Helping my son decide between IB or AP classes

Hello, I am new to this site and enjoy reading so many helpful posts! I’m hoping I can ask for some advice:

My son is 16 and starting his junior year in high school. His high school is one of the few that offers the IB Program and he is currently scheduled to take it for his junior and senior years. He takes all honors right now and has a 4.0 GPA, he also plays Varsity football, JV baseball, and plays trumpet in wind ensemble and jazz band. Outside of school he plays house and travel baseball, has a new girlfriend and a social life. He plans to go to college for sure but struggles with a major and knowing what he wants to do in the future. He says he sees himself doing so manty things such as a lawyer, teacher, coach, etc… He is highly motivated and thrives on doing well.

He’s also hoping to play college sports…maybe a club team or a D3 school.

The issue is he is questioning whether to take the IB program as opposed to all AP classes. He knows how rigorous IB is and is starting to worry he may have to sacrifice some of his other interests to focus on the program. All of this is new to me and I feel like I don’t have enough information to him.

Would you please share your opinions and experiences with me.

Thank you!

D20 also had the choice of full IB or AP and we went back and forth for a while. I can tell you the things I asked our GC or friends and how the answers played into our decision.

  1. Music: IB classes met in such a way that they didn’t fit into our regular block schedule so she would have missed 1/3 of her performance group. Supplemental performing groups (jazz band, ensembles) were not possible since the conductor of the music group wouldn’t give permission to miss class times.

  2. CAS: This seemed like a huge time suck to her. She already had a sport/year round travel team, played an instrument, had volunteering gigs that she chose. She didn’t want to take time away from those things to explore “new” things for the sake of fulfilling a requirement. Also, our school had set it up so that IB students were required to help out with the service projects of their classmates. We have friends who were constantly buying things for various charity “drives” (school supplies, diapers, winter gear, etc), manning tables to sell “awareness” bracelets, or doing charity walks. She wanted to participate in things that mattered to her, not because she had to.

  3. Our state has a 4 year PE requirement for graduation. IB “extras” like TOK made it so there wasn’t enough schedule time for a PE block. All IB students were required to take an online PE class, outside of the school day. It seemed pointless when she was already at a 2 hour daily practice for a sport. There was no exemption for an EC and she didn’t have enough time in the day.

  4. A close friend was the parent rep on the IB implementation committee when the school was launching the program. She traveled all over the country to visit programs to help guide the set up. Long story short, the resulting program at our school didn’t look like any she had seen in the investigation process. Her daughter ended up having to transfer to a private school halfway through junior year just to get out of the program.

TLDR : D20 preferred AP. Ask questions of your GC and parents of students who have been through the program. Program implementation is key and your student’s wants and needs should come before extraneous and arbitrary requirements.

ETA: We had enough contact with the GC to ensure that she was taking enough APs balanced through enough subjects to get the “most challenging curriculum” designation on his recommendation form for colleges. Our school typically reserves that for only IB students but I pushed back. I can’t verify what he actually did but she was accepted ED to a top LAC so…

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In addition to the excellent points made by @helpingmom40 , I will add a couple more.

1/ While it seems not to be your son’s case, IB can be more constricting to the advanced STEM kid.

2/ IBDP usually automatically warrants a “most demanding” schedule rating by the GC, while AP may not, depending on the mix of classes.

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It may depend on:

  • Which AP courses and other courses.
  • Which IB HL versus SL courses.

in relation to his probable academic interests.

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Thank you so much. These were all the kinds of feelings/thoughts I was having. Just wasn’t sure if I was wrong to tell him not to do the course. His high school is proud to offer it so they do strongly encourage the kids that are able to take it. I started looking at AP and he would def have a lot more freedom to take what he wanted. I also reached out to a couple of colleges, both of whom said they weigh AP and IB the same.

Every college we visited also said they don’t distinguish between AP or IB since most high schools are one or the other. D felt pressured by teachers who wanted to push stronger students into the program and by friends who wanted to be in classes together. Personally, my issue was separating the “sales pitch” from the actual experience. I spent a lot of time fact finding before I sat down with her and laid it all out. We worked on a pro-con list together and ultimately it was her decision. About 2 weeks into the school year, she came to me and thanked me for guiding her. Her friends were already complaining about the myriad issues we had on the list.

In all fairness, I do think there are some benefits if you are looking at international colleges or if your student has a hard time with ECs or volunteering. If you have a student with varied interests and outside activities, it seems to cause some conflicts in terms of time and priority.

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Our school had both and lots of students mixed and matched. A couple of general thoughts…

I personally think the IB curriculum is more engaging but it is more work. But if you are interested in STEM, for example, the IB HL material will be more advanced. There is work outside the exam that is critical for IB and it is great college prep.

You need to evaluate the courses in each to see what interests you. You might have AP econ but IB psych. One program may be right because of course selection.

The IBD is a second diploma with a second set of requirements. This may mean you find yourself needing to take courses you wouldn’t otherwise. Take a hard look at the two year plan under both of them. Many STEM students, for example, would rather do more of that and no FL, for example. The fact that it’s a degree program and not a a la carte creates a rigidity that can be unappealing.

It is possible to take the exams in either without being in a diploma program but that’s up to your school.

While the SL classes may be the same as the AP classes in some subjects, colleges rarely give credit or placement for them. Some students will take both exams, but that can be an additional burden.

There are quite a few colleges that will give IBD holders a full year of placement. While most students don’t do this, it can be really cost effective for a student with a long academic road in front of them. It doesn’t sound like this is your kid, btw, since he wants to explore but worth pointing out.

Consider who teaches the classes at your school. At ours, the teachers were good for both but the TOK teacher, for example, was exceptional as was the HL Math teacher. Both were beloved “life of the mind” types who attracted students.

If you were going to take the same classes either way, I’d go with IB but most students aren’t choosing the same schedule but with an AP or IB option.

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My girls both took a mix of AP / IB classes. They chose AP over IB when it came time for a commitment to the IBDP. There were a few reasons, but the most obvious was that it would have meant they’d have to give up some EC’s altogether or diminish the time they could invest in things they loved. The decision to stick with AP classes was the right choice for them. I mean one is at Amherst College and the other will be at Williams College and we are thrilled it worked out!

I would offer the following advice, have your student speak with the high school counselor to see how they determine who gets the “most rigorous courses taken” box checked and take a look at previous AP/IB graduates from the school to determine where that landed them. What we found by doing the same was that for our girl’s goals, the IB diploma would offer no advantage.

Your student is motivated and I bet will have success doing either one. What I found was that when our kids are happiest, doing all the things they love that don’t involve exams, that is really a successful high school experience and it can shine through the college application process. I wish you all the best!

Just another parent perspective here – at our urban magnet school, the IB program was the elite/most rigorous program offered. Students who took AP or were not Diploma candidates did not get the “most rigorous curriculum available” check on their guidance counselor form that went with their college applications unless the reason they were not full IB was because they were taking upper level math etc. at a nearby major university. So, I would encourage families choosing between IB and AP to understand their school’s policy on the GC form – do non IB students get that “most rigorous” designation? If not, a student aiming for top 20 (and perhaps top 30+) schools will likely not be given serious consideration because admitted students will have taken the most rigorous high school curriculum offered by their school.

Next, find out more how CAS works at your school before concluding it would require “add ons.” My kid was an extremely busy athlete and musician, and his school and outside-of-school involvement in each of those counted for “activity” and “creativity” hours. He had to write some reflections, but otherwise, there was no extra time spent on anything. The service component of CAS was the same as what he had to do for National Honor Society, so again, did not require extra commitment.

Finally, think about educational goals. IB is reading and writing intensive so that students develop the critical reading, writing and thinking skills that are necessary for college success. TOK is an unusual class for high school students, many of my kid’s friends loved that it because it was so different from their previous high school experience of “teaching to the test.” Please see added comment at the end of this post, to incorporate comments made by other, wise posters – The usual critique of iB is that it requires STEM kids to take more, and more rigorous, humanities type classes than they would otherwise want – since most students take HL English and HL History – both of which involve lots of reading and papers. So, for a student who, for instance, is only looking at engineering, IB could limit the course selection in high school.

Bottom line – find out more about what IB means at your school since there is a lot of variation in the US in how various IB curricular requirements are implemented. Talk to parents of rising seniors and current college students to understand more about their experience. I will say, my IB student found that college classes were not a shock, he felt well-prepared and able to manage the demands of being a college athlete and student because he’d been doing that kind of time management for his 11th and 12th grade years. There is no “right” answer here, just the better choice for your student!

Edited to add – as @skieurope and @ucbalumnus noted below about HL classes, find out more about specific courses offered at your school, to see how the offerings meet your student’s interests and goals. My own kid’s school had limited STEM HL offerings, so that was the criticism of the diploma for STEM kids, that they had to take HL English and History to meet the HL requirements. Other schools may do a better job at offering a diversity of HL offerings.

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I agree with everything you said (and basically said the same thing earlier), except this. While it may be true at your kid’s HS, overall, most STEM students will not take both HL English and HL History.

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I agree with @Midwestmomofboys , it depends on both the school and the kid. My son did the IBDP, and it was the right choice for him. He preferred the research/writing focus of the IB program over the test-focused (at least as he perceived it) AP approach. Certain aspects of the IB program were quite demanding, but he was able to handle it while commuting three hours a day, playing two varsity sports and doing a quite a bit of theater. He did not get all 6s and 7s, which would presumably have required a greater commitment, but it got him where he wanted to go and it prepared him very well for college. He enjoyed TOK and did not find CAS to be much of an added burden. He was able to get CAS credit for some of his regular activities and some of the community service activities were quite a lot of fun (scuba diving to pick up waste on the ocean floor, anyone?) So between his personality and preferences and the way his particular high school implemented the IBDP, it was a good choice. Another thing to think about is whether a particular student is ready to narrow down from junior year. In my son’s case, he was already very interested in Psychology, and his Psych HL course led him to his college major. I don’t think anyone should do it just for perceived prestige, apart from the “most rigorous” checkbox issue.

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@skieurope Thanks for the correction and clarification. Yes, I should correct my comment to reflect that was at our high school – other schools may offer more robust choices in the various areas than our school did!

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I agree with much of what has been said here. In our school, kids not doing the IBDP need a huge number of AP classes to get the “most rigorous” category checked by the counselor.

One other thing at our school is that scheduling starts with the IB classes, since they are required for the diploma. There is a good chance of kids having AP scheduling issues and then needing to pick between AP Physics and AP Chinese, for example. Whereas IB Physics and IB Chinese need to both work for scheduling. They try, but I have heard of a few who don’t get their requested AP classes.

Wouldn’t this depend on the specific IB HL and SL courses offered at the high school? For example, an IB program that only offered English and history as HL, but only offered math and sciences as SL, would be a poor fit for a prospective engineering major. But some other IB program may have different selections of courses offered as HL and SL.

Agree, thank you and to @skieurope for noting my flawed assumption that other schools were like ours! I’ve edited my original post in italics to reflect your clarifications.

My D21 just completed the IB diploma and my S22 will next year. Another vote here for understanding it at your school because although the IB materials say that CAS should be new activities, our school does not require that since the kids are so busy and engaged anyway. So CAS added no burden except for the writeups which my D procrastinated on and then it only took an hour, haha.

She is very grateful now that she chose IB over AP. Although IB might have some extra work, the teachers worked so closely with them, they had the best teachers and there wasn’t memorization. They learned to critically analyze and write. And As were not hard to get if they stayed engaged and did the work.

At our school the IB is STEM slanted (more HLs) - and my kids are in STEM so it fit them better than the humanities kids who were forced to take tough STEM classes. So it really depends on your school.

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