Does your child have a preference?
Just be aware that the course load IS tough. My daughter is a HS senior and decided to just take a couple of IB classes instead of going for the certificate. She is SO happy with her decision - she is seeing that her full IB friends are stressed out and exhausted.
My daughter graduated from an IB program and it was extremely rigorous, to the point that it didn’t allow much time for the ECs colleges are looking for (her primary ECs included class VP and GS Gold Award). Even graduating the top of her class with a 4.2UW, I don’t believe it gave her much, if any, boost in her college search.
My boyfriend is an IB diploma graduate. He’s not the smartest person ever, but he has some of the best study habits of anyone I know. He doesn’t procrastinate, he’s extremely diligent, and when he works on something, he gives it his all.
I think people here are missing the point when they ask what your daughter prefers, or are trying to gauge difficulty of the high school. One issue with many of these new specialty high schools is that they are not very up-front about what you can and can not do in high school. The questions you need to ask yourself are first, what courses do you or your daughter want to take in high school given a choice? Then you need to check if the high schools will accommodate your wishes. Some things to watch out for -
Are there restrictions on the number of advanced classes you can take? The IB programme automatically includes this, as you can only take 3 or 4 HL classes. Some schools might limit students to only 2 AP classes.
Are there other restrictions on classes you want to take? For example, at Lamar High School, if you want to take physics, you can not take an IB HL science, and vice versa (according to http://www.houstonisd.org/cms/lib2/TX01001591/Centricity/domain/11085/academics/ACADEMICS_IB_Course_Sequence_Flowchart.pdf). Additionally, there is no IB HL science.
What is the selection process for getting into advanced classes? Some schools have in depth selection processes for taking advanced classes, including essays and recommendations.
What are the required classes that are not obvious? For example, DeBakey has a whole health science department (http://www.houstonisd.org/Page/13188), but it is not clear what classes are required and which are not.
Both the websites were a bit hard to navigate, which is a bad sign IMO. I would talk to school officials and make sure that all the information you have is completely accurate, as things might have changed, and information might have been committed.
My daughter is an IB diploma graduate. She doesn’t feel that IB affected her college admissions prospects either positively or negatively. But some of her former classmates feel that it was actually a disadvantage. Their GPAs were probably lower than they would have been at their neighborhood high schools, they had less time for ECs, they were competing with extremely qualified classmates for spots at selective schools, and it’s highly unlikely that any of them received a “one of the best in my career” recommendation from a teacher.
Of course, once they got to college, they were extremely well prepared. Many considered college practically a vacation after IB. (“Mom! There’s time to sleep.”)