<p>Hi, I'm a Junior in high school who is in my school's IB Diploma program. I feel that it will help me get accepted to high level colleges, even Ivy league. At the same time, looking at what most people say about IB, does it really help in acceptance and does it lower the GPA; those sort of questions. I know that there are those who say that it only hindered them from going to the colleges that they wanted, others who say that life is easier because of it. I'm kind of scared that I might have made the wrong choice.</p>
<p>Trust me, the rumors you hear about IB being extraordinarily difficult aren’t true at all. You get a lot more work than you normally would (in my district, it’s probably three times the work of AP), but it’s definitely manageable. The work isn’t much more advanced than that of a normal high school, but there’s a lot more of it. You may end up reading 300-400 pages of pretty random material to study for 3-6 tests over a few days if you procrastinate like I do, but it’s not like the reading level is just far beyond what most people can manage. As long as you put time into what you’re doing, you’ll be fine. Honestly if you want to go to the Ivy League you shouldn’t have much trouble anyway.</p>
<p>As for the getting into colleges part, it helps about the same an AP curriculum would. If you have a rigorous IB program, you’ll get a little check off on a box for “Most Rigorous” curriculum undertaken at your school (talk to your counselor about it to make sure), which basically fulfills one of many factors in the admissions process. You’ll prepare yourself much more academically than at anywhere else, but also a few parts of the curriculum (especially exploratory epistemology in ToK) can really improve your writing and how you address particular issues. So basically every student will have extracurricular activities, fairly strong writing, independent research and creative (rather than just analytical) papers in IAs, and a rigorous curriculum, which all assist in getting into good schools but don’t guarantee admission. Just because students in other curricula aren’t required to do something outside of school doesn’t mean they won’t, so you’ll still have some fierce competition.</p>
<p>TLDR: The rigor helps, and so do the opportunities within the school. It’s worthless for your admission if you don’t take advantage of what it has to offer alongside external things.</p>
<p>In my experience, the IB first of all makes an interesting talking point during interviews, and depending on where you went to school, may make your application stand out.</p>
<p>In college, any rigorous curriculum better prepares you for difficult classes. IB particularly helps with research papers and essays, which I have found to be much easier to do, especially long ones, because of my IB classes.</p>
<p>IB and the way the exams are curved also teaches you how to take a class/exam where the majority of the questions are very difficult, and grading is relative</p>
I am a IB student and I’m in a IB career program but the problem I have is that I need to take French which I’m horrible at and if I fail my French class which is one of the 4 classes I take for IB I will not get my certificate no matter how hard i worked my junior and senior year. If I fail one of my IB tests that’s it. Idk I think its really risky and I’m planning on transferring to another school.
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