After checking airfares and other expenses, I decided I could not afford to return home for Tet (Lunar New Year).

Many universities in Vietnam now allow IELTS scores to be converted into admission points, a policy that has helped fuel the test’s growing popularity, raising the question of whether it truly promotes effective learning or simply pushes students into an expensive race for marginal advantages.

When I learned that many of my child's classmates already held IELTS scores of 6.5 to 7.0 while still in Grade 8, I realized that my child had entered the race later than most.