CELPIP-G or CELPIP-General 2014: Which to Pick in Express Entry

Halfway through the Express Entry profile, IRCC asks which language test you took. The dropdown offers CELPIP-G and CELPIP-General 2014. Your score report says neither, just CELPIP-General. So which one do you click?

Both labels point at the same test today. CELPIP-General 2014 is the name IRCC's system gave the current test when it replaced an older format on April 1, 2014, and CELPIP-G is shorthand that stayed behind. Select CELPIP-General 2014 and copy your scores exactly as they appear on your Official Score Report. The only option in that dropdown that can genuinely hurt a PR application is CELPIP-General LS.

Before April 2014, IRCC accepted an older test called CELPIP-G, scored on a different grid. On April 1, 2014, it was replaced by the restructured CELPIP-General, the version with levels from M to 12 that convert directly to CLB. IRCC's online forms list the newer test as CELPIP-General 2014 and kept the old CELPIP-G entry, and applicants have been second-guessing the choice ever since.

One fact settles it. Language test results are only valid for two years, and the last scores from the old format expired around 2016. If your report is recent enough to submit at all, it came from the current test, whatever the dropdown calls it.

Select CELPIP-General 2014. It's the official designation of the restructured test, and every score report still inside its validity window comes from that test. After you enter your four levels, check the CLB values the system shows against your report: CELPIP levels convert one to one, so a 9 in speaking should appear as CLB 9. The cutoffs each program expects are in our Express Entry score requirements guide.

Already submitted under CELPIP-G? Applicants report approvals with either label, which fits how the check actually works: IRCC verifies your result through the registration number on your Official Score Report, not through the language test version you picked in the dropdown. If you're not sure which number that is, our CELPIP certificate number guide shows where it sits on the report.

The people who message us about this dropdown are usually a day from submitting their profile, and none of them ever sat the pre-2014 test. Some were in primary school when it retired. It feels high-stakes the night before a deadline, but it's a naming question, not an eligibility one.