A month before his deadline, this Pune student found out his IELTS baseline was sitting a full band below what he needed. In his own words, here’s how he closed that gap, what almost made him skip proper preparation altogether, and how a single Reading question type nearly derailed his score.
Q1. Tell us a bit about yourself and where this journey started.
A) My name is Sumedh Kamble, and I’m from Pune. I did my schooling at Kendriya Vidyalaya and then went on to do my bachelor’s in financial markets. I’ve always been quite skilled with numbers, so a math-heavy degree made sense to me from the start. But sport has really been the bigger part of my life. Football is what I play the most, and I actually worked as an assistant football coach part-time while I was still in college. For my master’s, I want to combine both of those, sports and maths, in sports analytics.
Q2. Did you always know you’d need IELTS?
A) No, not at all, and that’s actually where I went wrong at first. I started out applying to Spanish universities, and I was planning to just submit Duolingo instead of IELTS. Then I found out they wouldn’t accept it. Once I dug deeper into UK, German, and even US universities, I realized that almost every university in Europe and beyond accepts IELTS. That’s the point where I knew I actually had to sit for it.
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Q3. How did you first hear about Leap Scholar?
A) A friend of mine had taken the course about two years earlier and vouched for it heavily; he said the mock tests were extremely close to the real exam. Honestly, I was skeptical. I thought, It's just an English test; how hard can it be, I'll manage on my own.
Q4. So you did try preparing alone first?
A) I did this exercise for about three weeks. I mostly focused on reading and a little bit of listening. I barely touched speaking or writing, and speaking especially made me uncomfortable even before I properly started.
Q5. What changed your mind about needing structured coaching?
A) My deadline was approaching quickly; I had about a month left before I had to sit the exam. I decided I'd rather trust a reputable course than keep relying on myself. I had a masterclass with one of the teachers, and she gave me a mock test right there. That's when I discovered I was at a six, maybe six point five, and I needed an overall seven. She told me getting one full band up in a month was realistic, and that's what convinced me to enroll properly.
Q6. What did the course itself include once you signed up?
A) I got six hours of masterclasses, eight full mock tests, and a bunch of sectional mocks on top of that. Before enrolling, I had only managed four to eight mocks total on my own, with no sectional practice at all. Suddenly I had every resource I actually needed, and I wasn't figuring things out blind anymore.
Q7. Did you verify Leap Scholar before trusting them with your prep?
A) Beyond my friend's word, I checked Reddit. I found posts specifically saying the mock tests felt very close to the real IELTS exam, and that lined up with what my friend had already told me. Between the two, I felt confident enough to commit.
Q8. Which part of the exam gave you the most trouble?
A) Speaking, at first. But after around ten FLC sessions, live practice sessions with the team, it genuinely got easier because I became familiar with the format. When I actually sat the real exam, which was online through a video call, the format and even some of the questions felt almost identical to what I'd practiced. Writing was tough too; I was scoring around 5.5 to 6 in my mocks, but I brought that up to 6.5 by exam day.
Q9. Was there specific feedback that made a real difference?
A) Yes, definitely. After one of my speaking sessions, my teacher gave me clear bullet points on exactly what to work on and what was already strong. I also had access to a speaking question bank with twenty to thirty different parts covering various topics, and I practiced those at home using mirror practice. After a few rounds of that, it stopped feeling difficult.
Q10. Did you use the AI speaking evaluation tool too?
A) I tried it, and it felt very similar to the live FLC sessions, with the advantage that I could use it anytime instead of waiting for a scheduled live class. I didn't use it as heavily as the live sessions, though, mostly because the live ones felt closer to the actual exam experience for me.
Q11. Was support always available when you needed it?
A) Always. Even small doubts got cleared within ten to fifteen minutes. My teacher, Anjali ma'am, told me straight up to ask anything, no matter how minor, in our WhatsApp group, and she made sure it was answered quickly every time.
Q12. Walk us through your actual exam day.
A) My exam was on May 19th. The day before, on the 18th, I had one more FLC session because I was genuinely nervous despite all the practice. On exam day, reading, listening, and writing came first, then speaking. In reading, there were four passages, and one of them turned out to be identical to a passage I'd already seen in a Leap Scholar mock. I still made sure to apply my skimming and scanning technique properly rather than relying on memory, and that boosted my confidence going into the rest of the paper. Listening felt manageable overall. For writing, I got a topic on sports, which I'd genuinely practiced and felt personally connected to, so that section went smoothly. In speaking, one of my topics was around planning, something I'd specifically worked on in a prior session, right down to the vocabulary I should use, so that familiarity really helped.
Q13. What were your final scores?
A) Reading came in at 8, listening at 7, writing at 6.5, and speaking at 7, which gives me an overall band of 7.
Q14. Did the exam change how you actually think about IELTS?
A) Completely. Going in, I considered it an English test where I had to memorize words and grammar rules, the way we did in school. But through the course, I realized it's really about communication. Speaking is meant to feel like a real conversation; reading and listening are about paying attention to detail, and writing works best when you approach it like you're debating or talking to someone rather than performing for an exam. Anjali ma'am's tip about writing in a natural, conversational flow specifically changed how my essays turned out.
Q15. Any specific tip that stands out?
A) The one for True, False, and Not Given in reading. I struggled with that question type so much that we even dedicated an entire masterclass to it. The tip was to stop thinking in terms of true or false with your own judgment, and instead just look for the same sentence or a synonymous phrase directly in the passage, without letting personal bias creep in. That one shift made a real difference for me. For speaking, the advice was simpler: speak with confidence, be yourself, and treat it like a conversation rather than a test.
Q16. Where has this journey led you?
A) Once I joined the band I needed, doors opened that had previously been closed, as I could not even apply without meeting the English proficiency requirement. I ended up with offers from four universities: University of Stirling, Leeds Beckett, and Coventry, all in the UK, plus German Sport University of Cologne, a public university in Germany. Cologne was actually my first choice, and I'm headed there for sports analytics.
Q17. Would you recommend Leap Scholar to others?
A) Without a doubt. My friend helped me out by recommending them, and I've already shared that with another friend, who is now enrolled. If anyone I know is heading abroad or just needs to crack IELTS, I'll point them here every time. It made the whole process easier, less stressful, and honestly more fun than I expected.
Q18. Anything Leap Scholar could improve on?
A) Just one small thing. In the AI speaking test, during Part 2, the cue card disappears after about a minute, unlike in the real exam, where you can refer back to it. It's a minor issue, and I guess it could be fixed in a day or two of work.
Q19. Any final thoughts?
A) I genuinely expected this course to feel like a chore, something that was not very intensive or worth the money. I was wrong. It turned out to be engaging and, honestly, fun, and it helped me achieve the band score I needed. It didn't feel like exam prep most of the time. It felt like something better.
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