<p>I have a friend who is taking IB chemistry higher level and she's struggling a lot- no matter how hard she works she gets really low grades. And for various reasons, the school won't allow her to drop chem HL to chem SL. </p>
<p>She would like to change to econ HL, but worries that it will look incredibly bad on record when applying to universities since she is halfway through her junior year already. She's particularly worried BECAUSE this is a higher level subject and a lot of weight is put on them. </p>
<p>Catching up on econ work from the past semester would probably take quite a bit of effort too, but she's willing to work hard for to catch up on that. </p>
<p>So, help my friend out- do you think she should change classes?</p>
<p>The only thing I can say, as a teacher in an IB school, is that IB rules are that you need 3 SL and 3 HL, or, I think you can do 4 HL, if your school allows, but I might be wrong about that. You mention that she could trade it to Econ HL, but that there are problems with that as well. It sounds as though her schedule is locked. If she changes from HL chem to SL chem, it might throw off too much of her other program.</p>
<p>I would vote against it, personally. Though the exam isn’t until next year, economics is cumulative. Until she has the whole 1st semester down before she starts, she will be behind. Also, it’s too late to order another SL exam for this year I think. Your friend should have thought about taking Chem HL before she signed up for it. Chem is, arguably, the hardest IB class. I’m in Chem HL and don’t have a problem with it mainly because I’m interested in it and put a lot of effort into the class. I would say that your friend screwed herself over. Econ would have been the easy way out (at least at my school). As far as I know, I don’t think colleges would care if you switched IB classes. Just be aware that switching into another class in the middle of the year will jeopardize her IB diploma if she doesn’t learn the material well enough by herself in time. IF SHE HAS NO OTHER SCIENCE (GROUP 4) THEN SHE MUST TAKE CHEM!!! OTHERWISE, NO IB DIPLOMA!!! Okay, i g2g. history IA lol</p>
<p>She does have another science group- Bio HL. This is her group 6 subject. So the only issue at hand is whether she will manage to cram in the Econ work she missed out on (if she does put in the effort) and whether it will look awful in terms of college admissions.</p>
<p>oh okay. I would still suggest to take chem HL, but idk the curriculum and whether or not it’s too difficult to make up. I don’t think it looks good on college, but I never heard of a student doing this/a school allowing someone to do this.</p>