Barış Alpaslan
IELTS Alumni
Hello,
My name is Barış Alpaslan. I am an assistant professor at the Department of Public Finance at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University. My main research interest focuses on the theory of economic growth and the macroeconomics of development.
With this blog post for British Council Turkey, I would like to share useful tips based on my experience and talk about the new doors that IELTS has opened in my life and career.
My IELTS Success Story started when I took YLSY (Exam for the Selection and Placement of Students to be Sent Abroad for Postgraduate Studies) and was granted an official scholarship for a master's degree in the United Kingdom. As you know, you have to pass the IELTS test in order to be able to study at a university in the U.K. I applied for IELTS through the British Council, the most reliable and well-established institution in Turkey when it comes to IELTS.
To prepare for the test, I took academic English lessons in Manchester after participating in general English and IELTS classes in Oxford. While preparing for the test, I mainly used "Cambridge Practice Tests For IELTS Series" published by the University of Cambridge.
Although none of the exam components was particularly challenging for me, I believe, to succeed in all of the IELTS components, one must have a full command of basic English and an extensive vocabulary. To pass the test, it is important to do lots of practice tests for each component.
After I got the required score, IELTS opened the doors of success for me. I received my master's degree from the University of Manchester with distinction and finished my Ph.D. with A(i) at the same university. I was recently a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge for 6 months under the "Newton Fund: Researcher Links Programme" of the British Council. Since I received my master's degree in the U.K., I have been working as a lecturer at the Global Development Institute (GDI) based at the University of Manchester, the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA) at the Australian National University, and the Economic Research Forum (ERF). To put it in a nutshell, I would never have had any of these opportunities if I had not taken the IELTS test.