Taking 4 HLs currently - English, Drama, Math and Econ.
2 SLs - Bio and French Ab.
She plans to apply to colleges in the US along the lines of Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Haverford…
She is interested in Econ/ maybe finance/ Poly Sci.
Math HL is really, really hard. It is a lot of work and is causing not a small amount of anxiety for her.
We know that for schools in the UK (like LSE) require Math HL for Econ majors,
Are we likely to run into the same issue in the US?
My gut says no - that because we don’t apply directly to the major we will not see such requirements. She will still take SAT 2 Math 2 to show her math skills.
I would like her to move from math HL to math SL to improver her stress load,
I agree with ucbalmnus. My younger daughter will be entering an economics Ph.D. program this fall, and she was advised that having a lot of math would help.
She doesn’t need HL math to get in to a U.S. liberal arts college, even if she states her intention up front to major in economics.
But she will need to take a full year of calculus as soon as possible – almost certainly during her first year of college.
She may be exempted from introductory economics courses because of having taken HL economics, but that varies from college to college.
So what would probably happen is that she would take no economics courses as a freshman. This may feel weird, but it doesn’t mean that she’s wasting the year. It just means that she would use that year to get some general education requirements out of the way, and to take some political science courses if she wants, and then take intermediate economics as a sophomore. She would have plenty of time to finish the economics major, which is not particularly demanding anyway in terms of number of courses (and you can easily take two or three at a time).
Others have advised you that your daughter will need lots of math beyond the economics major requirements if she plans to go on to PhD study. But most economics majors in the United States do not go on to pursue PhDs in economics. Most go on to careers in business, law, government service, or other fields. If they do any type of graduate study, it’s most likely to be an MBA program or law school.
My daughter graduated from a U.S. IB school. She did not take HL math (although she did take a U.S.-style AP calculus course on top of SL math). She also did not take HL economics, which was not offered at her school. She majored in economics at a college comparable in selectivity to the ones you’re talking about, worked for a while, and then went back to school for an MBA three years later. Beyond her year of calculus (which in her case was completed in high school), the only math courses she had to take were linear algebra and statistics. But she knew from the start that she had no interest in a PhD in economics.
U.S. colleges don’t seem to care what subjects you took HL and SL. They look favorably on the IB diploma program, but they don’t fuss over the details.
Sorry about the double post, but I just thought of something else:
If your daughter is going to have any difficulty with admissions to U.S. colleges, I suspect it will be with her French. If I understand ab initio correctly (it was not offered at my daughter’s IB school), it means that she began her study of French when she started the IB diploma program. That means that she only has two years of French. Some U.S. colleges want three years of a foreign language, and a few prefer four. Check their admissions requirements, and if she’s seriously interested in a college that asks for more than two years of language, she may want to send them an e-mail to see how they would view her foreign language background.
@Marian = thank you for your posts! Re language - she completed her second language - Hindi - after 10 years of study, French is now her third language,
Thanks for all the info on the econ degree - very helpful for us as we make our plans. She got the ok today from school to go down to Math SL and take Bio up to HL. She wants to do the 4 HLs to ge a “most rigourous” check fron the counselor’s offuce.
Why does she want to major in economics? Is math a weaker area for her? She can enter as an undecided and try out a few areas of study and decide at the end of sophomore year. Kids change their minds all the time, and major is not as directly related to ultimate career goal or even grad school as they often think.
Many students who get 5’s on the US AP exams still take the intro courses once at college. This keeps stress down but also every school has its own sequence of courses and the intro classes are foundational for that sequence.
I am sorry she is stressed, but that stress is good information for future choices in college, both which schools and which majors. It is good to find schools that fit the kid rather than try to fit the kid to the schools : )
Well-being during high school years is the most important, and sometimes that does mean sacrificing rigor in a class or two. There are still amazing schools available.
@compmom She like the public policy/social sciences side of econ. She is actually quite strong in math, but the class is super rigorous and stressful. It is a good class for kids going into engineering and pure math.
Taking 4 IB HL courses is inherently stressful. The workload for HL courses is MUCH greater than the workload for SL courses.
IB students do not have to take 4 HLs. They can choose to take 4 HL/2 SL or 3 HL/3 SL. My daughter’s IB school strongly advised students against taking 4 HLs on the grounds that it’s just too much.
The OP’s daughter’s decision to drop down to SL math might reflect a distaste for math (in which case she might not enjoy an economics major, which is very quantitative). But there might be many other reasons why she would make this choice.
As @compmom said, she has plenty of time to decide whether economics is for her. In the meantime, the goal is to get through IB sanely and successfully (and hopefully, be able to spend a few minutes each day helping her mom with tasks that absolutely require two functioning arms). Taking 3 SLs instead of 4 is a good step in that direction.
@Marian - to be clear - she will continue with 4 HLs and has been approved by her school to do so. English HL, Drama HL and Econ HL all come very naturally to her and the extra work is not a burden. She will be moving up to bio HL when she drops Math HL - her bio teacher has been asking her to move up all year…but we would not allow 5 HLs!
The math decision is a decision to make HS more enjoyable, less stressful and to give her time to focus on other activities. Math HL was a burden and a big time sink. I do not think at this point the payoff from taking the class was worth the cost in terms of time and stress.