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<p>It’s true, most schools just mail them but our school makes an effort to get the kids back. They host a ceremony. It’s a private school so maybe they have more flexibility. The ceremony is held during Christmas Break, so a lot of kids are in town anyway. Not all of them attend but at least half do. Actually, there were 18 IB students last year - I misspoke. About 10 came to the ceremony.</p>
<p>S2’s GPA was lower than it would have been had he attended our local HS, that’s for sure. He would have liked to have more time for ECs, though he did a couple in considerable depth. There was never time to do the external things that would get one big awards, though. So far, he’s been deferred at Georgetown SFS and was accepted at Chicago EA with a 3.49 UW on the transcript (inc. HS classes taken in MS) and a 3.56 (4.24 W) in the IB program, excellent SATs and essays. He paid attention to schools that seemed to appreciate IB and were familiar with his schools’ program.</p>
<p>Virtually everyone graduates from this program (~100-115 kids). It is a significant point of pride for the school.</p>
<p>The IB curriculum is highly regarded. While it has flaws, it is a strong proven curriculum in much of Europe, and in a handful of private and public schools in the United States. It takes a great deal of effort for a high school to recruit IB savvy teachers, to attain the necessary IB certification, and to maintain a high course standard. That’s less the case in most public schools that offer some AP courses, and allow students to select the AP courses that suit them. So for your school where both the IB and AP programs are offered, I would expect that colleges would see the IB as the more rigorous program. And since selective colleges compare students based on the rigor of their coursework at their selected school, I agree with your counselor’s advise.</p>
<p>The IB is holistic. The whole curriculum matters, and dropping parts of it because they are not “interesting” to the student is not the philosophy of the program. The closest comparison to an IB are programs at a handful of selective academic schools (both private and public). These schools have course standards that focus on the cornerstones of a traditional college prep curriculum: English (with lots of analysis and writing), math (all four years), science (all four years), history/social science (three or four years), and language (three or four years). These programs don’t need to distinguish AP from non-AP because the coursework is as rigorous as practical, and the students expect that. The programs at these schools don’t look very different from an IB. So you can try to craft a similar program at your school from the AP classes that are offered. But my sense is that it would be very hard to apply the discipline in selection to do as well as the IB program that is offered.</p>
<p>And finally, should your SD take the IB I encourage your SD to take the final exams, and get the formal IB certificate. It would give the student a closure to the program, and it would be a meaningful addition in graduate school applications. In practice college acceptances arrive before the IB exams are taken, and many IB students choose not to take these exams.</p>
<p>“I encourage your SD to take the final exams, and get the formal IB certificate. It would give the student a closure to the program, and it would be a meaningful addition in graduate school applications.”
fogcity: as I said above, my older D graduated from the same hs as my S. She took the final IB exams and has her IB diploma. D is now a senior in college. How will the IB diploma help her with graduate school applications?</p>
<p>IB can help getting into graduate school programs. No kidding?</p>
<p>How expensive is an IB program to run? If they need to justify the expense, the 10 kids who would be interested wouldn’t be enough. That would explain why they Shanghai kids into it here.</p>
<p>I faced a similar choice when I was in my 11th grade year, I was debating whether to drop the IB diploma and take a couple of AP courses along with the IB courses I was taking. I visited a number of liberal arts colleges while I was making my decision, and asked the deans at all of them whether it would be better to keep the full diploma, or drop the diploma and take AP calculus instead of TOK, along with my other six IB classes. All of them except one (Wesleyan) told me to keep the diploma, even though the latter route would have probably been more academically challenging. I don’t know if that’s true for all schools, because I only asked a few liberal arts colleges (Amherst, Williams, Vassar, and I asked my friend at Columbia what he thought…all said keep the diploma), but I get the impression that the IB diploma makes for a more glamorous resume. The thing is, there are so many kids who take a bunch of tough AP courses, but it’s a much smaller pool that take the IB, and even smaller that take the full diploma. In fact, the dean at Williams told me that kids with the IB diploma get something like a little “star” on their application with the deans are reviewing them for admission (but that might just be Williams, they’re kind of weird up there). Amongst most top universities in the US, the IB diploma definitely makes you stand out more; it holds a great deal of prestige and adds to your “diversity”.</p>
<p>On the downside, if you do the IB and you’re applying to the states, you’re in for a lot of busywork that the deans of the colleges your kid applies to will not care about at all whatsoever, but you still have to do-- such as the extended essay, TOK essay, group 4 project, internal assignments, CAS, etc. You still have to do the IB exams, which count for nothing unless they’re HL classes (if you get a 6 or 7 on HL exams, you can get college credit). In the end, I chose to do the diploma (but my school has a really weak AP program), and found myself getting pretty frustrated at times with all the IB work I had to do that did not benefit my school grade whatsoever. It is definitely time consuming, and doesn’t always feel like it’s worth it. It’s annoying when my teachers’ whole goal is to adequately prepare me for my internal assessment when that’s about the last thing I care about, since I’ll probably never even see my grade and it has virtually zero impact on my college future anyway.</p>
<p>So, I think your kid’s decision really depends on your situation. I think especially when it comes to liberal arts colleges, and I would almost definitely say IV league-level schools as well, having the full IB diploma gives your application some extra sparkle. That’s not to say he/she can’t get in with AP classes instead, especially if the rest of your application is pretty strong, just the IB diploma gives him/her that extra edge–the diploma stands out more, and “diversity” is the big thing these days. Just if you decide to do it, be ready for lots of busywork. For me, I definitely had some painful moments (but that was mainly because I hated TOK with a passion), and my situation wasn’t quite as flexible as yours, but I’m glad I did it, and even more thankful that it’s almost over… 
Good luck with your (or his/her) decision!</p>
<p>banjanadian: nice, thoughtful post. Sounds like you did your IB homework. I hope you (and everyone in IB) get the notice that you’ve worked so very, very hard for.<br>
DS is still thinking it over. I’ll share all of this information with him. Who knows? Maybe he’ll decide to continue with the program. I hope he does-but we won’t push him. The IB program at his school is very strong. The best teachers are in that program and we all want our children to have the best! Time will tell.</p>
<p>banjadian- Great post!<br>
I have been wondering which schools ‘give stars’ to IB diploma candidates, and now have some solid info.</p>
<p>By the way, when we asked LAC’s in California, they said they didn’t care if you had IB or AP as long as the transcript showed rigor. I wonder what they would have said if presented with your scenario.</p>
<p>"Amongst most top universities in the US, the IB diploma definitely makes you stand out more; it holds a great deal of prestige and adds to your “diversity”.</p>
<p>I have not found that to be true. Saying this as the parent of one son who got the IB diploma. The other, switched to AP so he could fit in the AP physics and another math class he would need to take senior year if he decided to go into engineering in college.</p>
<p>The schools where I’ve heard admissions officers say they view AP and IB the same are: Harvard, Johns Hopkins, U Virginia, UNC, Duke, and Emory.</p>
<p>Older S, who now is almost 26, says he feels he wasted his time getting the IB diploma because it didn’t make any difference in his life. People hadn’t heard of it or didn’t care.</p>
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<p>Our GCs say that there is no truth that IB will get you into a top university if you couldn’t get in with AP courses (in other words, a GPA is a GPA is a GPA). This irritiates the IB coordinator to no end. OTOH, the IB coordinator at our school really pushes the whole notion that “IB diploma will get you noticed at the top universities.” But when you look at who gets in where, this doesn’t really pan out at our school. But, we have a really strong AP program - it’s not watered-down. You must first qualify to be in the AP class, we require all AP students to take the exams and we have greater than a 90% pass rate. So at our school the AP program is just as rigorous and will also earn you the most demanding designation. If you are at a school with a weak AP program, I could definitely see where the IB program would be the best route to go.</p>
<p>Again, IMO, it comes down to whether the student wants that type of curriculum and whether they are willing to do that amount of work. There is no doubt that it requires a lot of extra work. If you have a student who thrives on extra work, then it’s an easier decision to make. If you have a kid who is a good student but they balking about the extra work, I would think twice about it. The IB kids routinely report having 4-5 hours of work a night. When you think about it, that doesn’t allow for much down time after being in school all day.</p>
<p>We are a K-12 IB school, so all of the students are exposed to the IB curriculum from K-10th grade. They are well-versed in the concept of IB by the time they have to make the decision whether to continue on with the program. About 15-20% of our students continue on in IB. I do think it’s an excellent program but one that is only right for certain students. At our school, you don’t just get to opt into the program. You must have teacher recommendations, parents are called in to gauge their level of support and students are interviewed before they are accepted into the program. I’m sure it’s like that everywhere. This ensures you don’t have a reluctant kid being pushed into the program.</p>
<p>“At our school, you don’t just get to opt into the program. You must have teacher recommendations, parents are called in to gauge their level of support and students are interviewed before they are accepted into the program. I’m sure it’s like that everywhere. This ensures you don’t have a reluctant kid being pushed into the program.”</p>
<p>I wish that was the case here. In fact, they make if very difficult to opt out of the program.</p>
<p>““At our school, you don’t just get to opt into the program. You must have teacher recommendations, parents are called in to gauge their level of support and students are interviewed before they are accepted into the program. I’m sure it’s like that everywhere. This ensures you don’t have a reluctant kid being pushed into the program.””</p>
<p>It was like that the first two years of IB in my town. After that, the administration stopped the elaborate application, and started letting in all comers, including students whose scores were below the cutoff. As a result, IB contains a lot of busywork --outlining, word definitions and similar things – designed to make sure that the duller students learn the material. It makes IB boring for the smarter kids. When younger S switched to AP, the quality of teaching was much more interesting, and the students were more engaged and smarter.</p>
<p>“Again, IMO, it comes down to whether the student wants that type of curriculum and whether they are willing to do that amount of work. There is no doubt that it requires a lot of extra work. If you have a student who thrives on extra work, then it’s an easier decision to make. If you have a kid who is a good student but they balking about the extra work, I would think twice about it. The IB kids routinely report having 4-5 hours of work a night. When you think about it, that doesn’t allow for much down time after being in school all day.”</p>
<p>Even more specifically: It comes down to whether a student wants to do extra work – including research – in all subjects including language, history, math, science, English. Many smart students like doing extra work in some subjects, but not all subjects. Many smart students don’t like doing research.</p>
<p>CountingDown: I’m not sure if I ever thanked you on the other thread, so in case I didn’t thanks for all that detail!</p>
<p>Pebbles: yes, you can choose to not register for the senior IB classes when you register during junior year. It’s not encouraged, but I know at least one person this year who dropped but I think there were a couple more.</p>
<p>In my D’s shool, admission is by test only and you can’t opt in later.</p>
<p>My observation is that there are some schools that love IB, but they tend to be lower down on the food chain (because that’s where my daughter decided to concentrate her search for other reasons). Bryn Mawr really likes the IB, Lafayette really likes it, and Binghamton grants preference to it.</p>
<p>How did you find out which schools really like it? I usually see “take honors/ap/ib” courses but not necessarily any preference.</p>
<p>URochester offers scholarships to IB full diploma students. W&M admits IB students at a higher rate than other applicants. UChicago loves IB. St. Mary’s College of MD (public honors LAC) gives scholarships and soph standing to full IB diploma candidates. Tufts said at an admissions program that if a student was full IB, “you have rigor locked down.” UMD is good about IB, too.</p>
<p>We spent some time looking at school websites to see who seemed to really appreciate IB, in part because S was concerned about how his GPA would be viewed.</p>
<p>bajanadian is absolutely correct in that the IAs and actual scores will not make a difference for US colleges since they aren’t released til July after graduation. It’s a lot of extra work on top of regular classes. The education, though…</p>
<p>And I am happy to report that S2 has settled down considerably and wrote his TOK paper yesterday, and it’s in fairly decent shape! :D</p>
<p>I am bothered, still, that the concerns of the student may get overridden. The student may see kids who are exhausted and overwhelmed (certainly the norm for the IB students at our HS). He may saying “that’s not the life I want to have” – and that is a valid point. </p>
<p>It’s one thing when a person challenges themselves. It is quite another when anyone else (family, counselors) demands that a challenging path be taken. The first is an adventure – the second is a form of torture. </p>
<p>“Wanting the best for our students” should include wanting a healthy, happy, balanced life. It’s utterly crazy to think that IB is the right choice for everyone to have healthy, happy and balanced existence. </p>
<p>Please listen to your son MUCH MORE than you listen to strangers on the internet.</p>
<p>^^^yup. S2 says the unhappiest folks in IB are the ones whose parents pushed them into it because it was a prestigious program, will help them get into a better college, yada yada yada. It’s overwhelming even for kids who WANT to be there.</p>
<p>Recognize, too, that many IB kids vent to relieve stress. There are countless FB groups where folks complain. Talking to current students may be able to help separate some of the “we’re overworked and secretly proud” vs. the truly stressed-out (or determine the proportions of each within a kid). Personally, I wouldn’t want my kid in a program he wasn’t 110% enthusiastic about attending. </p>
<p>We spent lots of time talking with S2 about what he wanted and the pros and cons of each program to which he had applied, in advance of admissions decisions. (The application process for these programs in our area is much like college apps.) This helped take some of the urgency and rush about making a good decision out of the equation, and we could consider each program on its own merits, side-by-side, and against what he wanted. We also made it clear he had the final say-so, whether it was one of the three selective programs to which he applied or our local HS.</p>