Meet the English condition on your offer
Almost every UK offer carries one. We prepare you for the exact condition on yours: the paper it names, the score it asks for, and the date it has to be met by.
- IELTS, TOEFL, PTEWhichever test your offer names
- Bands 5.5 to 7.0The range UK conditions are written in
- No cost to studentsThe universities pay us
Academic English is not the English you already speak
A department is not asking whether you can hold a conversation. It is asking whether you can read forty pages of argument before Thursday, write about them in your own words, and then defend that in a room of twelve people.
That is a narrower skill than general English, and it is the one the test is built to find. We prepare for it directly rather than around it.
These are the ordinary cases. Many departments also set a floor on each of the four papers, and that sub-score is where a place is most often lost. The letter on your offer is the only one that counts, and we read it with you line by line.
clear the English condition before their university's deadline
The figure is high for an unglamorous reason. We never plan for one sitting and one result, and we never wait to find out before arranging the alternative.
- Two sittings, planned The second date is held before the first result lands, so a half band short costs a fortnight and not a year.
- Pre-sessional in parallel The university's own English course is priced and dated alongside, while places on it still remain.
- One deadline, tracked The date the condition must be met by sits on your calendar and ours, with the visa timetable read back from it.
Two routes to the score, and we prepare both at once
One of them gets you the band in an exam hall. The other makes the band unnecessary. Which one you end up using is not decided until the result comes back, so neither is left until then.
Targeted exam focus
A study plan built from your first mock rather than from a syllabus. Full papers under real timing, marked the way an examiner marks them, until the target band is the ordinary result and not the good day.
- A diagnostic paper in the first week, marked band by band
- A full sitting under exam conditions every week after it
- Whichever test your offer names, taught to that paper
- The weakest of the four skills given the most hours
Pre-sessional support
If the sitting lands half a band short, the place is not gone. Most universities run their own English course that satisfies the condition outright, and we enrol you on the right one while there is still room on it.
- Six, ten and twenty week courses compared on dates and cost
- Enrolment made early, before the summer courses fill
- The CAS and visa timetable moved to match the longer start
- Accommodation brought forward to the earlier arrival
Four skills, at the level a department reads them
The examiner is not marking politeness. Each paper stands in for one thing a first term will ask of you, which is why preparing for the test and preparing for the course turn out to be the same work.
Reading
Forty pages of argument, and the point of it, before the seminar starts.
Writing
A position held for two thousand words, with the sources where they belong.
Listening
A lecture at speed, in an accent you have not met, with notes worth reading after.
Speaking
A view put to a room of twelve, and then held when somebody disagrees.
From a band score to a first seminar
The condition is a gate, not the goal. What the preparation is really for is the term behind it: reading critically, writing that argues rather than summarises, and speaking up in a room where everyone else already sounds certain. These are the three programmes that carry students across.
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01
Intensive IELTS preparation
Ten to twelve weeks, all four papers, and a full sitting every week from the first. Each one is marked against the band descriptors, so progress is read in the same units the university will read it in.
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02
Pre-sessional integration
The university's own English course, chosen for its dates and its department rather than its price, with the visa, the CAS and the room moved to match the earlier arrival.
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03
Advanced academic writing
Structure, citation and register, taught on the kind of essay your own course will actually set. It runs after the condition is met, because that is when it is needed.
Where fluency meets the rest of it
Language is what lets the place open up. The society you join in the second week, the group project nobody warned you about, the tutor's office hour you walk into without rehearsing it first. We prepare for the paper because the paper is the gate. We prepare properly because of what is behind it.