<p>Hello,
I am a student of a IB international school in Asia who seeks to go to US colleges.
I want to know whether TOK, EE, and CAS are considered to be important aspects of American college application.</p>
<p>As far as I know, American colleges works hard to be fair to all of its applicants and thus judge the applicants based on an solid American standard. (so that no one is getting advantage or disadvantage just for coming from different environment.)
If this is true, on admission officer's eyes, TOK, CAS, and EE will be nothing more than an elective philosophy course, community and service, and some extra work that only IB students have to do, respectively.
Based on this judgement, I assumed those 3 to be less important than my grades, standardized test scores, and college essays.</p>
<p>However, for years, my school is telling us that we should put TOK, CAS, and EE over everything else, which basically includes working on our grades, standardized test scores, and college essays.
TBH, I do not really trust my school regarding to college issues. Its stance and behavior have always suggested me that only thing it cares is getting 0% IB Diploma fail rate and cannot care less about sending us to good colleges.</p>
<p>I want to know whether TOK, CAS, and EE are important enough to spare my time that I could be instead spending on improving my grades, standardized test scores, and college essays.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading a long question written in bad English :)</p>