<p>Which curriculum gives you more of a chance of admission to an Ivy school?</p>
<p>Test scores being equal, are you better off going the IB route and getting an IB Diploma and a 3.75 or staying in a regular school and taking all AP classes and getting 4.0? The IB route is definitely more work--does it buy anything?</p>
<p>Your advice is appreciated.</p>
<p>Depends what you are looking for. I personally think that it’s harder to get college credit out of IB, but that it shows colleges that you are well rounded. I think with AP it is easier to accumulate a lot of credits and they don’t have all those extra requirements that are stressful and time consuming in IB. Colleges always look at the rigor of the couse load of the applicant as compared to the hardest courseload that their school offers. So if IB is offered, it may look bad to the Ivys if you don’t do it. But if only AP/honors is available, then I don’t think it will hurt you.</p>
<p>Just looking for admissions chances, not necessarily college credit. Plan on taking the AP exams on my IB subjects just for the heck of it to see how I do.</p>
<p>My big question was the 3.75 IB versus 4.0 AP.</p>
<p>4.0 AP over 3.75 IB</p>
<p>3.75 IB over 3.75 AP</p>
<p>This is a frequently discussed topic on CC. You may want to do a search for previous threads – some with both student and parent input. You’ll find a great deal of differences in opinion.</p>
<p>You may get the best advise from the guidance counselor at your school, and from selective college admissions.</p>
<p>My personal sense is that the answer depends on the school. The IB is less variable than a mix of AP courses. The IB is a rigorous proven program. Selective colleges recognize it as such. The AP programs are highly subject to the school, the makeup of each of the classes, the teachers, and the often unstructured manner in which a mix of AP courses is selected. So with care, and with luck, a mix of AP classes may be equivalent to an IB.</p>
<p>i dunno what your hs is like, but at least at my school, taking the ib has taken a huge dip into my gpa, as compared to other students who had generally the same grades as me and went the ap course.
if i could choose again, i would take the ap. however, there are plenty of people who are thoroughly enjoying the ib right now.
are you considering applying outside the US?</p>
<p>No applications outside the USA.</p>
<p>I was under the impression that the more selective schools treat having the full IB Diploma as a notch above having all APs. The MIT admissions office had related that they consider IB the gold standard of high school programs.</p>
<p>My son now attends the International Academy in Michigan, which is considered one of the top 10 high school sin the country for its rigor. I just wondered if he went back to his home school and took all APs what the difference would be as I know he could get all “As” doing so and at IB he will end up being a 3.75 or 3.8, and they don’t weight their GPAs.</p>
<p>I doubt the IB diploma helped me much more than taking AP classes would have in terms of college admittance, but it has definitely better prepared me for college. IB is more about the process, whereas I find AP to be more about rote memorization. Obviously, there is some rote memorization for classes like history and some of the hard sciences, but all in all, it’s more about how you know, not what you know. The diploma is a pretty significant undertaking, and requires a fair amount of time and effort (how much depends on which classes you take), but I think it really will prepare me well for college. I’ve learned how to write formal papers for every subject, and I’ve written a 3400-word thesis on a topic of my choice, not to mention the required basic philosophy and advanced, discussion-based English classes.</p>
<p>Are there many IB students out there who are also going to or have taken the AP exams? I have told my son that “what do you have to lose” by doing so, and that it may help with some schools who don’t give a lot of credit to the Diploma Programme.</p>
<p>Any thoughts or experiences?</p>
<p>I took three AP exams and received four grades.
My school offers AP Gov to sophomores to fulfill the Virginia requirement for government classes (CP Gov is also an option). My teacher didn’t teach us much, but I studied some on my own and received a 4.</p>
<p>My school also offers AB & BC Calculus in addition to Math Studies (SL), Math SL, and Math HL. Math SL is a rough equivalent to AB, and HL is a rough equivalent to BC, though SL is easier than AB and HL is harder than BC. I received a 3 on the BC exam and an AB subscore of 4.</p>
<p>I took regular (CP) history last year, but I did quite well in the class, which was taught by a former AP US History teacher who still uses the same notes. I studied some outside, and took that exam as well, and received a 4. </p>
<p>As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason to take overlapping AP and IB exams for a HL class, as every college I’ve seen awards credit for HL exams. For my SL exams, it gets a bit trickier for me.</p>
<p>SL Physics: I was just terrible at that class. Awful. There doesn’t seem to be much overlap between AP and IB on that one, either, since IB is a lot more theoretical.</p>
<p>SL Math: I already took the AP exam.</p>
<p>SL Psychology: I actually had no clue that there’s an AP Psych exam, but I wouldn’t take it anyways, again because of the emphasis on the theoretical.</p>
<p>(My HLs are English, French, and Computer Science)</p>
<p>At my son’s school, everyone is on the Diploma track. No one is in there to just get some certificates and take only SL classes. All of the 11th grade classes are the SL and the 12th grade are the HL. In order to free up his schedule to take two sciences in 11th and 12th grade, he is taking the state mandated Government class on line.</p>
<p>The only exception he has to the above is Math. He is in the one section they have of kids in Math SL in 10th grade, so I believe he goes to HL next year and Further Learning (FL) in 12th grade or they stretch HL into two years–I can’t recall.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the info!</p>
<p>Personally, I find the IB math classes to be significantly easier than AP. I took BC my sophomore year, tested out of SL my junior year (with a 7 on the test) and am now taking Calc 3/Diff Eq. I was originally in the HL class but after a couple weeks I realized I would be spending two years relearning a lot of what I learned in PreCalc and in BC, so I dropped down to SL just so I could fulfill my IB Math requirement and take a harder math class my senior year. I have not taken an AP test after taking an IB class because sometimes the curricula don’t match up very well (I know this is especially true for the foreign languages). But I have taken AP classes and tested in those.</p>
<p>The comment on the IB language is appreciated. I have a friend who is a Chinese teacher and has studied both the IB and AP programs in Chinese. Her daughter (now in 10th grade) took the Chinese AP exam in 7th grade and got a 5. She told me that the Chinese IB HL exam was much more difficult and that her daughter would not have done well on it at all.</p>
<p>I am not very familiar with the AP courses, but what I do know for a fact is that colleges prefer students who have challenged themselves. They prefer a student that decided to take the harder route despite possibly not receiving a perfect score, over a student that chooses the easier option to assure a perfect score. They have plenty of applicants with perfect scores, but many of those get rejected for “less perfect” students… So that is the best advice I can give if you want to be accepted to an Ivy, is to challenge yourself as much as you can. Which of the two is more difficult I can’t tell you, since I have only done the IB diploma program myself…</p>
<p>AP Language is a lot more focused on grammar etc as I understand, whereas IB wants you to actually know the language. It’s fine if you make some grammatical mistakes (to an extent), they’re more looking for how well you communicate your ideas, how well you use the language, etc.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to take IB classes as a sophomore. I was in the SL French class as a sophomore, but I was not allowed to take the SL exam until my junior year. Similarly, I was in the HL French class as a junior, but I am taking the HL exam this year (I’m in the HL class again this year). I don’t know if that’s specific to my school, but I think that’s more or less universal among IB.</p>
<p>At my school, SL classes are one-year courses that can be taken junior or senior year. HL classes are two-year courses that must be taken both years. For an idea of how I did my diploma, here are my jr & sr schedules</p>
<p>Chorus
Real World Finance/Theory of Knowledge (each is a one-semester elective)
IB French V SL
IB Computer Science SL
US History
IB Physics SL
IB English HL 11
AP Calculus BC</p>
<p>Chorus
Theory of Knowledge/teacher’s aide to a theatre class
IB French VI HL
IB Computer Science HL
IB Psychology SL
Chemistry II/Forensics
IB English 12 HL
IB Math SL</p>
<p>My Spanish teacher always said that the IB language tests focus on how well you can get your point across, even if you make small errors here and there, whereas AP focuses more on the gramatical intricacies of the language. I have found AP Spanish to be must more difficult than IB Spanish.</p>
<p>My S is a Junior in an IB Diploma program (about 125 kids in his grade). In his school you can take AP & IB classes combined. He has already taken 6 AP/IB classes. He is currently taking 6 AP/IB classes and 1 IB class. Next year he will take 4 HL IB, 3 SL IB. His load is not unique. His school has been offering the classes this way with great success. The teachers and staff are amazing. FYI-This is a public school which does not test the applicants prior to admission. Almost any student with a B avg and the desire can enroll.</p>
<p>it really depends on what kind of learner you are–if you prefer learning the rules and abiding by them, then AP will be better for you. If you care more about communicating, with or without some errors, then IB is better for you. </p>
<p>Personally, I’d rather be able to communicate well rather than never make a grammatical mistake. All of the French people I’ve met and conversed with don’t seem to mind when I make a minor error, and we communicate well with each other.</p>
<p>I’m the parent of IB Sr. who took enough AP exams along the way in IB and pre-IB courses to be an AP National Scholar after Jr. year. Like FLMathMom’s school, the teachers teach to prepare the students for both. A weakness of AP alone, IMO is the the limited assessments–just a single exam. IB courses have oral exams, papers, etc during the semester in addition to the exams at the end of the year. This could seriously effect your education if your AP teachers put too much emphasis on teaching to the test. For example, an AP history teacher (and I’ve known this to happen) could spend the year having students practice DBQs (short essay questions like those on the AP exam) and not bother to assign a term paper. IB students are guaranteed to get plenty of practice writing serious papers and giving oral presentations.</p>
<p>Well, there are many factors, but here was my general rule:</p>
<p>If you plan on getting a university degree outside the United States, do IB. If you plan on staying inside the United States for college, do AP. Also, if you plan on majoring in math/science/engineering, do AP, and if you plan on majoring in humanities, do IB.</p>