaching I am sure you can go beyond 6.0 overall. Hope this helps. All the best.