<p>Hi, I am currently in Year 11 (10th grade) of Luanda International School. I am about to go to IB Diploma Programme next year and have been making final decisions towards my HL and SL subject choices. I am VERY interested in Biomedical Engineering, aside from medicine that is the only thing I seem to have a passion for. For SL, i am taking Spanish, Economics and Biology. For HL, i chose Chemistry, Maths, and English A. If you know how the IB works you know that you can only take two sciences (which sucks). That's the problem, I have heard from various sources that physics would also be required, which is totally NOT a surprise since it is engineering, but some people say that chemistry, biology, and maths are the most important subjects to take in high school if you want to do BiomedE. But there are also people who said that colleges have high school physics as prerequisites, which worries me. And then there are people who said that you dont have to take physics in high school as long as you do well in physics in college. </p>
<p>What should I do? (I made a solid decision to keep my Chemistry HL, so the choice is really between Biology SL and Physics SL). (Also I am planning to go to college in the US).</p>
<p>Also, I am planning to do a 3-week summer program in Brown University this summer and a Biomedical Engineering summer program in Columbia University next summer.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help :)</p>
<p>@geegeehan Hi, first question i’ve go for you is, have you taken physics so far in Year 10/11? If yes, i think you should take HL Biology and Chemistry, i’ll tell you why. Since your considering medicine these classes will prepare you really well for university level science courses (which are extremely hard). Drop something like higher level english to sl because there isn’t much of a difference between sl/hl and you’ll benefit more by taking higher level biology than english. </p>
<p>If you haven’t taken physics yet, I advise you to take sl physics as you’ll be taking really hard physics courses as an engineer major. You don’t want to struggle to much with them. Plus, if your considering applying to top engineering school’s such as Caltech, MIT, Georgia Tech i think you’ll be best of taking the combination of Higher level maths/chemistry/physics as you’ll face a lot of competition from other applicants, most of which will have taken the AP equivalent of HL chemistry/physics/maths. </p>
<p>Hope i helped!</p>
<p>@pink997 Hi! I do already take physics in Year 11, but they are basic physics topics, such as force, momentum, and it is not a separate subject, but a single science subject 
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<p>@geegeeha If that’s the case stick with Higher Level Biology/Chemistry if your leaning more towards medicine. But if your leaning more towards BME take Higher Level Chemistry/Physics. Hate the fact that you can’t take all three sciences for IB. The good thing about US colleges is they aren’t very specific on prerequisite classes so you’ll be fine if you take either combination of higher level sciences. </p>
<p>Don’t stress out about it too much. You’re on the right track by taking HL sciences so you will be well prepared for BME in college. It’s not going to make or break you to have taken certain IB sciences. I’m studying neuroscience and didn’t take IB bio; all I had for biology background was freshman bio, but I was strong in other areas. If you have a solid background in math, bio, chem, physics, you’ll be fine, even if you can’t taken them all as IB.</p>
<p>Are you planning to use these classes to get college credit for them and skip out of intro classes? If so, I would probably recommend against taking HL physics for that purpose. Because IB Physics isn’t calculus-based, you will probably have to retake it in college. Even if they DO give you credit for calculus-based college physics (like my uni does), it might not be the best idea to skip out on it and jump into upper level classes without actually having had the calc-based side of things. </p>