<p>Any former history students? How hard was it? How much reading did you have? How often did you write papers?</p>
<p>I take HL History, and I personally love it. I have a great teacher and a great group of kids and I find the coursework fascinating. A lot of kids say we get a lot of homework, but it’s really very manageable. We get a “big” essay about once a month and quite a few in class essays, so be prepared to do a lot of those (and a lot of DBQs!). I’m getting a 6 right now (7 with my school’s bump ups) and I am so glad I took this class.
Basically, if you’re good at handwritten timed essays, writing, and enjoy history, go for it.</p>
<p>My school doesn’t really divide into HL or SL until senior year - apparently everything they teach is at the HL level, and you get to choose what you want to take as HL the end of junior year (which I’m at right now). From what I’ve been hearing, HL History is very hard; my teacher apparently asked for a 7 paper example for one of the HL exams, and the IB said they didn’t have any. That said, I personally don’t find it that hard. We do a lot of readings, yeah (you should see my binder; it’s BURSTING), but the readings are actually really interesting (more interesting than the AP World History stuff I got freshman year, at least). We write big essays (a Paper 1 and a Paper 2) for all of our tests and midterms, with emphasis on the Paper 2s, since Paper 2 is typically the harder paper of the two. It’s not the hardest class I’m taking, though. For me, that would be Physics.</p>
<p>So, like what nycibo said above, I think it’s a great class that you’ll do great in if you’re good at essays and enjoy history! Though, word of caution: I used to think history would be a blow off class where I could just memorize dates and do well, and it’s totaaally not.</p>