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Here, we take all HL classes but test HL in only 3, the other 3 we test SL with HL knowledge.
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<p>Good heavens! That sounds overwhelming!</p>
<p>Isn't there a maximum of 4 HL clases you can take?</p>
<p>Competitive colleges don't differentiate between the two.</p>
<p>All I know is that when D was applying 3 years ago, on the Yale site, there was shock and dismay and incredulity after the rejection/acceptance letters went out. Kids with IB and otherwise credentials were being accepted, and kids with higher stats and AP were being rejected. I remember one of the acceptees saying that she was expecting to be rejected, since her IB projected grades weren't as high as others, and her EC's weren't all that good, and her SAT's, while respectable, weren't stellar. She couldn't believe she was accepted when others were rejected. And please. don't start the "it's all about fit" argument. I understand. But I remember at the time we voiced the opinion that if D had taken IB she might have been accepted. That was before we really knew that much about the difficulty of college admissions. Our district had just started IB, so D was ineligible, and we still think that after reading all the posts of those accepted, that IB had it hands over AP that year at Yale.</p>
<p>ejr1, or maybe it was a coincidence that year the strongest applicants in your d's school were also involved in IB. i doubt that's what happened ALL ACROSS the country with yale. anyway, we all know a friend's brother's girlfriend's best friend's friend who got into... and id listen to outbanx because he was an ACTUAL student who took IB.</p>
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Isn't there a maximum of 4 HL clases you can take?
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<p>You can't test in more than 4 HL. They can't stop you from learning all HL.</p>
<p>Some subject are very similar HL vs SL. English A, for example, the HL testing only requires a little more. Not exactly sure what, but I think its just another essay.</p>
<p>The same is true for Spanish HL. Even though we're technically only covering SL level, I'm going to sit the HL exam so I have a cushion in case I don't pass the AP (and believe me, that's very probable, especially considering how stupid talking to a CD player for an oral component of the examination is).</p>
<p>jake321 - i take english HL....and yes the difference is one world lit extra for HLs plus we read 3 extra materials......and of course...HL requires a greater detailed analysis.....</p>
<p>and yes...u can't test in more than 4 HLs....</p>
<p>At S x 2 high school, IB students run the board from athletics to student council to service club leadership to academic team championships to theater, music, and art mastery to even ROTC leadership. This is true even though IB students comprise only about 25% of the total student population. In the past few years there were several IB students on state champion athletic teams, including football, soccer (mens and womens), and golf. They are cheerleaders and colorguard members. IB students star in the school plays, win ITS state level awards for writing, directing, acting and costume design. The regional art awards go to IB students. IB students start their own businesses, work at the grocery store, surf and ski, go to movies and play video games. They even are members of rock bands.
No time. No ECs. No way. Those who say this are lacking facts. The CAS requirement urges the IB student on the path to varied activities.</p>
<p>Colleges know these are the characteristics of an IB students and they like it. Colleges want students who will contribute to the university community, IB students do this at their high schools as part of the program and go beyond the requirements. This is why college admissions officers like IB students. These students have enhanced their high schools and are very likely to enhance their colleges as well.</p>
<p>Whether IB is "preferred" for admissions purposes, I can't answer. And as others have said, the college admissions officers do not answer that question either. But they will tell you the kind of student they want at their institution and when you listen to the description, it matches that of an IB student.</p>
<p>yeah and those students wouldn't be doing all that if they weren't in IB?</p>
<p>IB isn't a magical motivator, those students are just naturally motivated.</p>
<p>If they were just taking AP classes instead, they would probably do all that and more, just because they would have more free time away from school work to engage in whatever independent academic endeavors they wish.</p>
<p>You will find bright kids whether they are in AP or IB doing all the things you listed. The program isn't going to change the person.</p>
<p>And CAS is not responsible for it either. CAS actually hinders your academic options, because it is very restrictive in what activities are approved for each of the three categories.</p>
<p>Usually everybody with IB, Abitur, A-Levels and etc are allowed to enter a medical school in Europe. At least in countries that participate in the Bologna process.</p>
<p>I don't understand why people think that the AP kid would have so much more free time than the IB kid does.</p>
<p>A top student in an AP-heavy high school program equivalent in rigor to IB would be taking about four APs in junior year and another four in senior year, with probably at least one additional academic subject at the honors level, plus nonacademic courses required to fill up the program and fulfill graduation requirements. At least half of such a student's AP courses would be "hard" APs (where "hard" is defined as a year-long AP course equivalent to a year-long college course and "easy" is defined as an AP course equivalent to a semester-long college course but taught over a full year in high school).</p>
<p>Such a student would need to spend plenty of time studying and working on school assignments, just as IB students do.</p>
<p>My daughter took two "hard" APs outside her IB program -- AP U.S. History and AP Macroeconomics/Microeconomics. Both courses required substantial amounts of study time, just as IB HL courses do.</p>
<p>People think IB takes up a lot more time because of all the extra "thing" you have to do as part of the program. This includes many things such as internal assessments, external assessments, orals, CAS hours, extended essay, group 4 projects, presentations, and some other junk I'm probably missing.</p>
<p>Internal assessments are pretty much going on consistently. If you don't have one in Chem, you'll have one in Bio or history. They are pretty easy (IB therefore I B.S.) but time consuming (~2000 words). Even tho you only send one out to the IB for each subject, you do many of them and pick your best.
External assessments are pretty much the same thing but get assessed in some other random country. There are 2 of these for English.</p>
<p>There are 2 orals in English. Another in TOK where you ask unanswerable questions, talk for 15 mins, and repeat the questions.
Extended essay is such a larger external assessment that you are suppose to spend more time on. Group 4 projects are science experiments that you present all dressed up.</p>
<p>So basically IB requires all these extra things. At first I thought it didn't seem like too much but it all adds up. These thing follow each other, one after another. So you are always working on one of these (currently history internal ...ugh).</p>
<p>I am currently in the I.B program and I advise you that once you get involved it will be very difficult to get out. In AP you have the choice of what to take as advanced, while in IB they choose your classes pretty much, it is up to you whether you choose to take it higher level. For instance my classes now are IB math studies (standard level), IB Spanish 4 (SL) IB BIO (HL) ib history of the americas (this includes canada and south america, which they do not do in AP), plus alot more classes. You must also do 150 CAS hours (creative,action, service hours; they start in your 11th grade year, you must also take theory of knowledge, do an extended essay. IB is alot harder, but if you decide to get out it can be brutal, because it show colleges you culd not handle a difficult courseload. However you should know that the only classes most colleges will omit will be your higher level ones and you usually have to score between a 4-5. I hope your 8th grader makes a wise choice, but if he chooses IB he must stick with it!</p>
<p>yes ther is only a maximum of 4 hl you can take, but most of them are already chossen for you, eng. , history are mandatory hl.</p>
<p>You can choose to test HL in any class you want. Many people choose to do English and History because they are easy, but you are not required to. The requirements class wise is making sure you take a subject in each "group".</p>
<p>Never said an AP only student would not participate and contribute to their schools and communities. Just described the IB student and the program's fostering of the collegial spirit. I disagree on CAS being limiting since it encourages not only service but artistic endeavors and action.
I also never said AP is not valuable and suitable for many students.<br>
Primarily my response to OP is to look at everything but do not accept several suggestions by misinformed posters that IB is not college level and thus college admissions officers will prefer AP. This is not factually supported.</p>
<p>Adding on to what some people have said the IB program tends to be more consistent in term of difficulty where as A.P. you can have a pud teacher.</p>
<p>HomeschoolDad,</p>
<p>You have a lot of misconceptions about the IB programme, which you are presenting as facts. I feel compelled to correct them:</p>
<p>1) You claim that the super bright science/math students cannot study at a sufficiently advanced level compared with AP.
FALSE. You imply that the AP Physics C is for these super bright students, whereas the IB Physics HL isn't. Well if this is true, would you care to explain to me why MIT has the following requirements for Physics course credits:
AP: For a score of 5 on both parts of the Physics C test, credit will be given for 12 units of subject 8.01, Physics I. For scores lower than 5, no credit is awarded.
IB HL: For a score of a 7, credit will be given for 12 units of subject 8.01, Physics I and students may begin immediately with subject 8.02 or 8.022 (Physics II).</p>
<p>2) You claim that IB has nothing comparable to AP Computer Science AB.
FALSE. If that is true, why on earth is there a course that's called Computer Science, offered both at HL and SL, on the IB statistical bulletins?</p>
<p>3) You claim that the really smart kids who take the IB cannot take advanced college-level courses in mathematics.
FALSE. If that is true, what the heck is the IB Further Mathematics SL course then? And why, of the 20 US students who took that exam in 2006, 10 got a 2, 1 got a 6, and no one got a 7? </p>
<p>This gets me to a pretty important issue that you have ignored: grade inflation. On the IB HL Math exam in May 2007, 8% got a 7, mean grade being 4.43. On the AP Calculus BC exam in 2007, 43% got a 5, mean grade being 3.70 (note that IB scale goes from 1-7, AP only from 1-5). Does that not imply, that if looked upon as equivalent courses (again I suggest you visit for instance MIT's website, where you will notice that they give the same credit), a 5 in Calculus BC exam is relatively a lot easier to achieve than a 7 in HL Math? This has been proven to be true by a lot of students in other threads; a 7 in a HL subject is generally harder to get than a 5 in AP.</p>
<p>And where did you get the idea that IB students are prohibited to take courses at the local college, whereas AP students aren't?</p>
<p>4) You claim that IB students cannot take 'cutting-edge languages', like Mandarin or Japanese.
FALSE. How many AP exams were there again? 37? Of these 37, 6 are languages: Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Chinese and Italian. So AP has Japanese, Chinese and Italian, that IB supposedly doesn't? Well guess what: IB has all of them and a whole lot more. Yep, from Albanian to Vietnamese, the IB basically has them all. And the IB has nearly all of them at three different levels, A1 i.e. literature, A2 i.e. literature of a foreign language, and B i.e. foreign language, with all these both at HL and SL.</p>
<p>Some other people as well have made remarks about the IB's inflexibility, which actually is not due to the programme itself, but the individual schools and their scarce resources. Not all IB schools can offer all the subjects, (examples of ones not offered by AP: Business and Management, Information Technology in a Global Society, Philosophy, Theatre Arts, Social & Cultural Anthropology and Design Technology), just like not all American high schools can offer all of the 37 AP's. Consequently, IB is actually more diverse than AP given the amount of different subjects and exams available.
The IBO is also not that strict on the subject choices as it is implied here. In my school there are students with all sciences at HL, who will also do the final exams at HL, and students with no subjects from the social sciences.</p>
<p>You also talked about College Board:
"The College Board, administrator of AP, is a consortium of all highly-ranked private universities and LACs, every public flagship university, all well-respected high schools. It's an American institution." Let's connect this with a statement you made before: "In one state flagship university I am familiar with, every AP subject is creditable, with suitable exam score, but only one-third of IB subjects are. Not because there is an anti-IB prejudicethe university would love to give credit to speed people along and lower enrollment impaction"
Shouldn't you be able to see something fishy going on here? If the universities are the ones behind the AP, then wouldn't they be biased in determining acceleration-credit policies? Wouldn't they want to protect their own creation, i.e. the AP? There is no reason for universities to give more credit to IB exams, even if they actually should, as this would create an incentive for students to do the IB instead of AP.</p>
<p>Oh and as a final remark, I have no idea where you got your background information from. The IB diploma programme was created in 1968, not in 1924. (International</a> Baccalaureate Organization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)</p>
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<p>IB 2009
HL: Mathematics, Physics, Economics, English B
SL: Further Mathematics, A1 Finnish, French B</p>
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Does that not imply, that if looked upon as equivalent courses (again I suggest you visit for instance MIT's website, where you will notice that they give the same credit), a 5 in Calculus BC exam is relatively a lot easier to achieve than a 7 in HL Math?
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<p>It only shows that fewer of the students who show up to take the IB test reach the indicated scoring level. Colleges in the United States do validation studies of what scores on different tests mean for their placement purposes. (Those have been going on for AP tests in the oldest AP subjects since before I was born.)</p>