<p>I am in 10th grade at my high school, which has an IB program. I play the bassoon and organ and piano, and have gotten into All State and All County bands multiple times on bassoon. I have to practice all instruments frequently to keep up at the levels I want.</p>
<p>Currently with Pre-IB, I have had straight A's, so grades are not a big part of my issue. However, I will be devoting more and more time to music and music classes in the next two years, and obviously with IB the workload will increase too. I do not especially want the rigid schedule of IB, though, and would like to take AP Music Theory, Psych and Stats along with others (AP Lang, Calc, etc.). With band classes added onto IB, I would not have room for all these. I've taken AP Human (5) and am taking AP Computer Science (online) and Euro currently.</p>
<p>Should I go the IB certificate route, or will I not get into any good colleges this way? Should I just tough it out with full IB? My sister graduated with the IB diploma, but had to devote all her time to academics and only got into 3 of her lowest-choice colleges.</p>
<p>I’m a senior this year and I am an IB diploma candidate I don’t feel like I spend too much time on homework, I play sports and work outside of school and I still get pretty good grades (B+/A-) however colleges in general don’t know as much about IB so I would say certificates are probably just as good as a full diploma.</p>
<p>Full IB looks really good to colleges. It isn’t equivalent to IB certificates. As a full IB candidate you have to write an extended essay and do some other extra things, and it shows motivation to colleges. Plus, its not as common in the US as AP classes so thats a plus too. However I will caution you, full IB is a lot of work. I am full IB and I spent a lot of time studying last year (my junior year). However I think it is worth it. I do multiple extracurriculars and had time for everything, but I didn’t sleep nearly as much as I should have. The extended essay is time consuming as well. The plus side to IB certificates is no extended essay. You just have to decide how much time you want to devote!</p>
<p>When I was in high school, I considered the fact that I could always switch out of the IB Diploma, but not into it. So I started it my junior year with the idea that if I didn’t like it or it was too much to handle, I could drop to the certificates version. I ended up sticking with it and don’t regret it. It was a lot of work, but I was really well prepared for college.</p>
<p>Also, an anecdote from my high school as to its effect on admissions: a lot of colleges there in the midwest aren’t very familiar with IB. One IB Diploma student got wait-listed to his top-choice school because his grades were lower from taking all the IB courses. The IB coordinator sent a letter about the rigor of IB, etc. and he was almost immediately accepted and went on to be really successful there.</p>