Taking out a personal loan to complete the immigration process

[Basil1]

Hi All,

 

My wife and I have been chatting about various ways of speeding up the process.  I would like to ask your opinions on taking out a personal loan in order to immigrate.  Does anyone have first-hand experience or at least know anyone who has done it that way? 

 

I believe that we would still need an SA bank account with enough money to pay the debit orders each month.  Our intention is to pay the loan off ASAP from Oz using AUS$.

 

Our plan going forward is to save as much money as we can this year to pay for the admin stuff (IELTS, Medicals, My assessment with EA, police clearance etc.) to get the ball rolling and then use the loan to pay the way to get over to Oz/subsidise the balance required.  (We're obviously not keen to take out a personal loan and have debt in SA when we leave, but if it means getting into Oz sooner, we're willing to do it!)

 

Any information would be appreciated.

 

Many thanks,

 

BMDJ

[HappyIsland]

22 minutes ago, Basil1 said:

IELTS booked for 07 July.  Will do Engineers Australia assessment thereafter. Applied for all documents at DHA yesterday (What a mission!) - What I'm trying to say is... the process has started!  By asking about the loan I was looking for a "fast-track" option, but we wont be taking out a loan if we do the process over a three year period.

1

What points do you need for the English test?
If you only need competent or functional english, I would say go ahead with the IELTS.
However, as someone who went through the process of scoring superior english on both the IELTS and the PTE, my advice would be to go with PTE.
IELTS takes about 3 months to get an appointment, and then another 2 weeks to get results. If you need superior english you will most certainly write the IELTS more than once (I had to write it 4 times to get the scores).

The PTE test is a lot easier than IELTS, you can get an appointment the next day to rewrite if needed and the results are available the next day at 10am. With IELTS if you need to rewrite 2 or 3 times, you're almost looking at a year long process just for the english test as it takes about 2 or 3 months just to get an appointment. Oh, and the PTE is cheaper too, which makes a difference if you write more than once.


 

Edited April 18, 2018 by HappyIsland
IELTS

[Basil1]

Thanks @HappyIsland

 

I do require superior English as I need the points. I have booked already, but not too late to cancel. Did you find comprehensive study material on the net for PTE? I know that there is for IELTS, but haven't looked into PTE.

 

I do feel quite confident with taking the IETLS as I've been studying part time for the last 2 years which tends to put one in "study mode" so one more test doesn't seem too bad! But I don't want to overlook your warning. I'll scour the forum and do some research into PTE, thanks.  

 

Appreciate it. 

[Piet1234]

Both me and my wife wrote IELTS once on Academic. She got 8.5 8.5 8.5 and 8, and I got 9 9 9 9.

 

For anyone who has English as a first language: the Listening, Reading and Speaking is a cake walk.

The only tricky section for me was the writing, as they are very specific in what they are looking for. It has two sections and each has a certain trick to it.

 

There are loads of preparation materials for IELTS and I know my wife did a some tests beforehand, I did about 3 writing tests beforehand because as I mentioned they are looking for some key things. 

 

 

[Basil1]

Hi @Piet1234 thanks for sharing. 

 

Congratulations on the great scores on your first attempt. 

 

14 minutes ago, Piet1234 said:

because as I mentioned they are looking for some key things. 

 

Please may you elaborate on the above.  Do you mean things such as; general layout, spelling, grammar etc?

 

I personally don't like that fact that the entire PTE test is done electronically. Maybe it's an advantage but I get distracted easily so may end up listen to others instead of focusing on my own work!

Edited April 18, 2018 by Basil1
Correction

[Piet1234]

With the writing question there are two parts.

 

Part1: they give you a graph, or some statistics etc and ask you to compare them.

 

Here you really need to show you understand the graph and some concepts of comparison. The question I got was computer usage by demographic between 1980 and 2015. So I pointed out that in 1980 the highest percentage of users was people who were in education or in a research capacity, while there was a very small percentage of home users, then things like the largest growth was for home users who had 10% of market share in 1980 to 30% in 2015.

 

You could point out that the education sector remained largely static while other sectors grew or shrank.

 

You need to know PERCENTAGE growth versus PERCENTAGE POINTS growth. For example going from 10% -15% market share is a 5 percentage point increase but it is 50% growth.

 

Basically you need to look at whatever picture/stats they give you and then write 150 words of comparing them.

 

Part2: which counts more marks, they will give you an argument with two sides, like social media takes loads of personal information but also allows people to reach a wider audience or something like that, they will then present a few points from each side of the argument and ask you your opinion.

 

There is no correct side but you need to state what you think, which side you agree with and why. 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The critical aspect is there is also a specific format for each question, like for question 2 it was something like:

 

Paragraph 1: Intro

Paragraph 2 +3: Some ideas for and against 

Paragraph 4: Your own conclusion

 

I can't quite remember the format but it was something like that. If you do not do that format correctly you wont get high marks. As they consider that your argument is not clear and concise.

 

You could check some examples here: https://www.ielts-exam.net/Writing.html

 

We used: https://takeielts.britishcouncil.org/prepare-test/british-council-online-resources

It has one or two free examples from each section, and then I bought my wife the full access for 50 dollars or something.

 

 

 

[Piet1234]

25 minutes ago, Basil1 said:

Please may you elaborate on the above.  Do you mean things such as; general layout, spelling, grammar etc?

 

Yes exactly, spelling, grammar, punctuation and particularly the layout of your argument are important. 

 

 

 

 

[Piet1234]

Might be worth noting, I wrote mine at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK.

 

Not sure if the SA version is different and whether you need to use local example/training websites versus the ones I used as they were set up by the British Council.

[LM17]

I checked my old emails - I wrote in PE, these are the links we got,  

http://www.britishcouncil.org.za/exam/ielts

 

https://ielts.britishcouncil.org/Docs/IELTSInformationForCandidates.pdf

 

once you register you get access to online material to help you prepare (Road to IELTS) 

my advice - just register today and get it done 

Edited April 19, 2018 by LM17

[HappyIsland]

1 hour ago, Piet1234 said:

Might be worth noting, I wrote mine at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK.

 

Not sure if the SA version is different and whether you need to use local example/training websites versus the ones I used as they were set up by the British Council.

I wrote 3 times in SA, never got a describe graph for IELTS academic.
Writing consisted of 2 essays - 1 informal and 1 formal.

 

My scores for IELTS were always 8.5's and 9's with usually a 7.5 in there.

The trickiest section for me on the IELTS was by far the listening section.
The trickiest section on the PTE exam was the speaking section (describe graphs and repeat sentences). 

It's possible that you can have a good score on the first round as some people manage to get. However, based on the responses on migration forums, and as someone who wrote and achieved required scores for both exams, the PTE is a lot easier by quite a margin.

Either way, good luck!

[Piet1234]

30 minutes ago, HappyIsland said:

I wrote 3 times in SA, never got a describe graph for IELTS academic.
Writing consisted of 2 essays - 1 informal and 1 formal.

 

Academic Example on IELTS Website: https://takeielts.britishcouncil.org/prepare-test/free-sample-tests/writing-sample-test-1-academic/writing-task-1

 

General Example on IELTS Website: https://takeielts.britishcouncil.org/prepare-test/free-sample-tests/writing-sample-test-1-general-training/writing-task-1

 

I am sure they have a variety of questions and it doesn't have to be a graph as the question 1, but the few tests I practiced and the exam I did were all graphs or tables with stats in them.

 

39 minutes ago, HappyIsland said:

It's possible that you can have a good score on the first round as some people manage to get. However, based on the responses on migration forums, and as someone who wrote and achieved required scores for both exams, the PTE is a lot easier by quite a margin.

 

I read this as well, but I have never taken PTE so I have no frame of reference. 

 

Best of all is, my wife is the main applicant and I didn't even need to write it. I only wrote the exam so that I could go with her for moral support as it is a long day

It was either that or I had to watch the kids... I schemed an English exam was more relaxing.

 

[Tntaglia]

I wrote PTE, after spending probably about 14-20 hours going through E2language videos on Youtube where they explain exactly what to expect from each section and what the marking system looks for. It was a godsend - I got 90 all around but without knowing what the test is marked on I would have done FAR worse. So I would suggest practice tests and videos, whichever test you choose. I believe there are IELTS training videos too on youtube but have never had reason to look for them.

[SimpleSimon]

Wow $7,500 visa fees for a family of 4. That’s daylight robbery! What does department immigration have to do, check your forms (probably a computer algorithm anyway).