JLPT’s two windows, OET’s venue dates
JLPT is two sittings a year. OET is a date you book at a venue. School scholarship papers cluster in other months. The chart is the year, not a promise of a seat.
Language papers get planned like school exams, and then the calendar does not match. JLPT is two global windows a year, July and December, run by JEES. You apply for a sitting; you do not pick a quiet Thursday. OET is the other shape: you choose a profession, a module, and a venue date from the dates that centre is offering. There is no single OET Sunday to put on a family wall chart, which is why OET is not a bar on the chart below.
The bars are typical months, not a seat you have already won. HAST scholarship rounds we track fall in February. NSW Selective falls in May. Victorian Select Entry falls in June. JLPT’s first window is July and the second is December. Confirm the Sunday on the JEES page before you book transport. The 2026 December hint we track is a Sunday early in the month; the live page wins if it differs.
[[chart:ld-proficiency-windows]]| Exam | When it exists | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| JLPT | Two windows, July and December | Apply in the JEES window. Miss it and you wait for the next sitting. |
| OET | Venue dates across the year | Book the centre and the profession paper. The date is yours only after it is booked. |
| School selective sits | Set by the state or the school | See the 2026 selective calendar. |
What to do between windows
A December JLPT candidate who starts in November is cramming a syllabus that was built to be retrieved. Vocabulary and grammar are fact cards. Reading speed is a timed section. Listening is a timed section. Mixing those in one “study the PDF” evening is how the blocked-practice problem shows up in a language exam: you feel fine inside one drill and stall when the paper changes skill.
- Put the application close in the calendar first, not the test morning. A missed JLPT application is a six-month wait.
- Most weeks, retrieve in Study Lab: cards for items you must produce, not a reread of a word list.
- Some weeks, sit one skill under time. JLPT practice is at JLPT. OET practice is at OET. The wider language desk is Practice Hub’s language pages.
- Writing and speaking, where the exam has them, are produced by you and then checked. OET writing is a letter to a brief. Do not start from a model letter.
OET is not “JLPT but in English”
OET is a profession test. Nursing and medicine papers use clinical tasks: reading parts with different clocks, listening parts, a letter, a role-play. The overview on oet.com is the format. A general English mock will not train the letter. Book the venue when your retrieve pile for that profession is no longer brand new — not when a countdown post tells you to.
School sits and language sits can collide. A student sitting NSW Selective in May and JLPT in July has two clocks. Retrieve for both in the same Study Lab desk; do not build a third system of notes. Section minutes for the school papers are in the section-clock chart.
A July JLPT month, without a cram week
Assume the first sitting is in July and you still have May. May is for cards: vocabulary and grammar you can produce with the list covered, a few each day, rated honestly so Easy does not hide a word you only recognised. June adds one timed skill a week — reading, then listening — from the JLPT practice pages. The week of the test, stop importing lists. Clear what is due. A new 200-card dump on Sunday is how people arrive fluent in the importer and shaky on the paper.
OET does not give you that July rail. If you need a result for registration, book the venue when a full letter and a listening section are already something you can finish, not when the homepage looks urgent. Then retrieve clinical phrases the way you would retrieve any other fact, and write letters to the brief on a timer. A general essay mark will not substitute for that letter. Use OET practice for the shape and assignment feedback after you have written.
If July and a school sit collide, protect sleep and one retrieve pile rather than two heroic weekends. The chart’s month numbers are there so you see the collision in June, not on the morning of the test.