I can tell you that Smith admissions really like the IB applicants. There’s a list out there on the www that shows the boost in admission rates for IB applicants. There are a few schools where chances increase 10-20% but I can’t put my hands on it now. Google is your friend.
@UrbanMum The kids who take Math HL at our school have taken AP Calc AB/BC before they take Math HL. The ones who have had Pre-Calc take Math SL. All of our IB kids take at least a few AP.
The 44 score mentioned is the total of points you earn from your exit exams. Each exam can earn up to 7points. You can also get points from your Extended Essay. You need to earn 24 points in order to earn the Diploma.
@UrbanMum if you’re on one of the coasts, you may get an admissions boost at the Midwest LACs, including Grinnell and Carleton. Having said that, note that Carleton’s overall RD acceptance rate is under 20% (see the class of 2022 admission statistics thread).
The IB score will only count towards granting credit at a college, and they tend to want 6 and 7 scores for credit. IB does not give many 7s. Your D won’t get the scores til after she graduates, so they are useless for college app decisions (other than the fact she’s doing IB). Many colleges limit the number of AP/IB scores they’ll accept for credit/placement, though state universities are often far more generous in this regard.
IB is an excellent program, and in the full diploma scenario, it requires strong performance across all academic disciplines. No hiding from a subject area weakness! There is LOTS of substantive writing, which is immensely helpful when one gets to college. S2’s HS grades would have been much higher had he gone to our local HS, but he received a much better education in the IB program, and colleges seemed to recognize that (i.e., he had a 3.56 UW).
Our IB program director said that their IB kids did particularly well on the ACT vs. SAT, since they are going deep across all subject fields. S2 did well enough on the SAT that we didn’t test that theory, but I will say that he maxed the SAT essay score both times he took it (this was in the 2400 SAT era).
@urbanmum My daughter did HL Bio, English, History, and French and SL Econ (they didnt offer HL) and Math Studies. Math was always on the difficult side for her, so your D might want to go SL to protect her gpa, and since the number of IB kids applying to schools right now is relatively low, I don’t think it would make a difference in admissions. I don’t know how kids are having 10 APs with an IB diploma, since for 2 years, 6 of their annual course spots are occupied with IB stuff (out of 8 at my D’s school), and it’s 7 for one of the years with the required IB elective. They must be super stacked in freshman/sophomore year, which still doesn’t make sense to me with the ordinary things that are required (language/history/science/PE/english/math) for basic graduation in most districts. The only way I can think of it is if they are double dipping and taking the AP exams without the classes, which my daughter was absolutely unwilling to do.
http://www.unis.org/uploaded/02_ACADEMICS/2014-15/Files_PDFs_%28Academics%29/IB_General_Files/Understanding_IB_Scores.pdf is a good link to an IB exam scores overview. Basically, each of the main subjects are scored 1-7 on the final exam, for a total of 42. Three additional points are available for CAS (community, action, service–basically service projects), the Extended Essay, and TOK. The max IB score is 45, although less than 1% of kids get that, while the average score is about 30, and like another posted, only 24 points are required for the IB diploma. I think that really won’t make a difference to colleges, since the kids’ grades are what got them admitted, not their IB scores, and I can’t imagine someone having an offer rescinded in July/August based on an exam score that doesn’t affect their GPA.
Throughout the year, students receive normal grades, like any other class. This is what will be on the transcripts they send to colleges. They can also submit projected scores, which don’t mean much in my book. What kid applying to a selective college is going to say they plan to get a 30? Among my kid’s peers, people projected 38-44, but that was in Nov/Dec during application times, and they hadn’t even completed half the course, and some had never taken a single IB exam before.
If course credits for college are very important to you, make sure you look at each school’s policies, as they can vary quite widely. For example, Columbia will only give credits for each 6/7 on HL exams only, with a max of 16, whereas Bopper noted above that their child’s school would give up to 32 credit hours and the score minimum was a 5, but still required HL courses. For certain classes/scores, some universities may offer exemption from requirements but not actual credit hours towards the degree.
eta: had the draft typed but not posted as I had some distractions, so some info is overlap with CountinDown’s post.
Same IB program. My daughter took 3 HLs (English, Euro Hist, Music) and 3 SLs (Spanish, Environmental Studies, Math). But she only took 8 APs. What a slacker! Her college gave her 30 credits – all from the APs. She got absolutely nothing for her IB scores, even though her HL scores were two 6s and a 7. But she used her AP credits only for placement, not to try to graduate early, so it didn’t matter much.
@UrbanMum Wellesley’s acceptance rate for the class of 2021 was 22%. https://www.wellesley.edu/admission/aar/resources/stats
How an IB kid ends up with 10 APS -
9 th grade - APHUG
10th grade- AP Euro
11th grade-
IB SL Spanish/AP Spanish
IB SL Math
IB HL History of the Americas yr 1/APUSH
AP Art History (California fine arts requirement)
TOK
IB HL English yr 1/AP Lang
12th grade
HL Chemistry yrs 1/2 double period/AP Chem
HL English yr 2/ AP Lit
HL HOTA year 2
SL Econ / AP Micro and Macro
APs were taken because, at some of her target universities, AP’s got more credit than IB equivalent or with a lower score. Example- SL econ she got a 6, which gives no credit, but she got a 5 on both AP’s which would have given her a year of econ at most colleges.
My DD dropped from IB diploma to Course the beginning of her Sr. year. She had no desire to take one specific class (that I don’t remember) and wanted to work part time and have some EC’s instead of writing the EE.
She chose to go after guaranteed merit and that is what she did. The most elite she applied to was Univ Minn Twin Cities college of Science and Engineering - she was accepted but the costs were too high.
Her peer group (IB/AP combo) went to several elite schools:
UT Austin - several auto-admits
A&M
TCU
Berklee College of Music
Harvard
Pratt Inst.
Cal Berkeley
They were accepted to a plethora of schools that included:
Rice
Columbia
NYU
As someone else stated, I think the IB for college readiness is great, the whole diploma part IMO is purely an option of what one chooses to do.
My son’s IB program incorporated the AP curriculum into the IB, so it wasn’t like he was taking IB Euro and AP Euro course, just both exams. They got the kids into this mindset and workload freshman year when they did AP Govt, but taught it with IB pedagogy. Ditto AP USH sophomore year. The program recommended getting through Calc AB before taking SL Math Studies because of a couple specific units of study, but the actual Math Studies exam didn’t involve much calculus at all. His IB score was in the mid-30s (all 5-6s, one 4 and all three points on TOK/EE), but he had seven 5s and four 4s on APs.
Marian, your post reminded me that S2 also took Environmental Science, but as a sophomore, and then took the AP. Pretty much everyone else in there was doing Enviro SL.
S2’s two top college choices would let him use five APs towards credit/placement. He used them to get out of core courses he didn’t want to revisit. At UMD-CP, he would have entered as a second semester sophomore with his APs.
To me, one of the biggest benefits to IB is the amount and quality of writing that is expected. S1 took AP Lang/Comp at the same time S2 was doing 9th grade pre-IB English. Read many of the same books. S2’s essays and analysis were far better than S1’s, but he received lower grades. S1 was at a STEM magnet where even the AP courses didn’t push much writing, other than how to answer a DBQ.
My S hasn’t taken any AP tests without taking the AP course but he’ll still end up with 7 AP classes plus IBD. This is what the schedule looks like
9th-AP world
10th-AP Econ, Gov, Lang, Chem
11th-HL (HOA, Lang., Spanish), TOK, SL (Math, Psych), AP Physics
12th-SL Environmental Science, AP Stats, plus his 3 HLs
It makes me tired just to look at that. I do agree that the writing experience from the IB courses is a big benefit.
Many helpful information here. At our IB school, about 1/3 of the rising junior class choose to do IBD, and our requirement is 4 HL/2 SL. In place of IB math SL, AP calc AB and BC are offered instead, IB math studies is offered to non-stem track IB students. APUSH, AP statistics and a couple other APs are offered. DS20 will be doing IBD and they are a nice group of kids.
My son’s high school offers both IB and AP. Initially, many students start in the IB MYP program but by junior year, there are typically only 40 students moving onto the DP program and then usually a handful of students drop out of the DP program during the junior and senior years. Because there are so few left, those remaining form a tight knit group. Out of 40 students who graduate, I’d say only half actually end up holding a diploma.
IB is not really recommended for those with lots of EC’s, and my son found that out the hard way. Particularly junior and senior years were killers. While an IB student, he took several AP courses that he was interested in.
In my son’s high school, more IB students usually end up at top colleges than AP students. It’s as if (don’t know this for fact) top colleges are preferring IB students more than AP. But that’s just my observation at my son’s high school. My son’s off to Princeton this fall after a personally fulfilling gap year.
My daughter was admitted ED to a college that required two writing-intensive freshman seminars but would allow you to skip one of them if you had a 7 on IB HL English or a 5 on either of the AP English exams. She did not want to have to take two seminars, but a 7 simply wasn’t going to happen for her: English was her worst subject. So she signed up for the AP English Language exam, took it with no preparation, and got the 5 she needed. IB English is that good.
My S did the IB diploma and took AP exams in the corresponding courses. In most cases, this was expected and the teachers designed the courses to prepare students for both exams. He got more college credit out of the AP exams than the IB, but we felt like the IB requirements led to more useful preparation, mostly because of the additional writing, and the quality of the writing–essays rather than practice DBQs.
The OP asked for college admission results: my S ended up at UChicago and was admitted at Northwestern, CMU, NYU, Tulane (with big scholarship), plus some safeties. His IB class had admits at many other elite colleges including Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Reed, Bowdoin, Emory, WashU. I’m certainly forgetting some.
Over the past 5 years at our kids’ IB program, kids were admitted to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Northwestern, Univ Chicago, Notre Dame, Emory, Duke, Williams, Carleton, Macalester, Pomona etc. While the school offers AP, the IB program is considered the “jewel in the crown” and attracts the highest-achieving (and most competitive/driven) students.
My IB Diploma kid was focusing on schools which would offer 1/2 tuition merit, so his list was schools more in the 30-60 range – for those schools, he was often told by admissions that the Diploma program stands out because it requires kids to manage a heavy work load as well as long term projects (the Extended Essay and various Internal Assessments) while still being involved outside of the classroom, as demonstrated through the CAS hour requirement.
My info is 8 years old. My nephew did the full diploma. I don’t remember all of the colleges he got into. I was not well informed at that time and the info was not meaningful to me. I remember that he into UCLA and Notre Dame.
IB is significantly more difficult than AP at our school. We were told that AP is often more “content heavy” with a more curriculum-based, traditional approach. IB is for kids that are smart, but also enjoy intense discussion on big picture ideas, inter-curricular work, and divergent methods of learning the material. Our daughter choose her college specifically because she LOVED the discussion and analysis as much as the reading/writing. And yes, we are given a list every year of the schools that students applied to and will attend. There are always a few kids that attend a community college first. The others tend to have a high admission rate to excellent schools. The teachers are different in style as well. If you are deciding between them, consider asking your child to think through their preferred learning environment. If you are doing IB primarily to get into a “good college”you will resent the extra work.
For another alternative you might want to consider some Canadian universities. UBC in particular is very IB friendly since IB has been on offer in BC schools for quite a while. It’s not as prevalent in the other provinces but it is growing. All universities here will have an IB & AP policy. For the most part, schools here treat IB HL courses as equivalent to AP courses with regards to transfer credit. SL courses do not as they are often similar to grade 12 university stream courses (roughly equivalent to your honours) at least in Ontario. I believe that McGill is also IB friendly.
As a side note, admissions to UBC will look somewhat familiar to US applicants as they have gone to holistic admissions.
I’ll ditto what everyone is saying about IB getting you ready for college classes at the selective school level, but (at least for our school) it is also a boost to getting you in to those selective schools. We are just a public school in Alabama, so we don’t have the prep school resources and professional GC (we have one just not very strong for the academic kids/caters more to helping the lower/middle get into community or state school). Most of the the IB kids were on their own as far as researching and selecting match schools. Most of the IB students were also in the top 3-5% of the class and I think the top 18 in my D18’s class were all IB students and all of them ended up in the top 35. I think 2/3 of the 23 she graduated with had straight As all 4 years of high school. Their teachers even commented at the end-of-the-year IB banquet that this class was the most dedicated and the most collaborative that they have had since starting the IB program. Strong group of kids - best classmates!
So I guess my point is for the OP is that participating in an IB program can put you with other kids that are dedicated to academics and like-minded. The outline of CAS and the the TOK class help to get the IB bookworm student out into the community and MAKE them get involved (re helps boost the ECs on applications beyond maybe their comfort zone!). Their CAS projects typically give them unique ‘stories’ to tell on their personal essays. Overall my D18 would do it all again and again… it was the best fit for her and helped her achieve her goal of attending a school where she fit in best.