I’m an IB Diploma senior. Our DP class submitted our Theory of Knowledge essays to the IBO yesterday, and I haven’t stopped panicking since. It was terrible. I doubt that I could have improved it at all, even if I had spent more time on it. I didn’t even have a proper conclusion, my points, though present, were scattered, my personal awareness did not feature in the essay, I didn’t flesh out my counterclaims, didn’t manage to meet the word limit, and I have one real-life example as well as one specific example from an Area of Knowledge.
I am absolutely terrified of not receiving my diploma, and I wanted to know just how difficult it is to obtain an E on the TOK Essay. How bad would the essay have to be for someone to fail it?
P.S. There’s only been one girl in the decade-plus-some-years that the IB program has been available at my highschool who failed her Essay and lost her chances at the diploma because of it. I really would not like to be girl number two. Please don’t chastise me or tell me this is a learning experience, I just want an idea of how inadequate the essay would have to be for failure to occur, thanks.
I don’t think failing the ToK essay automatically makes you fail the IB… After all, your ToK grade comes from both the presentation and the essay, so unless you completely screwed up the presentation as well I think you’ll be fine. Based on the grade boundaries from May 2015, an E was 0-4 marks. Meaning, even if you get a 0 on the essay (which I can’t imagine is possible given that you actually submitted something), you’ll be fine as long as you got 5 marks or more on the presentation.
Lastly, you can still get the diploma even if you were to get an E in ToK (as long as you don’t also fail the EE), but you’ll need a minimum of 28 points instead of 24. But try to not stress out! Try to get your mind off of ToK and do something you enjoy! From an IB student currently struggling with his ToK essay
But according to the 2017 handbook rubric, no matter the candidate failed TOK (essay or presentation) or EE, then there’s no chance for the candidate to receive a diploma. Or is it like what you have mentioned above? I’m a bit confused. Thank you.
The final ToK grade and the final Extended Essay grade are entered into the Diploma Points Matrix (see
below) to award a possible maximum of 3 extra points to be added to a student’s Diploma score. Candidates
who fail to submit satisfactory work in either area will fail the Diploma.
But if I have got a 2 on my TOK presentation, does that mean I failed IB and will not have my diploma?
(I think I did well on EE and my TOK essay.)
If you got a 2 on your TOK presentation, it means you got an E (1-2), only if you did really good on your TOK essay to get it to D, but if it’s still an E for TOK (presentation + essay) then that is considered as failing condition.
Even if you did well on your EE, you still failed IB and will not receive your diploma.
From an IB student currently struggling with his ToK essay 