Of course it’s also a great way to impress an employer and substantiate your English knowledge to any organization. Your English skills are graded, resulting in a final level, ranging from A1 to C2.
It was roughly three years ago that I first heard of the Cambridge English certificate. It being official and all intrigued me and with how little information was available at that time I just kind of ignored it. Last year me as well as fellow classmate Philipp and a handful of other people took part in the Cambridge workgroup at the school as a means to prepare for the upcoming exams in mid-December. With the help of our English teacher Mr. Weisenburger, we practiced the kind of exercises that typically appear in the final Cambridge English exam, and in hindsight the difficulty was about on point. Eventually winter rolled around, and we had to leave the comfort of our homes to attend the speaking exam first, followed by the written portion a few weeks later. The former was no different from a regular speaking exam at school while the latter was challenging, with many of the available answers meaning very similar things. They really try to throw some curveballs in as to trick you into picking the wrong thing, so you’re forced to really read between the lines and work out the specifics.
After everything was said and done, I wasn’t particularly worried, mainly because it’s very hard to “fail” per se. Doing the C1 exam you can get both B2 and C2 if you under/overperform, so barely anyone leaves empty-handed. Of course, you can always redo the exam if you aren’t happy with your current grading. In the end it was a surprise for both of us when we received our results. C2 with flying colors, and apparently, the second and third person at the school to own a certificate like this. It's definitely an honour, considering C2 is only reserved for the people who are considered to be on-part with native speakers. We encourage anyone interested regardless of age to look into this topic. It’s definitely worth a shot, if you have the means!
(Note of the teacher: the author of this article achieved C2 - an outstanding result!)