I have to take either History or Economics at the higher level in IB. I’m torn. I live in Canada and from what I’ve researched about top U.S. universities, they want 4 years of english, math, history, etc. I’m planning to go into science so I’m probably making too big of a deal about this but which class should I take? I’m leaning towards history because 11th grade is American History and 12th grade is Canadian and World Politics. I’m good at writing essays and thinking about global issues and I am pretty fascinated by history. However, my parents are pushing me to take econ because it’s a more “useful”. They even made me look up Elon Musk to convince me :). I’ve talked to students taking econ and they say it’s a bit dry.
Economics IMO is much more interesting than history and IB economics is a WAYY easier 7 than history. History by far is the hardest group 3 subject to get a 7 in (only 2% of students got a 7 in May 2014), so do seriously take that into consideration! With that being said, I recommend going with the subject you’re more interested in as it’ll be easier for you to do all the work, IAs etc for that class. Finding the motivation to do the work for a class you’re not interested in is very difficult, been there, done that!
I also recommend you take into consideration the teacher that is teaching each course - is one teacher known to be much better than the other? Is one known to have a good track record with final scores? If one teacher is significantly better than the other and if his/her class(es) get higher average scores than the other teacher’s class(es) then I recommend you take that class. Don’t underestimate the importance of a good teacher to do well in an IB class.
BTW I only take HL economics and am basing my opinions on HL history on what I’ve heard from friends and others.