<p>Hi Oh Wise Ones,
We are starting the college prep process with our 2nd DD, who is academically gifted and an excellent artist. She is quite the perfectionist, and currently makes every middle school project her masterpiece. This is great, except she eliminates other activities to make it happen. </p>
<p>She is deciding whether to enroll in IB next year, and is looking for feedback from us and others who have been there. In our school, you set your "track" going into freshman year - we have both IB and a lot of AP/Honors classes. We are divided as to whether IB is a good idea for a kid who has her eyes set on Stanford, and could undoubtedly do the work but the cost might be an exclusive focus on academics. I know that we need to help her ease out of her perfectionism and into the pursuit of excellence instead, and I don't want her to stop pursuing art and social stuff. </p>
<p>I also have a (younger) gifted/creative/perfectionist girl who will spend hours on the cover art for a project and would/do have the same concerns re IB/any project based learning…subscribing to this thread!</p>
<p>IB is not necessarily harder than AP. I have kids who did both and each was the right choice for that particular student. The main difference, put as simply as possible is that IB requires more thinking and understanding while AP requires more memorizing. IB also requires ALOT more writing of big, long papers. My AP kid would have been lost. My IB kid thrived. Colleges on the whole seemed more AP focused to us. Some seemed oblivious to the whole IB thing. Each child is doing fine.</p>
<p>And, IB kid was the one with many more outside activities. Not a problem.</p>
<p>Colleges of Stanford’s caliber are definitely IB-aware, and I am sure that being an IB diploma candidate has helped many student’s applications. However, even Stanford doesn’t give credit for all IB exams:</p>
<p>My daughter is an IB diploma candidate at a school that does not have separate IB/AP tracks, and has taken a number of AP exams. I would say that the expectations are far higher in the IB program, and it is generally much more difficult to get the top score (7) on IB exams than it is to get a 5 on an AP. Some universities recognize this and give credit for 5 and 6 on higher level IB exams, but others require either a 5 on the AP or a 7 on IB to be given credit or placement. In my daughter’s case, if she gets advanced standing in college, it will likely be the result of her AP scores, not her IB scores.</p>
<p>If you are considering an IB track, make note of which IB subjects HL (higher level) is offered in (versus SL (standard level)). Placing a student in an IB program where his/her strongest and best liked subjects are only offered at SL may be academically less satisfying.</p>
<p>Yeah, I didn’t mean to suggest that colleges were not IB aware. We just didn’t get the feeling that it was an admissions advantage. D was one of very, very few in her school that received top scores on the final diploma testing.</p>
<p>Credit after acceptance varies but it’s skimpier than AP at her school, although that was never really a big issue.</p>
<p>I have a kid who is a full IB student (senior) and manages to train 20 hours a week in her sport. Most of my other kids did 4-10 AP classes in high school. The IB diploma program and its extended essay, extensive community service and extracurricular activity requirements, and frequent assessments and presentations is definitely more time consuming and requires a higher level of organization than taking the comparable number of APs. My AP kids were great memorisers and test takers but probably would not have been able to attend to all the details of the IB program. My IB kid is all about presentation and organization and would likely not have best shown her strengths via a heavy AP load. What matters to a school like Stanford is not whether the student chooses the AP or IB route, but whether the student has elected to take the most challenging course load available at his school AND also extensively participated in meaningful extracurriculars .</p>
<p>My 8th grade daughter is very much like yours. We don’t have IB so I can’t speak to that. I just wanted to say that for a perfectionist, the final exam grade 5 or 7 may not be the main issue. In my experience, it’s more a matter of wanting everything to be perfect, even if perfect is well above and beyond what is required to get that A, that 5, that 7. Between IB and AP, are the classes graded the same–ie A, B, C, or percentages? I am glad that our school uses A,B,C, because I think it will be easier for my daughter to let go of the perfectionism and come to see that it’s ok to get a 94, it will still be an A. Having percentages as course grades would be horrible for her. Your daughter may even see that spending an excessive amount of time on a particular project won’t help her to get that 5 or that 7, but she wants perfect grades on the project and in the class, and that’s an issue she’ll be facing all year long instead of just come exam time.</p>
<p>Right Mathyone…my kid can come home with a 100% but at the time it was being turned in felt she could have worked on it “just” another few hours.</p>
<p>If you’re in the US, and your school gives normal grades as well as IB scores, the final IB diploma tests will have no impact whatsoever on college admissions. Only the regular transcript will matter.</p>
<p>IB was a good fit for my kids, but I think it may not suit everybody, and perhaps perfectionism would be an issue. There are a lot of big projects that take a lot of time–they might take even more time for somebody obsessed with perfection. But there is also a requirement for service and other activities.</p>
<p>Also, IB programs differ a lot–it’s important to really understand the one at your school. Does it get the best teachers? Do the best students typically choose it?</p>
<p>For Stanford, IB or no IB will not make any difference. In addition, the programs come in all shapes and flavors, despite the claims of uniformity. Just as it is with his more known cousin, the boondoggle known as the AP. </p>
<p>A student should be careful in selecting the highest considered program at his or her school, and match it to his or her aptitude. There is hardly part of either that shows great mental vitality or requires superior talent. It is mile wide and inch deep against overrated busywork. Considering how IBers struggle with that final paper or endlessly talk about it, one has to place the final outcome in perspective. It is still taught by HS teachers with varying degrees of qualifications and amounts to a glorified paint by the numbers curriculum. </p>
<p>A student who does not drink the KookAid and wants to have plenty of time to present an angular application filled with elements that catch the attention of adcoms is probably better off by picking a set of the pedestrian AP. Selective schools are expecting students to do well in AP or IB, but that is not always essential for every case. A series of dual credits is not necessarily a handicap to gain admission at the best school, if the local AP scene is weak.</p>
<p>AP are also easy to self-study, which might free more time to pursue what I called the angular activities.</p>
<p>Our HS has an overlapping AP/IB program where all the material is presented in one class. Kids can test one or the other or both. Our D did the full IB diploma but ended up double testing on most subjects for the college credit since IB exams are not the best way to get credits unless you attend a school that gives a block of 30 or something for the complete diploma. Several years out I think she said that IB taught her how to BS and churn out a paper with the right ‘voice’ and elements to please a prof and how to prioritize time and let some things go. She did learn a lot and received the diploma with lots of point room to spare. She had friends who were perfectionists and just didn’t sleep for 2 years. That would be my concern for a kid who is reluctant to let some things slide (to a point).</p>
<p>S1 is a senior in the IB program. Our local HS did not offer AP courses at the time and he was an excellent middle school student, but was frustrated that the classes moved so slowly. A couple of his teachers recommended a particular HS out of district because locally it is thought to be more rigorous than the other schools in that city that offer AP. Also, as some point out, you can pick and choose which AP courses to take, so if you are all about the math and science, you can load up on that, or if you like humanities, you can concentrate there. IB has a framework (for diploma)that includes social sciences, language, math,science, and the arts, so you aren’t able to avoid classes that don’t play to your strengths. S1 is very strong in math and physics, and his IB program offers higher level math and higher level physics. He even chose a math topic for his extended essay (The EE is a requirement for the diploma, along with service projects/hours). Before making a decision, you might want to check which IB courses are offered at the HS you’re considering. I don’t think S1’s school is particularly strong in art, unless you are into music. Another consideration is how long the IB program has been at the school you’re considering. I have heard that some schools don’t have a handle on it the first few years that they offer IB.
The thing that bothers me about IB is that colleges that offer AP credit for many classes tend to only offer IB credit for the higher level classes. The HL classes cover two years and most SL classes cover one year. I see no reason why SL classes aren’t afforded the same credit as an AP class. But many of the more selective schools don’t offer credit for either AP or IB, so it might be a moot point. Also, physics HL is algebra based instead of calc based, which seems to be a source of annoyance among the STEM crowd. Regarding Stanford admissions, S1’s school has at least one or two students admitted each year. Usually a dozen students out of around two hundred take the entire diploma track. They start out with more, but many drop to partial IB after junior year because of the (at least in his school) grueling workload. The IB “exams” are really two exams and a sampling of your work throughout the class, called the internal assessment.
S1 still finds time to participate in extracurriculars, although he doesn’t get as much sleep as I would like. There is a ton of writing in IB, but he no longer blinks at writing assignments, just knocks them out. I think the program has made made him much more well rounded, but it isn’t for everyone. I think a motivated student would do well in either.
This has a comparison of AP v IB.
[Free</a> Test Prep Blog » Blog Archive » Advanced Placement versus International Baccalaureate, or AP vs. IB](<a href=“http://www.freetestprep.com/blog/2012/college-admissions-2/advanced-placement-versus-international-baccalaureate-or-ap-vs-ib/]Free”>http://www.freetestprep.com/blog/2012/college-admissions-2/advanced-placement-versus-international-baccalaureate-or-ap-vs-ib/)</p>
<p>D1 completed IB last year. While not a perfectionist, she is very exacting in her work and study habits but also had plenty of time for varsity tennis, club soccer along with other school clubs.</p>
<p>Make sure your IB program is a full program and not some IB-light which have become more common.</p>
<p>To me, IB was about being able to wisely budget your time. Your daughter will need to learn this skill if she is going to be successful in life (not just get into Stanford). You simply can’t spend an inordinate amount of time on something just because you desire perfection if you do so at the expense of other subjects or activities.</p>
<p>Interesting because it is widely acknowledged that the weaker elements of the IB program are exactly their math and science courses. And, especially when compared to the Honors courses at schools that are rejecting the AP/IB fads.</p>
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<p>The above represents a pretty good --albeit incomplete and perhaps misleading-- overview of both programs. The misleading part is that a high school should prepare its students for the writing and research demands of college with or without the AP or IB programs. Not to mention that, although the preparation suggested in the IB program might not hurt, there remains a WORLD of difference between working on a 4,000 words essay for months and the typical demands in writing and research at selective schools. </p>
<p>Neither the IB or the AP offer bona fide COLLEGE level courses, and pretending that the IB writing demands are propelling students to … advanced classes is simply spurrious. At best, such courses might represent a decent preparation for the higher demands of college. </p>
<p>Of course, it is hard for the people who accepted the IB challenge to admit that the programs fall way short of the advertised version. Again, being in AP or IB will NOT hurt the chances of admissions. Just as it will not help as much as people think. After all, the correlations are skewed by the mere fact that the high schools have found the “merits” of segregating the students by pushing their best and more disciplined students to the “schools within the school.” </p>
<p>Looking at the admissions results of a class is misleading. There are schools in the country that do NOT offer the IB nor a dedicated AP programs and do extremely well in admissions, often cornering the market in their area.</p>
<p>Lastly, one has to consider that AP/IB courses without exams are losing their relative value. For many schools, the results of the exams do not play any role, as the “expected” grades are meaningless without a strong showing at the … standardized tests such as SAT and ACT.</p>
<p>HL courses are more advanced than SL courses; the HL courses are more likely to cover college frosh level material. For example IB math HL includes what is typically a year of college frosh calculus, while IB math SL is mostly a precalculus course that includes a more limited introduction to calculus that is generally seen as less than AP calculus AB and thus not enough for placement into more advanced college math courses (though some high schools may extend their IB math SL courses to include enough calculus for the AP calculus AB test).</p>
<p>Yes, if you have a decent college nearby (can be a community college), taking an actual college course can give a sample of what the expectations of students are in college, even when compared to an advanced/AP/IB/etc. course that may cover the same material.</p>
<p>But potential pre-med and pre-law students should be aware that grades in college courses taken while in high school do affect GPA for applying to professional schools (AP and IB scores do not).</p>
<p>@Tempe, mine is actually willing to call it quits when the project meets her standards, which are inevitably way above what the teacher was expecting. But she does like to see those 100%s and will freak out if she gets a point off on a small assignment–that two point quiz or homework becomes a catastrophic F and it doesn’t matter to her that it’s only one point out of several hundred for the semester.</p>