<p>I'm a sophomore about to choose my IB courses for next year. I have heard several times that you should choose your HLs based on what you would like to study in college. I am not sure what I want to study, but computer science is among what I am interested in.
So my question is, do colleges look at what you took in HL or SL if you're applying for a certain degree, for example if you want to take something engineering related I'm assuming they would like you to take Math in HL?</p>
<p>All right, but for example if one applies for an engineering degree, would colleges require HL Physics or Math? Does it matter to colleges which HLs you take? </p>
<p>Colleges will look at your International Baccalaureate education holistically in terms of what you were offered and what you chose to do with what you were offered. As a result, it is important that you both get involved in things that interest you, as well as things that will show that you challenged yourself. </p>
<p>It is completely untrue that colleges will count no SLs when they do HLs. Most top-tier schools will not accept any form of college credit earned in high school, but many of the IB courses choose to also prepare students for the AP exam in that subject, regardless of whether the student takes the course higher or standard level. For example, I take Physics SL in the DP at my school, and Chemistry HL, but HL and SL students both take the same AP exam, so many schools will accept that as credit, and I likely won’t get any advantage in terms of credit for chemistry, at least not likely at an American school. HLs are of course more attractive and indicative of a higher degree of passion, but just do what works for you and don’t stress out too much. </p>
<p>While it’s true that Mathematics HL and Mathematics SL is a whole world of difference. (A joke, if you’d ask me, that someone with Mathematics SL would even dare to apply engineering), I must contend that in certain subjects, the SL is not very different from HL in terms of rigor and difficulty. For example, ITGS SL has almost the same curriculum as ITGS HL (humanities). The difference is that ITGS HL has one extra question in one paper, and another extra case study paper, with extra 90 hours of teaching in 2 years. In my opinion that is not fair at all, since the ratio of teaching hours between SL and HL is 150:240 (5:8), but the extra content that they have is merely two extra chapters out of 20. In this case, the SL students has less time to study almost the same content as the HL students.</p>
<p>Therefore, I recommend:</p>
<p>Math HL
Science Subject HL</p>
<ul>
<li>Math HL touches on Uni-1st year subjects as one of the options, and you’re required to write a math paper equivalent to that of Uni-1st year standards.</li>
<li>Math SL is a joke.</li>
<li>Science HL has double the amount of things to learn with only 60% more time for it.</li>
</ul>
<p>Humanities SL (which has almost the same rigor, except perhaps Economics)
Language SL (the only difference in HL is that you have an additional coursework to submit, and your paper is slightly harder (the curriculum is entirely the same though)</p>
<p>For the Arts, HL is basically the same as SL in terms of curriculum but you have double the amount of coursework to do.</p>
<p>At least that’s what our school does. It varies greatly from school to school though, so beware. Our Math HL is unnecessarily hard, for example.</p>