I took the Speaking sub-test at home on 15 June and the LRW sub-tests at Prometric on 19 June. I received my results on 22 June. I was actually expecting them on 21 June since the portal mentions results are released within about 48 hours, but I think (not entirely sure) they don’t release results on weekends, so I got mine on Monday instead.

A little background about me: I am a non-native speaker from India, and I studied for only 4 days, as I needed results asap for processing my research fellowship application, and also in my Step dedicated.

Day 1: Around 4 hours getting familiar with the test format and watching a few videos on writing from the official OET channel and E2 OET.

The day before the Speaking test, I dedicated an entire day to role-play practice. I completed 16 scenarios in total. I’m a very shy person, so I didn’t practice with friends or even my native English-speaking boyfriend. Instead, I recorded my responses using an iPhone voice recorder, copied the transcripts into ChatGPT, and asked it to evaluate them. ChatGPT usually scored me between 370 and 430.

On test day, I felt confident. Although I couldn’t complete all the tasks in the first role-play, I stayed calm and focused on doing better in the second one, which thankfully went well.

Two days before the LRW test, I completed 3 official sample tests for Listening and Reading. Honestly, if you already have a good grasp of English, I think that’s enough preparation for those sections.

For Writing, I started practicing the day before the exam. I wrote about 7 letters and used ChatGPT to analyze them. ChatGPT generally scored me between 330 and 390, but Claude was much harsher, giving me scores between 280 and 330, which naturally made me feel underconfident.

On test day, I had to travel 5 hours to the Prometric center and I spent about 3 hours browsing the official OET website’s blogs on writing and grammar tips. They were extremely helpful, and I highly recommend them. They highlight several common grammatical mistakes that many of us make without realizing it.

The exam itself went smoothly, but I found the Writing task challenging. Even though it was a referral letter, there were so many visits and details to include. My final letter was around 308 words, and I was quite worried afterward because I didn’t have time to proofread it. So, I would recommend practising sample letters with a timer.

When I got home, I tried rewriting the letter from memory and asked ChatGPT to score it. It gave me a score between 290 and 310, which completely terrified me. Thankfully, my actual Writing score ended up being 360.  
So if you’re waiting for your results, try not to panic after the exam and stay calm. I know that’s much easier said than done!

Here's the drive link, which has practice tests for Speaking and Writing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tQAYd5LdFSMK\_OVoNQkbk3Mr2KvnFbyeWRq0euHKi7I/edit?tab=t.0

If it gives you any context: I’ve also given TOEFL back in 2023 for USCE and scored 100/120.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Happy to help!

Passed OET (1st attempt)