@Busy_Momma , thanks for your comments. A lot to think about! He’s in concert band only which is less commitment than two types of musical involvement. I may need to have a talk with the music director about what types of time/weekend commitments there would be throughout the year. Once he hits junior and senior year, football is going to have to go and that should free up some time. S2 and S3 are still in MS and IS so not too worried about them yet. A long way to go yet but when I read about other moms on CC who get their kids safely through with their sanity in place, I am encouraged!
My school is instituting IB and my grade will be the first eligible for the diploma. I want to go into STEM. These will be the offered classes.
English HL
History of the Americas HL
Biology HL
Math SL
Spanish SL
Electives:
chem SL
Physics SL
and a couple others that I don’t really care about
we have a much developed ap program with ap calc bc ap stats ap bio and ap chem along with ap comp lit and us history.
What is my better option
@birdbear - the first years of any program will be rough. I don’t like that your school will not offer HL in Physics, Chem or Math. Our strong STEM kids had AP Calc AB/BC and HL Math and most took HL Physics.
What other math and science courses have you taken or would you take along with the IB? How many courses can you take in a year- you have to have a Group 6 Arts and Theory of Knowledge in order to earn the diploma.
A couole points of clarification. How do you mean that AP credits are more readily accepted? By whom? This was not our experience at all. In each case a satisfactory score, which varies by school, was required whether it was IB or AP.
Also had two IB kids, one full diploma and one certificate (the latter took a good many of the required course series but chose not to do the essay or community service hours as an ECNL soccer player with a demanding travel schedule). Our oldest chose to stay at our community high school and do AP. Without getting into a long debate here, I have to say that I disagree with the suggestion that IB doesn’t help with college admissions. In our program kids are placed at tippy top flagships, Ivies and their equivalents like Stanford and Chicago, and top LACs, every single year without fail. If you see kids do the full diploma program with near 4.0 gpas and none of them place at highly selective schools then I can almost guarantee that either (1) we’re looking at a test score problem or (2) they didn’t apply to a reasonable number of said schools.
I also happen to know, since my sister advises college applicants for a living, that many top schools absolutely view the IB as the most rigorous path and hence favor it. This is especially true in the east, although our competitive flagship is also known to highly value it because they publicly say so. Both of my IB kids were admitted to the honors college at UW. My AP kid with similar grades and scores was not. All 3 chose elswhere but there you have it.
OP do what you have to do to keep yourself healthy. But if you’re trying to talk yourself out of IB by collecting opinions that it’s overrated, then I think you’re going about it the wrong way.
On an individual basis the credit given for an HL IB exam score is ridiculous compared to AP.
My daughter got a 5 on AP Chem. She also got a 5 in IB HL chem. Taken the same week.
We were looking at University of New Mexico.
In AP a 3 gave one semester credit in the non chem major class. A 4 gave the first semester in chem major sequence, a 5 gave both semesters.
In IB a 5 gives NOTHING. a 6 gives the same as a 4 in AP and a 7 gives the same as an AP 5. I have no idea how they came up with that. It is ridiculous.
To reiterate, a 3 on the AP exam gives more credit than a 5 in IB HL.
@VickiSoCal I may be missing something pretty basic here. If that’s the case, I apologize. But, AP and IB scoring is not on the same scale. On the Weslyan website, it gives which score is required for credit on a class by class basis, for both AP and IB. And in no circumstance will Wesleyan give credit for an AP score below 4, and in most cases, they require a 5, in order to give credit. For IB, it is similar. It varies by course. Typically a 6 or a 7 is required; however in a few cases, an IB score of 5 will confer credit. The top IB exam score is 7, and a 5 is as I recall basically just above a passing score. I saw nothing on the Weslyan site that would indicate that in any circumstance a 3 on an AP exam would confer credit there. So at least at Wesleyan, one could make the case that, in one or two instances, IB will confer more credit for basically the same performance on the two exams.
I’m sure this all varies by school, and who knows? Maybe New Mexico has a deal with the college board. LOL. But in any event, I don’t think it is accurate to make a sweeping statement that AP earns credit at schools more easily than IB. If you want to make the case that IB exams are substantively harder, then that would be a different conversation. But I think the main thing is that a 3 or 5 on an AP exam is not the same thing as a 3 or a 5 on an IB exam.
My point is that it is far, far harder to get a 5 in IB HL Chemistry than a 3 in AP. That is why my kid easily scored 5/5 on AP Chem but only 5/7 On IBHL chem.
But an AP 3 gives credit and an IB HL 5 does not.
Her AP 5 gives the same credit as an IB 7. An IB 7 is far harder.
I see. I don’t know how unique Wesleyan is in his area. They give Credit for specified threshold level scores at the standard and higher levels in a be. Of course, they award less credit for the standard level IB exams them for high-level. But nowhere on the Weslyan website is there any indication that an AP score below five welcome for any credit. For Skidmore, where my other kid a chance, it is similar. Although I didn’t readily find anything on their website distinguishing between high-level and standard level, it appears they will come for up to four credits for IB work that lands at the 56 or seven score level. For AP it’s 4 or 5.
Maybe the disconnect is with IB in the distinction between standard level and high-level testing, and not rewarding the rigor of the high-level exam performance. I don’t know. But one thing I did see in scanning statements from both of those particular schools is that in no event will either school give credit for AP scores of three. Again that may be the case at New Mexico. But I wonder how typical that is. My guess, and it is only a guess based on the sample size of two, is that for selective schools, an AP three isn’t going to get you anything.
Most schools won’t give credit for SL exams- except for foreign language. So a student can take Bio SL and get a 7 and get no credit, while another could take AP Bio and get credit with a 3, 4, or 5, depending on the school. Since the IB limits the amount of HLs a student can take, kids who take AP typically get more credit.
The biggest exception I’ve seen is Florida schools- they don’t differentiate between SL and HL.
@worelyclan After looking at their website Wesleyan is unique- you can only earn 2 credits total for IB or AP- that is not typical at most colleges. Skidmore allows for 16 credits and only gives credit for HL.
Most colleges allow for more AP and IB credit- up to 30-40 hours, so taking IB SLs will not give you the credit that AP will.
Take the AP test. My daughter took IB SL econ and easily got a 5 on both econ AP tests.
@jeneric yes after looking at UW’s website it appears that they award credit for AP scores of 3. Didn’t see what the total credit limit is but I presume it’s more than 2.
I’ll add that Amherst awards zero credit for IB or AP no matter the score but they can be used for placement purposes. I think Williams take the same approach and though I didn’t take the time to explore, I’m guessing that other highly selective LACs and perhaps other highly selective Larger schools also limit much more the amount of credit one can claim.
Learn something new every day.
I’m not sure I tracked your comment about IB SL not giving you the credit AP will. I think we’re talking about two things: (1) which is harder AP or IB - to get credit for; and (2) that some schools allow for more or less credits in the aggregate.
Almost every school we looked gives no credit for SL classes.
However our school encourages students to also take AP exams at the end of SL classes and most IB SL do well in the AP exams with very little extra study.
@VickiSoCal Very smart of your school to encourage the IB kids to take the AP exam. I wish mine would do that. My daughter got lucky that she is going to school in FL, even though it is OOS, the credits given for SL exams will save us money.
@worelyclan I agree, the more selective the college, the less credits AP or IB will be accepted. Most kids are not going to those colleges, so if money is a factor, then earning college credit in high school is a consideration. Since most colleges do not give credit for IB SL, it takes IB kids two years to earn the same credit that is given to the AP kid who is in the class for 1 year, AP kids can simply take more classes and earn more credits for college, since most colleges allow for 30-40 maximum credit hours from AP/IB/DE… At UNC AP Bio earns 8 credit hours for a 5, IB Bio HL gets the same 8 credit hours for a 6 or 7, IB Biology SL gets 0 hours. I think the IB exams are harder no matter if they are HL or SL and HL classes should be awarded more credit or higher course level credit, because they cover more content than AP, unfortunately colleges do not feel that way.
My daughter graduated 1.5 years early because of 32 credits from IB Diploma (at SUNY Bing)+ a PLTW class + a couple summer classes. We told her not to hurry but she went and got her Masters …Undergrad + grad was all within 4 years.
She did Math HL, Chem HL, Physics HL, English SL, Business SL, and German Ab Initio (we lived in Germany at the time). She majored in Math and got a Masters in Secondary Math Education at Columbia.
Looks like your school’s IB program is not really for top-end prospective STEM students outside of biology, since math, chemistry, and physics are not offered as HL.
Yep, that’s why I probably won’t be doing it.