<p>I posted this in another thread, but I thought I'd get more responses here. My son will be graduating from hs in 2012. He is in the "pre-IB" program at his HS. Now that he's almost done with soph year, he must commit to the real IB prg w/in the next couple of weeks. His big sister did the IB diploma several years ago at the same school. Although she earned her diploma and got in to a good college w/a merit scholarship, she says that she regrets the massive amount of time that she spent on busy work in IB. My DS is just not interested in continuing IB and wants to do AP instead. He is already self-studying for a few AP tests this spring and will sign up for as many AP classes as possible his junior year. He has all honors classes so far and all A's (except for 1 B in one honors class as a frosh). He is in a varsity sport (and club-same sport) mostly year round, tutors and is on the debate team so his schedule is packed. My question for all of you seasoned parents is this: will switching to AP hurt him in his quest for an elite college? The school counselors say that his school is so strong in IB that switching to AP will hurt him with admissions.</p>
<p>First off, you are BLESSED if your son has a choice between AP classes and IB classes. Most high schools have one or the other. </p>
<p>IB certainly is the choice IF your son has to go to Harvard, Yale,etc to be happy in the world. If there are other choices that would make his heart sing (say, the other 3,700 colleges that aren’t the top 25 most selective schools), then it is really no big deal. </p>
<p>Here’s your big clue: “My DS is just not interested in continuing IB”. Forcing him through all that work would be a recipe for strife and misery. IB, as you know, is a ton of work. If his heart and soul don’t see the value in it, then you are signing him and YOU up for two years of ongoing torture. </p>
<p>It sounds like he is willing to do some work. Taking a load of AP classes (and doing well in them) sounds like a terrific alternative. </p>
<p>Honestly, I think he would be a BETTER candidate for a selective school if he has a strong, happy attitude about the next two years (which translates into strong, happy teacher rec letters). </p>
<p>I hope you’ll find the faith in your son to say “switching to the AP track makes your mother nervous. The counselors are warning us that it may close some doors. But I’m willing to have faith that you know the path that suits you. As long as we agree that you will work hard in the classes you choose, I’m on board.” Wow, what a huge leap toward adulthood that could be. </p>
<p>You could also ask him to check in with his closest friends. If they are all doing IB, that might tweak the picture a little bit. </p>
<p>We have two kiddos. The first one sailed through IB. The younger one is digging his way through with dedication and effort. I would have loved for the younger one to have had AP as an option. Some times the plate just gets too full and its hard to see.
Good luck!</p>
<p>“IB certainly is the choice IF your son has to go to Harvard, Yale,etc to be happy in the world.”</p>
<p>Not true. I’ve interviewed for Harvard and have seen IB students from my area be rejected while AP-intensive students got in.</p>
<p>IB is great for students with deep interests across academic fields. AP is better for students who are more lopsided. What students do with their IB or AP curriculum is more important than which curriculum they chose.</p>
<p>For instance, I saw a student get into Harvard who chose AP over IB because the student had a deep interest in computer science. The student had taken very advanced computer sci courses, gotten top state honors in some math -related competitions, and had been paid for professional work writing computer programs. He also was an Eagle Scout and a pianist. </p>
<p>He had more going for him than did students who other than getting top grades in IB didn’t do anything exceptional. Lots of students get top grades in IB (and in APs for that matter), but few have the ECs and in depth academics and/or ECs to stand out for schools like Harvard.</p>
<p>I agree on IB not necessarily being better than AP - it seems to me that IB may be somewhat of a regional thing?</p>
<p>I had never, ever heard of IB until I came to CC; almost no schools (even the best schools) around here seem to have IB programs. Therefore, there are plenty of student who get into amazing colleges with only AP classes.</p>
<p>OP, perhaps our DSs are in the same school. Thank goodness my son voiced his doubts after pre-IB after seeing the suffering of his friends. He dropped IB diploma over strong protests of the counselors who particularly want the bilingual IB diploma candidates to follow through. He still takes almost all IB with some AP classes and is active in enough activities that the CAS requirements would have been a snap…but the paperwork! the senior paper! the meetings! only a really, really well organized kid can get through it …also another mom said to me that “your S and my S are very similar and IB was the worst decision for our family” …her son flamed out despite being a really smart kid and had trouble graduating yet really loved some of the IB classes but hated others. IB English is a nightmare of an obsessive/compulsive analysis of 1 novel. But the native spanish IB is a wonderful survey of Spanish and Latin American literature. So DS has done first language Spanish IB-HL (keep the counselors happy with enrollment in this class) with AP lit and language to fufill state english requirements. Just to note…the previous year there were three Harvard acceptances…1 full IB and 2 AP intensive…from the school. The counselors feel that there isn’t much difference in terms of college acceptances but keep in mind that IB SL classes generally don’t get credits like AP and some schools want the full certificate to give credit for the HL classes. Not fair, but that’s the reality.</p>
<p>I don’t think top colleges favor IB over AP or vice-versa. AP has the advantage of being more flexible; IB is better integrated and teaches students to write well. It really depends on the kid. I like IB better for social studies and humanities, and AP better for math/science.</p>
<p>Top schools do not favor IB over AP. On our selective campus data on performance in introductory science courses reveal no significant difference in the academic performance between students that completed IB, AP or honors level HS biology courses.</p>
<p>Love this thread. Excellent answers. IB is not for everyone. The kids here who are in it for any reason other than they ‘think it is a fabulous program’ are very unhappy. </p>
<p>If you have to ‘talk a kid’ into it, for any reason, you are asking for a miserable 2 years. (Emphasis on miserable.)</p>
<p>By the way, all of the 12 colleges we looked at in California didn’t care if you had IB or AP. They are interested in rigor. Only one of them said they would give sophomore status to an IB diploma student. The rest will give college credit for HL courses only. Obviously, you can’t get credit for more than 3 or perhaps 4 IB courses. </p>
<p>I’ve heard that some schools on the East Coast ‘prefer’ the IB diploma, but have seen no evidence. I know students who got into Cal Tech, MIT, Duke, Amherst, Pomona, Rice, Berkeley, Edinborough and Melbourne etc. without an IB diploma.</p>
<p>I’ve heard admissions officers at Harvard, Duke, Johns Hopkins, UNC, UVA and Emory say that they regard a strong AP curriculum the same as they regard an IB curriculum.</p>
<p>My kid did AP but the girl next door did IB so I kind of lived through it with her Mom (my friend). In this case the girl was a good but not “top of the heap” student who was determined to stay in IB to show everybody she could do it. The drama was unbelieveable. The workload, the stress, the having no time to do other things was crazy. The Mom wished every single day the D would drop IB but the D wouldn’t give in.</p>
<p>The stress lasted right up 'til the last minute in h.s. because the D was not doing great in German and there was a real possibility that she might not pass the final German exam which would keep her from getting the IB diploma. Complicating the situation, she had already decided to attend a regional oos public because they offered full tuition scholar ship to IB diploma grads. They could not afford the school w/out the scholarship.
The stress the wholefamily went through was awful. Thank goodness she passed the exam and got the IB diploma. They were so relieved. They initially encouraged her to do IB because they thought it would bring many scholarship opportunities. It really didn’t work out like they thought.<br>
My friend was so relieved when her younger D opted for AP.</p>
<p>My daughter graduated in 2005 with the IB. She’s a kid who never broke a sweat over school work–until senior year of IB. It was almost too much for her and she is generally unflappable about workload. She did it but a lot of it was pure slog. 7 years later my son is in the same high school. He might take a couple of IB classes but there is no way he is going for the diploma. Interestingly when my daughter was in high school the families had to pay for AP classes but the school funded the IB. Now the opposite is true, families pay the IB costs but AP is funded by the school.</p>
<p>“The stress the wholefamily went through was awful. Thank goodness she passed the exam and got the IB diploma.”</p>
<p>Older S got the IB diploma. At 25, he’s still angry that he chose to take the IB program because he has found that few people have heard of it and no one cares that he got the IB diploma.</p>
<p>It’s a great program for students with broad interests who are willing to work very hard in all subjects. It’s PITA for students who aren’t like that. It is NOT a guaranteed ticket to getting into top colleges or getting great merit aid.</p>
<p>Younger S left IB for senior year because due to the way his schedule turned out, he would not have been able to take IB/AP Physics or another year of math his senior year. At that time, he was considering majoring in engineering, so would have needed senior year physics and math.</p>
<p>The plus of IB for younger S was that our program attracted a high proportion of students born outside of the U.S. That S always greatly enjoyed making international friends and friends of a variety of ethnicities and racial backgrounds.</p>
<p>The minus of IB was that while S actually does like all subjects, he was not a strong writer despite having a 760 CR SAT. He also seems to have inherited my slight LD when it comes to learning foreign languages. I have to do far more than normal to learn languages. </p>
<p>AP was a much better fit for him.</p>
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<p>That’s been our experience from kids who have applied from our high school. AP intensive kids are on the same playing field as the IB kids when it comes to college results.</p>
<p>My son basically ignored the IB program at his high school, and they didn’t offer AP classes instead. He was accepted by MIT, Caltech, Reed, Michigan and UVA. He did, however, take responsibility for learning quite a bit on his own.</p>
<p>I would never force a student into an IB program against his/her will. IB can be hell for the student who does not want to be there.</p>
<p>IB was a good choice for my daughter, who is now a college junior and who feels that her IB diploma program provided her with excellent preparation for college. But my son refused to even apply to IB; he didn’t want to do the extra work and he felt that the curriculum was too restrictive for him and would not allow him to sufficiently pursue his strong interest in computer science. Two different students; two different decisions. And both decisions were right for the individuals involved.</p>
<p>Trust your son on this one. The next two years will be horrible if he is coerced into IB.</p>
<p>Congratulations on having such a sensible and self-aware young man. You’re doing a great job with him! IB is wonderful for the kids for whom it is the right choice. It’s a nightmare for the kids for whom it’s the wrong choice. Tell him how proud you are, support him in the AP classes, and remind him to make a plan for his ECs.</p>
<p>I wish AP had been offered at S’s high school. He signed up for pre-IB English in 9th grade, and the summer assignment was to fully annotate To Kill a Mockingbird. He had to have multiple color-coded entries on EVERY page, including vocabulary words he didn’t know, themes, foreshadowing, what he thought would happen next, and the characters’ motivations. Without ever having being taught how to annotate. I had him moved to regular English 9 by the end of June.</p>
<p>He also tried a pre-IB history class in 10th grade, which required everyone to do a project for National History Day. The teacher took several weeks to tell S his chosen topic was unacceptable, so he had to rush to choose another topic and do the first draft. She took weeks to return each draft with a lot of criticism but no suggestions for improvement, and the class had only a few days before the next draft was due. S tried talking to her, but got no help. Then I tried talking to her, suggesting that the class needed to be taught how to do a research paper. Her only response was that they would learn it by doing it.</p>
<p>This turned S against IB so vehemently that he refused to take any IB history, even though he wanted to be a history major. The only IB class he took was math.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the responses. So much more to chew on. I spoke with another mom at S’s school whose D doesn’t want to do IB next year either. Both my S and her D are being pressured big time to do it. I really don’t understand why these counselors and teachers tell the kids that they will get into any school they want and that they must do the IB. I know from my own D’s experience that they don’t get into any school they want, heck many of her IB classmates didn’t either. Only a handful got into ivy’s. There is so much drama over this. Thanks so much for the info!</p>
<p>I think my kids go to that same school too 
I’ve questioned the benefits of IB since my current senior was in 8th grade & we went to the parents meeting for IB. It didn’t seem like it was a good fit for my D (it is so restrictive and there was a few classes that she was really interested in that she wouldn’t have been able to take if she had done IB.) She ended up taking APs and being in a lot of classes with the IB kids. As a senior, she is taking an IB class. The stories I’m hearing about the IB workload, kids not sleeping etc. make me think she made the right choice for her. Plus I’m not that impressed with the program at her school (of course, I’m hearing this through a kids filter but…) They usually have 60-70 kids in pre-IB, that ends up dropping down to 20 or so by senior year. Last year only 7 got the actual diploma. </p>
<p>My youngest is a current freshman and is pre-IB. She brought home her sophomore registration stuff this week & is continuing on that path (the college prep and pre-IB tracks are pretty close anyway with the exception of the pre-IB english class and taking economics as a sophomore.) I really, really hope she changes her mind. The workload and her perfection plus her need for sleep would really affect her. And as far as outcomes at the end of senior year, I’m not seeing a big bump for IB. Of our 4 NMSFs none of them are in IB; two of them were and dropped last year.</p>
<p>Pebbles: the counselor comment about them getting into Ivy’s is BS. I mean, there is a natural self selection process going on to get into IB. If you’re not already a strong student with a good work ethic, you’re not going to bother considering IB anyway.</p>
<p>When I had asked the question about IB vs. AP back in the day, I was told that when college app time comes the put a big IB stamp across the front of the transcript & that since it’s a smaller group they get some additional attention from the head of the program for letters of rec, etc. One of the GS leaders (who is also a teacher in the district) that I talked to told me of some senior girls who had been in her troop (they had graduated the year before.) A few had been in IB and when they went on GS weekends, they had to bring all their homework with them due to the workload. Fast forward, 1 dropped IB junior year and 1 continued. College app results time the IB girl got a full ride to the state flagship (which is nice) but the other girl ended up getting into a much higher ranked school with very nice merit aid and had a much happier senior year to boot. Again, anecdotal, but lack of IB doesn’t seem to hold students back here even if we do have the program.</p>