Shadowing Practice: IELTS Speaking Test- Excellent Band 9.0 - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Let's start off with asking you,

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Let's start off with asking you,

do you work or do you study?

I work, actually.

So I co-founded the startup.

It's called Secure My Scholarship.

It's an edtech platform that connects students with scholarships at universities around the world.

So I work full-time, longer than full-time, if you may say.

What do you love about your job?

I love the impact that we create, man.

So we give students that come from hardworking middle-class families

or working-class families a chance at going to the University of their dreams and personally I love that about what we do.

Did you always want to do that job?

This specifically, no, but have I always wanted to work in something that would allow me to create an impact?

Yes, everything I've ever done in my life has been around companies with impact or with social causes

and somebody once asked me,

if I wasn't with Secure My Scholarship, what would you do?

And I said I'd work at a non-profit.

Is there anything that you dislike about your job?

Me personally, no, but if you ask my fiance,

she will tell you that my job takes up a lot of my time

and I think she hates that about my job.

Would you like to do any other job in the future?

I got my hands forward to secure my scholarship right now,

but in the future, who knows?

I mean, I love solving problems and helping make people's lives better.

And the world has a lot of issues, so who knows?

Now let's talk about mobile phones.

How often do you use your mobile phone?

I use my mobile phone every day.

The company basically runs off my mobile phone.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I use LinkedIn a lot.

I use a productivity tool called Asana.

It allows me to track my tasks and manage my day.

I use Slack a lot,

internal team communication, WhatsApp obviously.

Everybody uses WhatsApp.

And yeah, a couple of apps, not that many.

I'm not one of those guys with 1,500 apps on their phone.

I have about eight or nine apps that I use.

Do you think that you use your phone too much sometimes?

Yes.

It's funny that you ask that.

Before Secure My Scholarship, myself and the same founding team,

we actually founded a startup called Lock & Stock.

It was a mobile app that basically rewarded you with offers

and discounts for not using your phone when you were in class.

We wanted to help students pay attention more in class,

learn better, do better in their studies.

And then when they were done,

they could get, you know,

buy one, get one free at the pizza place or something like that.

So, yeah.

Now let's talk about your school.

Did you enjoy school?

That is a tough question.

When I was in school, I hated it.

But I think the beauty with school is that the later in life you go,

the more you begin to appreciate the school that you went to.

Who was your favorite teacher?

My favorite teacher?

My favorite teacher was a woman named Mrs. Mallika Menon.

She was my math teacher in grades 10 and 11.

And I really liked her classes and I really enjoyed them.

And what specifically did you dislike about school?

I went to a school that made academic performance very, very important.

Everything revolved around, okay, do better.

You got to do better,

your grades, all of that stuff.

Much to the neglect of maybe extracurriculars or sports,

I played cricket and football in high school.

And I remember we wouldn't have any training practices, any practice matches.

We wouldn't go to any tournaments or we'd go to very few tournaments.

And I didn't particularly like that when I was in school.

The focus on academics and not really on other stuff.

Describe a period of time from your studies that was difficult.

I'd say the hardest time during my studies that was difficult was when I was in university.

I think second or third year university.

To go to the university that I went to,

it required a lot of effort.

I think my parents really saved to send me to university

and I had to get a bunch of scholarships and all of that stuff.

I wanted to make the most of it but I didn't quite know how to do that.

I was majoring in economics but I also wanted to study this class

and this class and this class and all of that stuff

and really make the most of my time because I was lucky to be at the university that I went to.

This was perhaps 2015, 2016,

second or third year of university.

It was hard because I had only a limited amount of time and to fit all of this stuff in.

But I think through that experience,

and I came out very well,

through that experience, I learned,

I think I learned time management,

you know, just actually breaking down what I wanted to do,

how I wanted to do it.

I had to schedule out my day and my week very,

very, very well, and really just make it happen for myself.

And that was super difficult, right?

Because the school I went to,

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everything was given to you on a platter.

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These are your classes, this is what you got to do.

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But at university, I had to basically make my own schedule.

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And if you were doing a simple major and that was it,

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then, you know, no harm, no foul.

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That's very clear cut, whatever.

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When I graduated university, I graduated with a major in economics and minors in political science,

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international relations, mass communication, and business administration.

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I would have had another minor in finance as well.

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So I had four minors that I graduated with along with my major,

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and I would have had a fifth minor as well.

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And to make all of this work and just fit it into my schedule, super difficult.

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But as I say, I was lucky to be at university when I was,

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and I wanted to make the most of my time there.

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So we've been talking about a difficult time you had at university,

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and we're going to continue to talk about university education and higher education in general.

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Should higher education be free to all citizens?

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To thank you for watching this video,

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I want to give you a free course that has helped thousands of students improve their IELTS speaking score.

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What it's going to do is take you through every single part of the test and give you strategies for part one,

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Thanks very much and let's get back to the video.

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In an ideal world, yes, I think.

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The cost of quality education today is incredibly expensive and is rising year over year.

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What happens with that is that this phenomenon

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then prices out so many people from the middle class and the working class who aren't given the same opportunities.

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It shouldn't be that, okay,

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only if you can afford to pay $150,000 a year,

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you can go to a top 10 business school around the world and succeed in life.

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I mean, that's not fair.

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It shouldn't have to be that way.

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Through Secure My Scholarship, I remember there was this one girl two weeks ago who applied for an MBA in the USA.

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And the cost of that MBA was like $65,000,

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which I mean, $65,000 is a lot of money.

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And especially when you're earning in rupees in India,

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that's a hell of a lot of money.

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Now, I mean, what's her solution?

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I mean, should she give up on her dreams?

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Should she not go ahead and do it?

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I mean, what does she do?

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She applied through our platform.

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We helped her get a $25,000 scholarship to bring her fees down from $65,000 to $40,000.

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We can't make it free.

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Unfortunately, we're not the government.

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We're not God or the government or whatever.

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We can't make it free,

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but we can minimize it as much as we can.

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I remember I was on a call with her

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and just the look of excitement on her face

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when she got this because she was taking a loan to go do her MBA

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and we effectively cut her loan by half and that's amazing.

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Should scholarships only be given to gifted children?

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In a world with finite resources I suppose I guess this is a tricky question right

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because if there are only n number of seats

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and there's a cost that is y and whatever then you have to ensure

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that students who are i guess uh academically talented

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or talented at a sporting level or an athletic level

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or whatever are able to get that push that they need

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because there are only limited seats so you know

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if they're not going to get it then somebody else is going to get the seat and they're going to miss out.

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So in that scenario, yes, scholarships.

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And in this sense, I mean,

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100% scholarships should be given to gifted children because they've displayed some sort of

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aptitude or level where they can succeed and they should be given that push, I think.

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Now, who determines how scholarships are given out?

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And I know there's a lot of foul play at the university level or,

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you know, this guy is my cousin's kid,

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so give him 100% scholarship.

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It shouldn't be like that.

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There should be an unbiased council that has to vote and decide or however these things are done.

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But it should be fair.

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But in a world with limited seats and limited opportunities,

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I guess, you know, you have to make sure

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that students who are who display a level of talent get access to those scholarships, I suppose.

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But again, just coming back to the previous question,

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if if every student was allowed to study,

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that's a much more ideal world, I think.

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Some people think that charities should provide gifted children with scholarships and other people think that the government should do it.

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Who do you think should provide scholarships?

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Can I say everyone?

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I mean, the government, see,

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it's in the government's best interest to ensure that its best

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and brightest receive the best education possible because they will then contribute to society.

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So it's in the government's best interest to do it.

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From a charity or a nonprofit standpoint, 100%.

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I actually, so someone once asked me,

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I was on like another,

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someone once asked me, I was having a discussion.

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And they asked me, you know,

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Craig, if Secure My Scholarship,

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you know, just becomes this huge company and you exit someday,

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you know, what are you going to do?

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And, you know, my ambition,

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at least, if I have the resources,

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my ambition in life is to someday open schools,

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not university schools, at the primary level or up to the middle school level

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and make it free just for any student to come and get a great education for free, literally.

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So that's something that I am passionate about.

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That's also why I work 100 hours a week on Secure My Scholarship.

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So, I mean, if there's a charity or a nonprofit that's committed to this cause, then 100%.

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And the third, I guess,

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stakeholder is the universities themselves.

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I mean, let's get one thing straight, right?

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Universities are incredibly wealthy institutions.

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You look at not even your top 20 or top 30.

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You look at your top 200 universities in the US,

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in the UK, they have billion dollar endowment funds that are invested into government bonds or T-bills or whatever it may be.

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There are billions, I think Harvard's endowment fund is 40 billion or 50 billion.

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I mean, don't quote me on that,

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but it's in that ballpark range.

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That's a lot of money.

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From a university standpoint as well,

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I feel like it should just be a part of their social responsibility to give back to the community

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that has given them so much.

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That's what I think.

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How will third level education change in the future?

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I think tertiary education, university education is going to get more creative already happening as well

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but I mean these like higher education is something

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that it will never go through like a sudden like shift

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a lot of people said after COVID everything will be online

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physical campuses are done whatever and

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that just wasn't to be I mean even till today we

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have students who apply through secure my scholarship for on-campus classes

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and online classes and 99% of students are applying for on-campus classes.

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Online just didn't shake up the industry like everybody predicted.

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But I think the real change is in the mode of education itself.

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Gone are the days where you have to go to class,

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take notes, memorize, come back next week and regurgitate that on a test or an exam.

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That doesn't work anymore.

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You're not training people the right way because Because today,

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if you need information, there's Google,

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there's ChatGPT, and probably a lot of other resources that can't come to mind right now.

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But information is available at your fingertips.

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What you need to train people about or train people for today is how to utilize this information.

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How well can you analyze the information in front of you?

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How well can you use the data that you have available to you?

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Do you know where to look?

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How well can you think through the problem to then break it down

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and then find the solution in the sea of information available on the Internet?

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How well can you do these things?

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How creatively can you think through a problem and figure out a solution?

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These are things that cannot be replaced very easily by,

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you know, ChatGPT or Google or whatever.

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These are the skills of the future.

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memorization and answering questions on an exam is,

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it's not really required anymore.

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And I think this shift is already happening and will really become more profound maybe 10 or 15 years from now.

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Well done, that's the end of the speaking test.

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Awesome, thank you so much.

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So full disclosure, Craig is not one of our students.

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We've never taught him English,

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he's never attended any of our IELTS courses or anything like that want to be 100% honest with you guys.

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What I noticed Craig online,

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and he's an Indian national who I think you will agree has reached a level in English which is unbelievable.

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He's easily a band nine.

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If there was anything above a band nine,

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I think Craig would get there.

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Also, Craig, as he mentioned a few times in the interview,

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runs a company called Secure My Scholarship.

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IELTS Advantage has no affiliation.

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We're not sponsored by them won't make any money if you go there.

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But we thought that it would be a great opportunity for our audience

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because a lot of our audience hopes to go to university,

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but you might be struggling financially.

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Craig, if you sign up for Secure My Scholarship,

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he guarantees, is that correct?

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It guarantees, and it's absolutely free.

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Absolutely free, and he guarantees to get at least something off a scholarship

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and could save you potentially thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars attending some of the best universities in the world.

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Up to you if you want to visit there,

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I would recommend it, but as I said,

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we don't make any money from it.

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But thank you so much, Craig.

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It was great listening to you

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and I'm sure people learned a lot from your performance

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and I hope that some of them check out your website as well.

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Thank you so much for having me, Chris.

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I really appreciate it.

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Thank you so much for having me.

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And best of luck with your company.

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Thank you.

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