Ib diploma + college

i’ve heard too many of my teachers tell me how their students (who went for the international baccaaureate program) find college so easy. so ib graduates, in what extent is this statement true??

IB has a reputation of being a lot of work, so the workload in college may be less.

However, sometimes even regular high school can have excessive busywork, so some students (not necessarily in IB) may find college workload to be less, or at least more worthwhile for learning and less of a seemingly useless chore.

But college courses will lead to more advanced material to learn than anything in high school.

It also depends WHAT college.
Your local directional (“central state U”) is going to be easier than IB.
Compared to Wesleyan or Dartmouth or HarveyMudd, nope.

it’s also “messaging”, a way for teachers to brag that their classes are so difficult and rigorous :slight_smile:

It also depends on what class. Taking a college class that is close in content to an HL class that you took will probably be easy. Classes with lots of writing won’t be much of a challenge. Learning new material in college will be equal in difficulty to learning new material in IB. You might take fewer classes in college giving you more free time.

What my IB kid found helpful was that he was used to managing on-going projects, lots of reading, and deadlines, in multiple classes. The content of college classes is still very much a challenge, but the logistics of getting reading done, being prepared to participate, managing long term projects at the same time that he got ready for the next day’s reading etc., were skills he had already started developing.

Yes, the logistical challenges of the IB are crazy. My IB daughter is very organized and she finds the IB to be a constant juggling of deadlines, projects, etc. I can imagine that college would feel a little less constant pressure.

Yes, there’s hope! My daughter’s good IB diploma friends from the past couple of years are at colleges that include UCLA, USC, Berkeley, Georgetown and University of St. Andrews. And what I’ve heard is that they truly find college easier. They’re not balancing seven intense classes, including working on their IAs and EE, while attending school for six to seven hours and doing extracurriculars (including CAS hours) after school and on weekends. When in college, they’re already accustomed to doing lots of writing, they’re used to juggling a variety of projects/deadlines, and they understand what college-level rigor is. So, according to reports back from them, college feels easier, partly because it has so much free time compared to high school. So hang in there… (and for students/parents considering going the full IB route, do understand what you or they are getting into. The requirements are intense and colleges often don’t seem to distinguish between the additional rigor/mandates of IB as opposed to AP classes. Students need to understand what they’re getting themselves into and weigh whether the IB diploma and style of learning is worth the sacrifices.)