Corruption in IB school.

Student Lounge International Students
1

<p>I really hope someone is willing to read my supremely long post and offer some advice, as I am in desperate need of it. </p>

<p>I am an international student, who will be applying to Universities and Colleges in the U.S. this coming year. </p>

<p>I have a weird story to tell with regards to my school, and I am also hoping for some advice on how to proceed with the matter. </p>

<p>I was previously living in Egypt before I moved to Germany. However due to visa issues, I arrived 1 month later than scheduled. Accordingly, I was one month late for school. When I arrived, my school had already set-up its schedule and, therefore, told me that it was incapable of offering me a second-language course and by extension the full IB diploma program. However, one or two weeks later, the principle set up an appointment with me and my parents; in which, she said that she was now capable of offering me a German class and hence the IB Diploma. To my surprise the following week I was given a schedule which indicated that I will only receive formal German teaching for approximately one hour and twenty minutes instead of the appropriate 4 hours and thirty minutes. That very same week, and to my greater surprise, I was regaled with the fact that my chosen German teacher had contracted some sort of infection and was going to be unavailable for one month. From the get-go, I was incapable of receiving two months worth of German classes. </p>

<p>It has been approximately 6 or 7 months since this unfortunate series of events. At the time, I was also quite naive in thinking that I might actually still be capable of studying for German on my own. As of now, I have completely realized that it is quite impossible for me to self-study German while simultaneously taking both Math HL and History HL, which are among the hardest courses in IB. My school will inevitably try to twist my arm by saying that they will write that I didn't pursue the most rigorous course load. In my opinion, however, it was not my fault that I wasn't capable of taking full IB, since they couldn't offer the full time required. </p>

<p>Another thing, which I fear will inevitably occur if I were to keep quite and remain in the IB diploma program, is that since I wasn't capable of doing the amount of hours required for German this year, I will have to do it next year. However, next year will be college admissions season for me. Hence, I fear that German will interfere with the time I am capable of dedicating to College Apps. If I were to assume best case scenario, which is that I am capable of pulling it off, I am quite positive that I would only obtain a mediocre score in German. </p>

<p>Should remain silent and continue with IB or simply switch to certificates? How much do you guys think this will hurt my college application, if at all? </p>

<p>To anyone willing to offer advice, I will remain infinitely grateful.</p>

2

<p>I have never worked inside a college admissions office, so I can only comment from the perspective of a former college applicant. I’d like to give you two pieces of advice. First, don’t kill yourself over academics - not worth it. Secondly, stay on good terms with the school administration and your teachers. Their letters of recommendation will be a LOT more important than a single German class. </p>

<p>If your school report says that you took the most important courseload available to you and that you couldn’t complete the full diploma because your school was unable to offer all of the necessary courses, I cannot imagine that an admissions office will hold that against you. </p>

<p>Of course, you may receive less college credits for an IB certificate than an IB diploma after you matriculate, but you are probably not very concerned about saving money and getting as many “free” college credits as possible. </p>

<p>And a bit of unasked-for-advice: the tippy top universities (Ivies and the like) will take for granted that you will have succeeded in the most rigorous curriculum offered by your high school. 90% of their applicants have. They’ll be looking for some accomplishment beyond the standard school curriculum (sports, science competitions, etc). I suspect that your best strategy might be to drop German and focus the extra time on developing a competitive extra-curricular profile.</p>

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<p>First, let me give you some advice. Don’t take the IB. Find your local ciricullum and take it (arbitur, etc). If you still want to take it, heed the following.</p>

<ol>
<li>The IB has many flaws, and schools many times neglect their IB students.</li>
<li>Many schools schedule IB courses so that people have ridiculously long days.</li>
<li>Some schools don’t even weigh IB courses. You will be ranked among the other students.</li>
<li>The IA’s depend very much on the teacher. This can potentially lower your mark by 1-2 points.</li>
<li>Universities don’t understand the rigour of the IB. They expect everyone to get 40+ predicted.</li>
<li>Predications are just predictions.</li>
<li>Taking certificate will greatly hurt your admissions.</li>
<li>High GPA in normal school, High SAT/ACT, no IB is preferred to Okay GPA in IB courses, High SAT/ACT</li>
</ol>

<p>Keep in mind, you are also an international student, which makes admissions that much more difficult. My advice would be to drop to a non-IB school, and take AP (if available). Then do well on SAT/ACT and GET a HOOK. Internationals need hooks (unless you come from an underrepssented country).</p>

<p>If you still want to do IB, talk to your IB coordinatior (generalizing, your IB coordinationor probably won’t do anything). If your problem is still not resolved, compain to IB. Best of luck.</p>

<p>If you still need more guidance, visit [IB</a> Survival | Helpful Procrastination](<a href=“http://www.ibsurvival.com%5DIB”>http://www.ibsurvival.com)</p>

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<p>^I completely agree with the list of flaws you mentioned with regards to IB. The problem is that this is the only English speaking school within a few hours of where I live. So my only real options are limited to either remaining in IB, or simply switching to certificates. :(</p>

5

<p>my sympathies on Math HL. Do 30 minutes every day. Seriously. It helps.</p>

<p>That said, there are lots of upsides to the IB in terms of admissions as well.</p>

<ul>
<li><p>at US colleges, the IB is actually respected far above the AP. Anybody who says otherwise simply has never tried applying with the IB to Oxbridge. A popular statistic is that an IB diploma is worth +0.5 GPA</p></li>
<li><p>If you take the IB, nobody cares about your GPA, especially from an international school. The IB has a comprehensive point system across the board, and a 45 points is 45 points, wherever those points originate from.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>That said, it’s true that predictions are just predictions, and that taking certificate will greatly hurt your admissions. My advice is, drop Math HL unless it is paramount to your college career (and given you’re taking History, and applying to the US, it really isn’t) and get a tutor for German. You’re taking it SL or ab initio, from my understanding, and it’s REALLY NOT THAT CHALLENGING. The writing part may be somewhat complicated, but everything else is a pieceacake. Maybe you won’t get a 7, but a 5-6 is perfectly within your reach.</p>

<p>You have the whole summer to catch up:)</p>

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<p>Honestly @vienneselights what you said is totally not true. For the US, it doesn’t matter if you take IB or AP as long as you take the most challenging course. So, thus if both AP and IB is offered, it would be better to take AP because it is easier to score well on. In fact, taking 10 APs would be more impressive than taking 6 diploma courses. However, one would probably argue that 6 ib courses is more of a workload if you do them all in one year.</p>

<p>And btw, US universities couldnt give a crap about the IB diploma. It’s mainly SAT + GPA (which is why IB is bad if it isnt scaled at your school). The international supplement just contains a sheet with predictions. The US universities won’t give the predictions much second thought. If they see a predicted 40+ but a low SAT score, they won’t really care.</p>

<p>The US doesn’t do conditional offers, which is why the IB predicitions holds little value to them. Of course, many of those accepted have both high SAT and high predicteds. So i if you have high SAT/low predicted or low sat/high predicted, things WILL look strange to adcoms.</p>

<p>I’m sorry, but they do care about your GPA. A low GPA/high predicted will get you nowhere in the USA. It will probably get a conditional offer from oxbridge, but not in the USA.</p>

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<p>It will NOT get you a conditional at Oxbridge.</p>

<p>Seriously, UK admissions are so much harder. Also, how do you get a low GPA but high predicted? Saywhat? Predictions are just predictions, but they are based on your academic performance to date…</p>

<p>What you say for SATs holds for APs as well, so that is a null point. You must also remember that overseas students are given much leeway for SATs because there’s less emphasis on sat prep etc at overseas schools. It’s actually way easier to get into a US school, IB or not, for a whole host of factors.</p>

<p>And IB IS the more challenging option. Colleges recognize this. Some say so on their websites (UPenn is a suspect, I recall)</p>

8

<p>^ concur with vienneselights. IB is the actually the preferred admission method though admission committees would definitely not say so - its universal and its assessment method are thorough and comprehensive. Simply because it does not just test someone on their academic rigour, but one would really need to pull a range of broad and soft skills in order to do very well.</p>

9

<p>@vienneselights, I may have phrased that wrong. But UK admissions is heavily objective based. And since you only apply with IB predictions, one stands a chance of getting a conditional offer (depending on interview performance and cutoff for program). They couldn’t care about your GPA, since they never see it.</p>

<p>However, US universities on the commonApp see both GPA and IB predicted.</p>

<p>And, it’s definitely not easier to get in a US (private) university than those in UK. You need both objective and subjective stats and international students are held to a much higher standard (many have international awards). You can see this simply from the acceptance rate at top tiers (MIT international is 2.7% and Yale is around that, Berkeley is around 13%). LSE, however, gives out lower conditional offers for internationals (since they need the money).</p>

<p>And I still stand that IB is not preffered. The reason is that the ACT/SAT is already to compare the students. The rigor of the course - IB or AP - is probably viewed the same (simply because so many more students take AP).</p>

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<p>Wait… so if i drop german but my school writes that i did take the most rigorous course load, will i be chastised for that? is taking certificates in general looked down upon??</p>

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<ol>
<li><p>You just said AP is easier. See, even you know that. You think those illustrious PhDs in admissions don’t?</p></li>
<li><p>If popularity does have even a marginal impact on the perceived rigour of ANY qualification, it can only be inverse. See: Harvard degrees are valuable because there are few of them.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Your point about GPA has some validity, however, as per UK, they do implicitly see it because nobody is going to predict you a 45 if your GPA is 2.0. And before we start talking about needing money, let us recall the UC campuses and their deplorable 2015 admissions year. That said, idk about stats and other semantics, but the both the international and domestic cohorts at my school received the same offers. Ability to pay full throttle will be in one’s favour - just like in the US - but it won’t bring the offers down.</p>

<p>tl;dr owing to diffence in school systems, it’s easier to go from the UK system into a US college and vice versa. However, that has minute value in the debate at hand /:</p>

<p>2.</p>