<p>At my kid's school the deciding factor in course choice is often the "most rigorous" designation on the transcript. Here it is defined as the IB diploma OR a combination of 7 AP courses or IB certificates.<br>
If your daughter is wanting that "most rigorous" designation then she should ask the counselors at her school how it is determined. She may get it only by taking the full IB diploma.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>IB classes are not taught to the test like APs <<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>At our high school, the AP and IB kids are in the same class with the same teacher in a subject that is covered by both IB and AP (and the class is labeled "AP/IB"). I am not aware that the IB kids are given different assignments or lectures.</p>
<p>When a subject is covered by only one program, then the class is labeled with only one program (AP Stats, History of the Americas IB).</p>
<p>Karen Colleges - I would caution against taking IB Math Studies if your D wants to go into ANY science in college. It won't provide strong enough foundation. Math SL is the course most students take for general science purposes. Is there a way your D can catch up the rest of the year/summer so that she can start Math SL? Or, she can progress on AP track in parallel to IB, but that seems like a waste of time taking Math Studies. IB Diploma is a terrific program, but you need to look at it in context of your D future goals. I'm looking at some UK universities and their requirements (in case my D wants to apply to UK as well as US), and Cambridge requires Math HL for all sciences, which is an overkill in my opinion, especially for subjects like psychology, but that's the way it is. Most universities will accept Math SL, but none will take Math Studies (for science courses, although it's okay for pure humanities).</p>
<p>
[quote]
At our high school, the AP and IB kids are in the same class with the same teacher in a subject that is covered by both IB and AP (and the class is labeled "AP/IB"). I am not aware that the IB kids are given different assignments or lectures.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>At the high school I know about, certain assignments in combined AP/IB courses are done only by the IB students (for those who know IB terminology, I'm talking about the Internal and External Assessments). Otherwise, everybody covers the same curriculum, which includes material designed to prepare students for both the AP and IB tests.</p>
<p>Karen,
DS2 is taking AP Calc AB next year and taking the SL Math Studies exam (as well as the AP exam). He'll take AP Stats as a senior as an elective. He is vascillating between going into history/polisci and environmental science, but we figure that having two AP math exams under his belt will give him good preparation whatever he decides to pursue.</p>
<p>Our local high school is thinking about offering IB and I'm delighted. My older children took AP courses because that was all that was offered, and I wasn't impressed. Two of them scored 5's on the Calculus AP and then struggled with the subject (despite the fact that they dropped down some) when they got to college. I have learned that a 5 on the AP test doesn't mean much. If it is offered, I will encouage my younger children to take the IB program instead of the APs.</p>
<p>^^^ While I am not discouraging that - be careful. An IB program that is just in its beginnings is generally very different from an established one. New program will have teachers that are still learning and will generally have limited oportunities/choices within the IB sujects offered.
Just a thought :-)</p>
<p>I have just compiled this partial list of US universities and colleges who seem to understand the IB diploma program. Here it is:</p>
<p>Some of the colleges who will grant Sophomore Status for IB Diploma
Recipients
(Minimum number of points shown when included in University policy)</p>
<p>Bemidji State University (MN) - 30 or more points
Cedar Crest college (PA)
College of Eastern Utah
Concordia College (MN) - 30 or more points
Eckerd College (FL) - 5 or better in three higher level subjects
Florida Southern College - 4 or better in three higher level subjects
Franklin and Marshall College (PA) - 30 or more points
Juniata College (PA) - 30 or more points
Lawrence University (WI) - 30 or more points
Oregon State University - 30 or more points
State University of New York Binghamton - 30 or more points
Oglethorpe University (GA) - 30 or more points
Oregon State University - 30 or more points
Pine Manor College (MA)
Sacred Heart University (Canada)
St. Cloud State University (MN) 30 or more points
Suffolk University (MA) - 30 or more points
Towson University (MD) -
Union College (NY)
University of Tulsaq (OK) - 28 or more points
New York University (Stern)* 30 or more points
University of Texas, Austin - 30 or more points
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities - 30 or more points
University of Florida - 30 or more points
Middlebury College (VT) - 30 or more points
Wesleyan (CT) - 30 or more points
Smith College (MA) - 30 or more points
Bryn Mawr College (PA) - 30 or more points
Mount Holyoke College (MA) - 30 or more points
Barnard College (NY) - 30 or more points
SUNY Binghamton - 30 or more points
Ohio State - 30 or more points</p>
<p>Lafayette College (PA) - 5s on all SL and HL tests and C or above on
TOK and EE
College of Idaho - 28 or better with Diploma
Florida State University - 12 Credits + Credit for HL & SL</p>
<p>Tufts University offers a full year of credit for the IB Diploma</p>
<p>All Texas Universities will grant 24 Credits for IB Diploma based on
State Senate Bill 111.</p>
<p>University of Washington, "Students who earn an IB diploma may be
awarded up to 45 quarter credits for a combination of subject grades
and 15 general education credits distributed equally among the three
Areas of Knowledge."</p>
<p>University of DePaul - up to 30 credits</p>
<p>Marquette University - Milwaukee - up to 30 Credits</p>
<p>Almost every school in the US recognizes the IB program now. Many as shown above have recognized the IB Diploma program as something special. Almost every school will want your daughter to take the most rigorous courses possible at her high school - which is the IB Diploma program. I believe she will be very competitive and she should strive to get as high as possible on her exams. </p>
<p>I have had one daughter get her diploma and three others are in the process of Diploma or MYP program. It is more important that you should know that many studies have shown your daughter will be well prepared for college and often ahead of her peers. Her writing skills will be better, her time management skills will be better, and often her research skills will be better. You can expect no matter where she goes (based on studies in various universities in the US such as U of FL, VA Tech and others, that her GPA will be significantly higher than her peers as a freshman, sophomore and beyond.</p>
<p>AP is a great program also.</p>
<p>Rich</p>
<p>Seconding Kelowna's advice- be wary of a new IB program. A lot of kids won't be on track to take IB Math, and will have no choice other than IB Math Studies (which doesn't cover enough for kids planning to major in science or engineering.)</p>
<p>Also, make sure that they offer more than one Ab Initio language class-- that is another area where kids got tripped up. </p>
<p>In two more years, all of the kids at our school will be on track, but in the first couple years, many were not able to take the full IB program. As they have completely dropped all AP classes, some kids can only hope that their transcripts are going to be strong enough to compete. No worries for the full IB diploma candidate.</p>
<p>Exactly what are "predicted grades", i.e., is there a published (or otherwise disclosed to the students) algorithm by which they are calculated from the existing grades, or do they contain speculation by the teachers?</p>
<p>I asked this in an earlier IB thread and never got an answer.</p>
<p>A couple of notes...</p>
<p>Some IB programs are awful; just because it's labeled "IB" doesn't mean it's a great program, alas. (Just as some AP courses are awful, of course, and I won't mention one that my son had been taking -- ick!!) The local high school with IB that is available to my son has very limited IB offerings, so has no flexibility in which math one takes, which language, and so on.</p>
<p>As happens in some other places, IB was brought in to try to keep highly-able students in the public school system and to try to introduce stronger courses into this high school (and into the district generally). The program is a mess; IB implementation in my school district is overall very poor, despite IB having been in some of the schools for over a decade. (There have been NO diploma recipients in the past several years, or possibly ever [I haven't checked back more than a few years], from any of the IB schools here.)</p>
<p>Also, the IB certificate (that which non-diploma students get for taking an IB course) is NOT the same as taking an AP test; it simply indicates that the student took the course, and does not relate to performance in the course nor to retention of the material. If you want your IB student to get college credit for IB courses, they MUST take either the IB or AP exam and get a score acceptable to the college.</p>
<p>rwlavalley, I know a student who got 52 (!) college credits for his AP exams. If one is seeking advanced standing in college, one has much more flexibility with AP exams than with the IB diploma. That's not anything against IB; it's just that there are many more opportunities to earn credit with AP exams (and of course, as has been mentioned, many IB students take AP exams).</p>
<p>Just want to caution parents to really look at the IB program their students are considering before signing up; it might not be the most rigorous available.</p>
<p>How do you evaluate an IB program? We have a magnet IB program in our district that my daughter is considering for high school.</p>
<p>It's been in place for about ten years now. Our district claims that 98% of the students complete required course of study and earn an IB diploma and that the average IB score (?) is 5.30.</p>
<p>Does this sound right?</p>
<p>My daughter is in an IB magnet program in an inner-city school. She loves it because it plays to her personal strengths. The extended essay is the object of absolute rapture for her because that's how her brain works. As a quirk in her personal schedule, she's got four HL and two SL classes and she particularly enjoys the flow from one year to the next. We've checked out how some schools treat the IB diploma and were thrilled to learn the Bryn Mawr awards sophomore status with a certain point total (I don't remember what it was) and Catholic University awards automatic admission to its honors program.</p>
<p>St. Mary's College in MD offers soph status to full diploma IB grads and offers scholarships specifically targeted to IB students as well.</p>
<p>Scottiemix,
Those numbers sound reasonably close to the IB program S2 attends, which is one of the top-performing IBs in the US. I will tell you, it is a ton of work. </p>
<p>I posted on this thread last year, but will update: S2 is now a junior. Is taking Econ this year as his sixth subject, after he got into Macro (due to a scheduling conflict) and loved it. This means he has pushed his math exam off until next year, but will probably take AP Calc BC and the Math SL exam instead of Math Studies. He (and we) think AP Stat would be better, but he is VERY concerned about losing the math skills he has and doesn't want to spend lots of time re-learning them in April of senior year. English is the current bane of his existence -- just because one is a great writer does not mean one will do well in IB English!</p>
<p>He took three APs prior to junior year, and will take AP Eng Lang, Spanish, Calc AB, Macro and Micro this year, in addition to SL Spanish and SL Econ. Next year: HL Bio, HL English, HL Euro, SL Math, AP Comp Gov't, BC Calc. AP Euro and Bio are possibilities depending on what his final application list looks like. The APs are either in areas in which S has a particular interest, wants to ensure college credit by taking an AP, or in the case of English, feels he must put up a strong score for college applications.</p>
<p>He is busting his tail to maintain a 3.5-3.6 UW. This would not be the case if he were at his local HS taking straight APs. This school is very serious about its IB scores and they teach/grade to a 6-7 score -- definitely well beyond the minimum to pass. I can only hope that colleges will look at his SATs and standardized scores (which are excellent) and not conclude that his GPA means he's a slacker.</p>
<p>Siserune, I don't think our school discloses predicted grades to the students, much less the methodology. The IB coordinator told us freshman year that we could request to have them left off the rec letter the IB department sends, but I don't know if we have to make that choice blind or actually get to see them. S2 has done two IAs for Econ so far, and the teacher is not allowed to tell them how they scored on the 1-7 scale. (This was specifically stated in the IB Econ subject area guidelines S was given.) They got a regular grade for the assignments, but we don't know what the IB assessment scores are.</p>
<p>ScottieMix, I'd look at course offerings to start -- how many are offered? What levels are offered? For different subject areas in which there should be some differentiation, does the IB program offer that differentiation? (Math and foreign language, for example.) Does the school offer IB courses in math, for example, at the level at which your D is likely to want to take it? </p>
<p>Also, how many teachers are IB-certified? How long have these teachers been at the school? How easy is it for the school to replace IB teachers when it loses one? It's far easier to replace an AP teacher in my district -- because AP is much more prevalent -- than an IB teacher, and that's assuming either one of these teachers wants to work in my district. (IOW, is your district seen as a desireable place to work by teachers, and are there enough IB programs in your area to have an IB-certified teacher population on which to draw for replacement teachers?)</p>
<p>If 98% of the student earn the IB diploma, that's a good sign, but I'd make sure that statistic means what I think it means. How many years does that stat cover? How many kids taking IB are diploma candidates, vs. how many are taking just an IB course here, an IB course there. (There's nothing wrong with kids not taking the whole program; I'd just want to know what the stat is based on, is all.) </p>
<p>How strong is the school overall, outside of IB? Some schools are strong overall; others are quite poor except for the IB program (the IB program gets the most resources in some schools), and others are bad schools AND have poor IB programs (such as the IB school for my area). </p>
<p>CountingDown and Marian's school distict is a neighboring one; their district is very good. Lots of high-performing, high-ability students are in the public school system. Mine... not so good, and many high-ability students are in private schools rather than the public system as a result. (One can look at NMSF numbers from both districts and see the wide disparity between them. Many NMSFs in the public schools in their district, spread over many public schools; few NMSFs in the public schools in my district, and usually just from one school.)</p>
<p>I think that I have posted that before, but will repeat.
At our IB school a lot of courses are labelled AP/IB. Some students make a decision in their senior year not to go ahead with an IB diploma and instead concentrate on AP exams.
Also, the GC states repetitively that IB is not a gifted program but one that is well suited for gifted kids. You do not have to have a staggering GPA to be admitted.</p>
<p>At the school in our district, only kids admitted into the IB program can take IB classes. IB kids can take AP classes when the IB program doesn't offer an equivalent(IE, I know that lots of IB kids take AP American Government and AP Psychology). The IB program only offers Spanish or French, but that's fine because our middle schools only offer those languages. The high school offers other languages if my daughter wants to take a second language.</p>
<p>The IB program does offer choices about science and math, which is good. The school is large enough that they have lots of electives.</p>
<p>The magnet is almost completely self-contained from the rest of the school, except for some electives and ECs. We have a family friend who graduated in 2002 who still is in contact with some teachers, so I guess the teachers are fairly stable. We live in a popular suburban district.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Exactly what are "predicted grades", i.e., is there a published (or otherwise disclosed to the students) algorithm by which they are calculated from the existing grades, or do they contain speculation by the teachers?</p>
<p>I asked this in an earlier IB thread and never got an answer.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You probably didn't get an answer because most of us here don't know. </p>
<p>My daughter graduated from an IB school in the U.S., and I still don't know about predicted grades. She never knew what hers were and never asked. And we have no idea how they were determined -- only that teachers are criticized if the predictions are more than 1 grade off, in either direction, from the actual score. If the teachers simply predicted the grades on the basis of past experience, we assumed that they predicted 6 for everyone who was getting an A in a course and 5 for everyone who was getting a B; this would cover them for the cases in which top students got 7s or not-so-top students got 4s. (Almost nobody at that school ever got below a 4, and almost nobody who didn't have an A in a course ever got a 7.)</p>
<p>I don't think predicted scores are very important for U.S. IB students applying to U.S. colleges (where admissions decisions are made primarily on the basis of GPAs, SATs, ECs, and essays), but apparently they are important for IB students from outside the U.S. or for IB students from anywhere who are applying to non-U.S. universities.</p>
<p>The IB diploma is viewed highly, but of course, college apps are based on predicted success. There is a quote on one of the IB v. AP threads from the Princeton dean of admissions on the value of IB. But as far as college credits earned, the student will receive more for AP tests. Thus if the goal is to get college over fast, go with AP. The college board still rules the day and IB does not have the marketing power it has. Although, I read an article in the Washington Post a while back about possible changes by colleges in awarding credit. If the goal is college admissions, I think an IB diploma candidate is viewed positively.</p>
<p>AP vs. IB is not always an either-or choice.</p>
<p>Some high schools, particularly those with long-established IB programs, offer IB courses that also prepare students well for AP tests or offer joint AP/IB courses that cover both curricula and are offered both to students in the IB program and those outside of it (this works best in subjects where there is a lot of overlap between the two programs' curricula). These kinds of arrangements often make it possible for IB students to get college credit for their SL courses even though the colleges do not give credit for IB SL scores. The students simply take the AP test in the same subject and get credit for that score instead. My daughter got college credit for all three of her SL subjects in this way. </p>
<p>Of course, this means taking extra tests, but by the end of the IB program, most IB students have taken so many tests and filled out so many forms that they don't particularly care. They'll fill out anything that's placed in front of them.</p>