<p>bah, I didn't think either of them were overly difficult. The one about civil rights in a 19th century country could have been spun to hint on slavery and go into post slavery conditions in the US/UK/etc. i wrote about Vietnam for another one and i don't remember the third...</p>
<p>I am going to have to find out what my teacher predicted my grade to be that could have a bigger impact on this than i expected it would.</p>
<p>I like your thinking, Princedog, but at this point after all this discussion I am just giving it a rest and going to study for bio :D</p>
<p>I'll just wait for July.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The one about civil rights in a 19th century country could have been spun to hint on slavery and go into post slavery conditions in the US/UK/etc. i wrote about Vietnam for another one and i don't remember the third...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A little, but they usually have something like "compare slavery in two countries of the region" or whatever. You really only could have hinted at slavery since the date they gave was '68 IIRC, or something a few years after the passage of civil rights legislation in Congress (To what extent had African Americans gained their civil and political rights by 1968)...post slavery conditions would have been stretching it a little. There was a question on Reconstruction I think? I don't know, I did political/civil rights by '68, Vietnam, and comparing the Latin America policy of two presidents from whatever time period until '45. For everything but the president one my references were like, myself. I used Eyes on the Prize for the civil rights one but I don't even think that's considered historiography and I couldn't even remember who compiled it all, so...I referred vaguely to these books I used in my IA for the Vietnam one but I couldn't remember what the historian's names were, it was really sad, so I just described them, like their occupations and titles LOL </p>
<p>Paper 3 was pretty unpredictable based on the other ones I've seen, and the paper 1, we only prepare for the China question, so I don't really know, I didn't look at the other choices. The China one was a little random. It was all about something that was a little more obscure than I'd think the whole question would be focused on...the ones we've looked at have mainly been pretty general like "How did the CCP win?" "Why did the GMD lose" "What were the motivations for China's entry into the Korean war?". Three/Five Antis is sort of a random thing to make the whole question about, actually the other teacher's class hadn't even talked about it before (my class did though). </p>
<p>I predict I'll get a 6. I think I got a 7 on my IA but when we do practice papers in class I usually just study a little and get around what a 6 would probably be, so I'm guessing I was predicted at a 6. I don't know if it matters that much anyway because I'm not planning to major in anything that's going to overly need history classes and if you look at the credit from even Va schools like W&M, on a little of HL exams you can get credit for 5s and 6s. I mean I guess the max credit would be more important if you were planning to major in history or take something with a lot of history classes.</p>
<p>I was predicted a 6. I specifically went and asked my teacher after I heard about the msg from IBO. He said that teacher's predictions have to be +-1 of the real score or something like that. What that means is that if he predicted a 7 and i got a 5 that would impact his credibility since it's not within a difference of one point. Because of this, he predicts mainly 6's as in "just in case." Maybe he was just trying to make me feel better. Haha...I am definitely not taking another history class in my life after this!</p>
<p>Well I think if there's a difference of two points lower (on the 7 scale) in the predicted then someone else has to score your exam again. If it's higher then you get the higher one. If you get higher than the predicted on the initial scoring, then they leave it. Very student-friendly process. Most teachers are pretty accurate. It wouldn't make sense to give a bunch of people predicted 7s when only less than like five percent of people in the entire program get that. I think predicted 7s are probably more rare than official scores of 7 just because there's no reason to predict most people will get a 7 since there is a lot of nitpicky stuff to separate the 6s from the 7s, and some of that can be luck if one topic didn't get covered enough...it's sort of like with internal assessments, if you initially grade everyone high, then your scores get moderated down and even if you did have a true 7 paper in there the score can get moderated down if worse ones are sent to the IBO. So there is no reason to initially attempt to score on the easy side. </p>
<p>Since the process of creating an IB score is fairly holistic as far as examinations go, I don't know that something like this skews it so far off. Probably there would be some reservation if one of your papers seemed extremely better than the others. The same amount of people are going to get scores as if they hadn't made this mistake. Also people are at much less of an advantage than if this were a multiple choice exam some had had access, I mean I guess if your school made you write out the paper 2s for May '05 on several possible questions, but then again there are some programs that prep intensively like that and have average diploma scores of like, 43 (seriously, this kid in my class from Australia moved here from a small school over there like that). So they'd probably have 7s no matter what paper 2 we'd been given. And I'd probably still have a 6 :)</p>
<p>My s is in his junior year of the IB. I have learned more reading this thread than anyone ever explained to me, although I must admit my head hurts trying to process all of it.
I will ask two really basic questions. Is it a mistake to take 4 HL's? and How does the EE grade factor into all of this?</p>
<p>Princedog, the question I was referring to said something to the effect of evaluate the post-slavery or civil rights conditions in the 19th century in one country in the region. I never mentioned any historians names when I talked about historian's interpretations. I was told that it didn't look good to name drop. I just remembered, for my 2nd question I talked about the extent the stock market crash caused the great depression. The next time I actually go to class when were done with exams I am going to ask for my 'predicted grade'.</p>
<p>Looking back on it, I made some mistakes with some dates (aka, I put the wrong year in a few places on accident) so I am predicting a 5, and my IA might put me over the hump to a total score of a 6. We'll see though.</p>
<p>IT IS NOT A MISTAKE TO TAKE 4 HLs!! By all means do it, but make sure your son can handle it first. HL's are more in depth than SL's and require much more work, but it will look good if he takes more than 3 HL's. At my school our 'ib coordinator' makes it hard to take more than 3 hl's, I tried to take four, but I was a year ahead in music and would have finished music HL my junior year so she wouldn't let me make it an HL. It was really weird.</p>
<p>The EE can effect your total IB diploma score by giving you an extra couple of points on your diploma. In conjunction with the Theory of Knowledge grade, you can get an additional +3 points to your final score which is a BIG HELP at making yoru score higher. That said, it is really hard to do that, mostly because grades from the ToK graders are VERY random at times. At my school we had a brilliant girl (currently at MIT) write a fantastic ToK paper and was predicted an A.... she got a D. He said there was another student the same year who he predicted a D... they got a B.</p>
<p>Its reaaaaalllllyyyy random sometimes, and EE grades can go the same way. The biggest problem students run into in their EE's and ToK papers are that they don't answer the question or fit into a particular category. He thought that was the problem with aforementioned MIT girls paper. He told me that sometimes the graders feel they want a question answered a particular way, and you lose MAJOR points if you "dont answer the question" or if your paper is "above the graders head" (as a side note, I was also predicted an A, but he told me he feared my paper would go over the graders head or be too analytical in my approach and miss the question, I wrote about AI). That was kind of a digression but its good to know.</p>
<p>For the EE, its important that it fit under a category well. If it straddles a line, it will be graded only for the content of what it goes under and may suffer as a result. I don't remember exactly how it works, but I know an A/A or I think an A/B or B/A (for EE/ToK grades) will get you that coveted +3 points. An A or a B on one paper as long as you don't fail the other one will give you +1 point, and moderately high scores on both will get you +2. Theres probably an exact score breakdown somewhere.</p>
<p>while were on the subject what were you guys extended essay and ToK topics and predicted scores? I did my EE in Physics under the title "Phase Calibration of Microphones in the Free Field," and my ToK paper on "Can a machine know?" and my presentation on language as a means of controlling thought called 'I Speak, You Speak, We All Speak Newspeak.' I was predicted an A on the EE, low A on the paper and low A on the presentation.</p>
<p>vistany, at my school most people who did 4 HL's are currently regretting it. I have to mention however, that at MY school most people do the extra HL in Chemistry and thus attain a certificate. Basically, during their junior year they take both Chem and Bio. Then, they "test out" of Chem by taking the SL exam but continue with it Senior year as a fouth HL and gain a certificate because of that. We do have some other students who have an extra HL in Music or Latin and I don't hear them complaining...but the Chem kids are ranting all over the place. Mainly they are blaming the Chem teacher for lack of teaching skills. I never had that woman so I can't say how true it is but apperently she screwed up many GPA's and chances for Ivy's (this is all supposedly right..according to students) and never taught them anything. This year, the Chem testing happened on the same day as History Paper 3. Keeping in mind that Paper 3 is 2.5 hrs and invovles 3 essays and they had to do Paper 1 and 2 of Chem that day...yea, bunch of high schoolers not happy about life. I have heard so much complaining here at my school that basically makes me think that 4 HL's is not worth it. The Certificate doesn't really impress anyone..Plus you are awarded the certificate after you are accepted to a college. A student doens't have the IB diplama when they are applying to colleges. So colleges assume that he or she will attain it and the certificate. Once again, this is a specificly the situation at my school and hopefully your son can make a good decision based on other students' accounts and teacher evaluations. The schedule is perpahs one of the most important factors in admissions these days. Yes, SAT's and extracurrics are important but the past 4 years along with the GPA show a lot more than a 4 hr test! </p>
<p>Ehiunno pretty much explained how EE with ToK works. Your son should have received an "IB Guide" of some sorts. There should be a matrix in there showing the different grades on EE and ToK and how many bonus points you get. Let say you son earns +1 point from the EE/ToK combo and scores a 3 on English HL. Well, the rule is that you need to score at least a 4 on a HL exam. Thus, he can use the +1 point and still get the diploma as long as he gets all his other points. It has come very handy in the past for some students. </p>
<p>ToK...oh my! Last year we had only one A on a ToK essay. Very, very hard to get as it's one of those situations were there is no right way to do it...You simply dont know what they want to read so you just write and hope they will like it. That's how it felt to me when I was writing my essay.</p>
<p>EE...I strongly advice your son not to pick a topic from History! That is one of the worst areas and hardest ones to score well. Also, whatever he decided to write about make sure he has sources and lots of them. Since I am from Bulgaria I decided to write about my history and specifically why I am here in America and not back home and blame the fall of communism and all that good stuff. Due to lack of sources, I kept changing my question and ended up writing about Comecon and how USSR exploted Bulgaria...blah! I thought I would love writing about my own country but I lacked sources and what I found wasn't exactly what I wanted to write about in the first place. Other friends had much easier time writing a their EE's for Bio or Psychology!</p>
<p>I hope this was helpful somehow. Good luck to your son!</p>
<p>Yeah, I think we usually only get a couple A's on ToK essays as well. They are tough to get because it is by far the most subjective thing to grade.</p>
<p>BGjeez's advice about EE history may be accurate, but from what I have heard science one's tend to be graded the most harshly, at least in the history of my school. That may be because my school doesn't focus too much on science though. I think the best advice is just to do what you love. If you are really interested in the subject you wont have trouble putting out 3500 words, that seems to have caused trouble for BGjeez though. Bah, its a wash, but i think everyone spends sometime feeling out what they are going to do and changing their topic. And remember, just because its easy to write does not mean it will get a high score.</p>
<p>Also, what he says about 4 HL's might be accurate. It isn't necessarily wrong, just make sure your son can handle it before he makes that choice. It may be a very good idea to make sure that he picks the right classes when he picks his HL's too, because there are often easy teachers who let you get A's, but don't adequately prepare you for the IB exam, avoid those like the plague! many a student at my school have lost their diploma because of this.</p>
<p>I am a girl btw :) </p>
<p>Don't get me wrong about the EE..absolutely do it on a subject that you enjoy. I wrote a lot...many words past the 4000 mark and actually had to cut down. It's just that the exact topic in the end wasn't what I wanted to write about at first. EE grades depend a lot on the advisor. Your son should do his homework and ask around and quickly get the advisor they want because the good ones tend to be taken quite quickly. At my school, one teacher can advice up to 5 students.</p>
<p>You guys gave a lot of really good information. My sons advisor only gave one A last quarter in HOA I. I am trying to get him to switch advisors. History is my s first love but maybe HL Business would be better. I would love to hear your thought on that. Even worse than taking 4 HL's he is taking 8 classes so he does not have to give up marketing. TOK at night.<br>
Why is the TOK Essay so hard? I thought that was a cake course
Thanks for all of the feedback, I greatly appreciate it. You guys are amazing!</p>
<p>
[quote]
I was referring to said something to the effect of evaluate the post-slavery or civil rights conditions in the 19th century in one country in the region. I never mentioned any historians names when I talked about historian's interpretations. I was told that it didn't look good to name drop.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>oh yeah, that may have been the question people used reconstruction for...there was one about free blacks in the 19th century. </p>
<p>We are supposed to put the name and nationality with the historiography but it probably doesn't matter. That it is just how they mark it when we do our essays for the classes. I don't really remember what the IB rubric itself says, I only look at my grade at the top LOL But yeah we get marked down if we don't use their full names, I don't know if that's just our history department though. </p>
<p>My HLs are math, history, english, and business. Business is the easiest. Math is the hardest. History is the most work and english is a close second. For me, the fourth HL doesn't matter because some of my SLs are harder (for me) than business is. </p>
<p>TOK can be easy or hard depending on the person. People who aren't inclined to speak much in class discussions usually fare worse than expected because a lot of the grade is class participation. The essays aren't that hard if you know what you're doing, but most people don't and personally I don't think the teachers do a great job of explaining it. It's a little weird though too. Sometimes the essay works and sometimes it doesn't. Most people just aren't given to philosophy (personally I find a lot of TOK hilarious or annoying), so when you write the essay there can be sort of an "I don't care I'm just going to explain a couple of things we read" sort of vibe. I never knew what to do for essays so I usually ended up frantically dashing off whatever fulfilled the word requirement. Oddly, on the one that counted, I got a pretty high score (from my teacher, IBO still grades it). But I'm also in the smallest class my school has, about 11 people, so that helps because we get some more individual feedback. Whereas the other classes are really too big (about 20+ people). So that has made my class much better, but experiences will vary. My section was created a month into the year just to make one small class someone might get something out of, and everyone in our class is really cool and works well together in discussions, so I actually really look forward to TOK, even if some of it is useless. But people in other classes seem a little more confused about it and don't like it as much.</p>
<p>ToK is a cake course at many schools, but it is NOT a cake subject. By that I mean a lot of schools (certainly not at mine) it is really easy to get an A in the class, but the material is still very difficult for a lot of students. You have to have a certain kind of mine to like ToK or really be good at it and those are rare. I guess for that reason a lot schools make the class pretty easy or something, I dunno but I have heard that before. If your son thinks ToK is a cake class he may have that kind of mind, but it may just be the way ToK is taught. At my school, me and a couple other guys would sit around antsy all day waiting for ToK, and I am not kidding. That was probably the coolest class I've ever taken. Most people.... didn't agree with us to say the least. So I guess it really depends on the teacher and how he teaches and how in depth he goes. If your teacher isn't very concrete but goes very deep then your never going to get it, I don't care how smart you are. If your teacher goes very deep and ties it into concrete examples then your lucky, and if he can teach you how to do that then you will score very well on your essay because that is what they look for. I was one of the lucky ones and had a FANTASTIC teacher. I would say the majority of ToK teachers aren't like either of those though, they are the ones that make ToK a 'cake class.'</p>
<p>The ToK essay is hard because it is. Thats really all there is to it. The concepts are tough to grasp. The questions are deep. The grading is arbitrary. And even if you can manage to come up with some brilliant insight into the subject, finding concrete examples and explaining them well is ridiculous. You have to maintain focus and continually tie an often abstract question or idea back into reality. Thats what gets you top scores. If you can take artificial intelligence, knowledge through religion, logical constructs in language, groupthink, etc relate it back to some larger question, and then tie it into the everyday world so much so that a middle schooler could get it you will get a good score, but that is very hard to do.</p>
<p>Most of the time a ToK paper had only a few of the above qualifications. Typically I have seen two types more than any other. a. the student does understand the subject, makes insight, but goes on rants and digressions everywhere (which is extremely easy to without realizing it), and can't tie it into the everyday world. The other is someone who doesn't really get it, and just sounds convoluted and confused, or overly simple.</p>
<p>The worst part is, it is easy to do that kind of stuff without realizing it and think you have a fantastic paper. Lord knows how many times I got my paper back, one that I thougth was amazing, with a fat D or C- on the front of it, and red ink everywhere. You have to realize that you are not the one grading the paper, and just because you follow your logic doesn't mean your grader will. Thats a big problem, having it go over the graders head because you didn't explain it well enough. Point's need to be made and reinforced with meticulous detail without becoming redundant.</p>
<p>Another big problem is hypothetical situations. Tell your son to avoid these like the plague!!! Every ToK student thinks they have a fantastic idea, and explains their idea by saying "if person X had idea Y and encountered person...." Contaray to popular belief, that is NOT a concrete example, its an abstract example and it really means nothing. Examples need to be taken from the other 'groups' of IB, that is history, english, math, science etc. It works very well to cite moments in history when some logical fallacy had some effect, or talk about implications of proofs in mathematics, or the use of art in the English language to affect public opinion. Find a specific proof (the square root of two is irrational, for example) or a specific historical example, or a specific text and character and tie your point, your expansion or addition to the ideas of ToK, and bring it into reality while tieing it back into the question through an example like that.</p>
<p>thats whats hard. its very hard. very very very very very hard. and it takes a lot of practice to learn how to do well.I dont mean to scare you off, I love ToK, it was probably my favorite class in high school. And I don't mean to sound pompous or arrogant about it either. These are all things I learned from making those very mistakes and having my grades suffer because of them, and from reading other kids papers who got better or worse grades. </p>
<p>I guess that kind of turned more into advice about how to write a good ToK paper and thats not really what you asked for, but thats also kind of why the ToK paper is hard. For a lot of people it isn't hard to write, just hard to do well on, does that make sense? You can think you did fantastic but you very well may get a terrible score. I have lots of advice and opinions regarding IB, especially concerning ToK and the classes I am fimilair with (none of those is buisiness, so I can't really help you out there). If you want to know anything more, just PM me or let me know right here and future IBers can see it.</p>
<p>ps. when I say you, I am of course referring to your son, or whomever else is in IB going through this</p>
<p>pps. my bad BGjeez! I usually try to watch my gender associations on here, I've made that mistake too many times, lol.</p>
<p>Wow! You make TOK sound like nailing jello to a tree, and very teacher dependent. I do get the concrete example verus the hypothetical, so that was really helpful. The tying things back to other IB subjects seems to be very sound advice as well because that seems to be the common thread in the IB. Not only do I appreciate your help with understanding the IB for my s but also my d. My s is student assigned to an IB school because he is a master scantron test taker and we thought that the IB would prepare him better for college. Make him a better essay writer. Now that my oldest is doing it and I am seeing some of the residual disadvantages I am trying to decide if that is the right course for my daughter. Our standard HS is AP and watching all of the intricacies of IB is making me wonder if it is worth all of the extra effort as I plan for her future. From a macro perspective I like the global thought process of IB but in terms of college admissions as well as college board tests, particularly SAT II, I think it is a disadvantage. For me the jury is still out until I see where my s gets accepted, and how he does in college. But in the meantime I sure do appreciate all of your insight. Fascinating stuff.</p>
<p>hehe, nailing jello to a tree is how a lot of people can describe it, and yeah it is very teacher dependent, but it can be done. Usually you dont have to master the ToK essay to get an A in the class because the teacher understands how difficult it is. That is to say, you don't have to be able to get an A on the paper to get an A in the class. If you did, I shudder to think how many enraged parents would storm the school with pitchforks screaming about their kids now 3.99 GPA, lol. It can be done, and I really loved it.</p>
<p>TOK also depends on the teacher you get. there were 3 teachers who taught the class my junior year. i happened to get the one who gave a lot of work and we actually had class. I didnt like the class very much, but other kids in other classes said they had a lot of fun. we had like four simultaneous projects fourth quarter.</p>
<p>the essay wasn't that bad for me, though it was hard to get a good grade. the format and style that is required was unusual. a lot of ppl got the impression that TOK was a guaranteed A but it wasn't the case. my teacher gave us a break at the end of the class though, which was good.</p>
<p>When writing the ToK essay, your s has to consider IMPLICATIONS...every question implies something. Oh, and Problems of Knowledge or PoK's....BIG thing and very hard to identify sometimes. All the supporting arguiments should come from the areas of knowledge..I think they were History, math, art and so on..and the way of knowing which were emotion, language, perception..and something else. Sorry I am a little bit rusty. At my school we take one semester of ToK at the end of junior year and one at the beginning of senior year..so I wrote my ToK essay in December! But basically lots of problems to identify with every arguiment, claims and counter-claims and try to link as many of the areas of knowledge as possible..as in a link between history and math.</p>
<p>But after all that stuff, I aboslute loved ToK. This class made me question everything! Loved all of our discussions!</p>
<p>To me IB was definitely worth it and my younger sister was just accepted to the program so she is definitely embarking on the same academic path.</p>
<p>I am resurrecting this old thread now that scores are out so we can all brag and cry about our IB scores.</p>
<p>I'll start.</p>
<p>I was kind of surprised to find that I got a D on my EE. I was half expecting it because it could have easily been considered off topic, or not a physics EE. Its ok, I got a B on the ToK essay (again, kind of dissapointed) and so I got +1 point.</p>
<p>I also managed to get a 5 on physics SL, which was really, really o_0. I thought that was the easiest test I had ever seen. wierd.</p>
<p>5 on English HL, my Oral was good (7) my IA's were probably 4/5. Thats what did it.</p>
<p>Math HL 6. Exactly what I was expecting really. I was hoping for a 7, but I ran out of time on paper 2. I pretty much expected a 5/6. I probably studied all of about a half hour for papers 1 and 2. And probably about an hour or so for paper 3 (way more than I have studied for any other math test other than my multivar or lin al final)</p>
<p>History HL 7. ***???!?!?!?!?!? This outwieghs any and all dissapointment that came a result of the bad EE. I can't freaking believe I got a 7 on hist!!!!!!!!!!!!! My studying for that one consisted of about an hour the day before the test, and waking up 3 hours before the test on test day and speed reading through all of my notes for the year, and I could swear I put down some incorrect dates in my analysis, but Yipee!</p>
<p>Alrighty, I'm next. :)</p>
<p>Let's first start with the disappointments since I guess everyone has those. I got a 5 on Bio HL! Major surprise to me. I was expecting at least a 6...teacher was talking about me getting a 7! What happened there?...I have no idea. Still getting credit at UVa..so phew!</p>
<p>Math SL 6! Pleasantly surprised because I ran out of time on Paper two and ughh it wasn't easy either. And I sped through paper 1. I told myself I'll celebrate if I get a 5 so 6 calls for big celebrations. :)</p>
<p>EE B / ToK C Happy! A B on my EE makes me giggle from happiness. I honestly did not enjoy writing about the topic I had to write in the end so a B is sooo good in my book. The ToK C is meh but my ToK teacher has never had an A essay so it's good for our school. </p>
<p>Spanish B Sl 6! I took my IB Spanish exam after the AP Spanish so I was exhausted. It was 7 hours of Spanish examinations </p>
<p>History HL 6! Yay but I was desiring a 7! I wrote sooo much. I think it was 17 pages for paper 3. A 6 is still good but you know..</p>
<p>And the big one....a 7! in English HL! You don't understand what that means to me! Last year there was only one 7 in our school. English is my second freaking language. I've been here for six years only. I love English and writing but this 7 inspires me to at least minor in English. I loved the exam. I enjoyed writing about the prose so much..and setting on Paper 2. Very happy.</p>
<p>My goal was to get 35 points. I beat it so I am one happy IB student. :)</p>