Your band is not one opinion
Most students imagine an examiner reading the essay and thinking "this feels like a 6.5". That is not what happens. The examiner gives four separate scores, one for each criterion, and those four are averaged into the number you see. All four count the same. Once you know that, one uncomfortable fact follows, and it is the most useful thing in this post.
The four scores, equal weight
04Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The same math, four different students
17 / 7 / 7 / 7
Band 7
Example: Even across all four. Nothing is dragging, nothing is carrying.
27 / 7 / 7 / 5
Band 6.5
Example: Strong writing, one weak criterion, and half a band gone. This student usually has no idea which one it is.
37 / 7 / 6 / 6
Band 6.5
Example: No disaster anywhere, but two soft scores add up to the same loss as one bad one.
48 / 8 / 7 / 5
Band 7
Example: Two excellent scores spent covering for one weak one. All that extra quality bought back what the 5 took away.
Why your weakest score is worth the most work
Look at that last student again. Two 8s, and they still land on 7, because one criterion is sitting at 5. If they had fixed the 5 instead of polishing the 8s, the same effort would have moved them further. This is the opposite of how most people study. Working on your strong side feels good. Working on your weak side feels like failing. The average does not care how it feels.
Where the weak score usually hides
A hidden Task Response problem
✕The question asks about the causes AND the solutions. You wrote three beautiful paragraphs about the causes.
✓Split your plan across both halves of the question before you write a word.
This is the most expensive mistake in IELTS writing, and it does not feel like a mistake while you are doing it, because every sentence you wrote was good.
A hidden Coherence problem
✕Your body paragraph starts about cost, drifts into health, and ends on the government.
✓One main idea per paragraph, stated in the first sentence, defended until the last.
You can write perfect sentences and still lose here. The score is about the shape of the essay, not the quality of the lines inside it.
A hidden Grammar problem
✕Every sentence is correct, and every sentence is the same shape: subject, verb, object.
✓Add a because clause, a which clause, and one conditional. Keep them correct.
Accuracy alone does not reach the top. The criterion asks for range too, so safe and simple has a ceiling.
Read next
Go deeper on each score: the 4 questions your IELTS examiner is secretly asking and 5 small changes that take your writing from 6.5 to 7.
Find out which of the four is yours
You cannot fix the weak criterion until you know which one it is, and one overall number will never tell you. Write your next essay in VoyaLang and you get all four scores separately, with the reason behind each one and a stronger version of your own essay to compare against. Most students are surprised by which score is holding them back. Create a free account and find yours in about a minute.
