Hey everyone,
I am currently a junior in high school. My dream schools are Stanford, Yale, and Northwestern. So far, I feel like I am on the right track; I’ve gotten all A’s so far with a rigorous schedule (1 AP in 9th grade, 4 APs is 10th grade, 6 AP/IB this year, and managed to get 5’s on all but 1). I have decent extracurriculars including MUN, mock trial, tutoring, key club, baseball, etc.
This year I have IB Geography SL and will have TOK next semester.
I’ve decided that I really want to drop out of IB and was hoping to take a range of more AP courses instead. Based on the courses I’ve already taken, I feel locked into extremely hard HL IB courses that I don’t want to take. I’d rather take AP courses that I am more interested in. For example, I am in AP Chinese but am absolutely horrible at Chinese. I don’t see anyway I’ll pass the IB test. I’ve taken 3 years of Chinese, so by dropping IB I wouldn’t have to take Chinese anymore. Further, IB seems to be a lot of extra work (extended essay, CAS, etc) that may not be worth it.
If I drop IB (after still taking the IB tests this year), but still keep a rigorous schedule, how will my college admissions be impacted? I’ve heard colleges look down on taking IB courses without the diploma. Is it still decently possible that I could get into my dream schools?
Thanks so much for taking the time to read and answer!
Not a problem at all if you are doing it to pursue your interests and if you still have rigor. The IBD program does not offer the kind of flexibility a lot of students want.
Many schools do value the IBD – enough so to give a full year of credit for it (which effectively gives you credit for the SL classes too), but this is only meaningful if you are on a path where there are clear benefits to getting to grad school faster or taking a year off. In terms of admissions, IB courses (often mixed with AP) without the diploma are viewed similarly.
You shouldn’t take it if you don’t want to. My friend got into Northwestern without taking any IB or even AP classes, so don’t worry too much about being rigorous enough.
Regarding the comment above, maybe that person who got into NWU with no AP or IB classes was hooked, or attended a school with few or no AP or IB offerings. That comment is irrelevant in this context.
gardenstategal, do you have any idea how colleges like Stanford, Yale or Northwestern would view a dropout? Would they think i just can’t handle the work?
Lindagaf, do you have any idea how a dropout would effect college admissions though?
If you want to tag people, put @ before the name.
I don’t see an issue, as long as your schedule is rigorous. It seems as though you already have about eleven AP or IB classes. I actually think you should take a couple of classes for fun in your senior year, or take soemthing yiu are interested in aside from trying to impress colleges. Your whole schedule is already very rigorous. You are putting yourself under a lot of pressure and I think you are burning out. There is no prize for taking the most AP or IB classes. Colleges aren’t impressed by academic drones. Top colleges like to see anywhere from 6-8 APs, but it’s most important that your GC checks the “most rigorous” box.
Have you talked with your GC to get his/her opinion? I haven’t heard that colleges prefer AP to IB, though of course any college likes to see an IB diploma. @skieurope or @MYOS1634 do you know if colleges prefer IB courses to AP?
If you drop for equal rigor, no problem. (For example, our school did not offer IB economics but it offered AP economics. A student who had an interest in economics might choose to drop the IB Program and substitute IB history with AP economics.) Likewise a student might decide to spend more time on the Sciences and find that foreign language after a certain level or TOK did not make any sense for them. If the Sciences were AP Sciences or otherwise rigorous, it would not be viewed negatively on the other hand. In fact, if it fit into your personal narrative, it could be positive.
If you are doing it because it’s just too much for you and you need to drop down a level, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, that could be a signal to you, as well as those schools, that they might not be a good fit for you. Try to think of it less about how they see it and instead what it’s telling you about yourself.
They do not.
Here’s my take. An applicant will spend 4 years busting his butt in HS, spend hours upon hours on each application, but the AO will spend 12-15 minutes max reading it. Thus, if the GC ranks the coursework as “most rigorous” it is unlikely the AO will spend much time looking at the course components.
An IB diploma, while very rigorous, is not for everybody. It’s not a great option for STEM kids who want to bo advanced classes in a couple of sciences, or post-Calculus, as an example.
As long as you’re trading for an equally rigorous schedule, it’s fine.
My STEM kids found it to be too restrictive and opted to take a la carte classes instead of going for the diploma. D17 is in her second year of IB Bio HL. As a junior she had IB bio HL, IB Physics SL, IB Comp Sci, and the rest were AP classes because it fit her schedule. She would not have been able to take those three classes on the diploma track because of scheduling issues, and they were important to her.
Since she’s a senior this year, we can’t tell you how it will impact her admissions, but she feels it was the right choice for her regardless of the college outcome.
Her IB diploma boyfriend is completely exhausted right now, and is considering dropping his EC sport. But he’s a lot more driven than D17 is, and I think he would not be happy if he weren’t grinding super hard, so my advice to you is to know thyself in terms of how hard you want to push yourself, probably more than what the schools think of you (but I’m only one data point).
It’s fine long as you take at least 3 string AP 's Senior year ( by which I mean : not all three from AP stats +AP psychology + APes - although one of the three would be perfectly fine.)
I’m in the IB Diploma Program right now. If you don’t like it, I think you should drop it. It’s really exhausting, especially keeping up with individual components like CAS, EE, IAs, EAs, etc. that you might not necessarily have to deal with if you take AP classes (I’ve only taken 2 APs so I’m not completely sure how different the workloads are). As a senior now, I really do feel totally burned out as a result of all those components I just listed. At the end of the day, I think IB has helped me with skills like critical thinking, time management, and especially how to write a 1,600 word paper in 3 hours 
But if you want to drop it, I definitely think you should, and maybe take a combination of APs and IBs next year.