<p>Going into 11th grade at Competitive Private in Orange County.
White Male
Intended BioE major.
Does Berkeley prefer AP or IB (full)? My school offers both.</p>
<p>If i go AP route, I will take 12 APs and 2 IBs:
Jr: Lang, USH, Calc BC, Bio, Psych (self-study)
Sr: Lit, Econ (both tests), Stats, Physics C (both tests), Ancient Greek SL IB (only three schools in the world offer this), Latin HL</p>
<p>I am doing GChem at CC this summer and will take Multivariable Calc at UCI summer after junior year.</p>
<p>If I do full IB route, I will take 9 APs and 6 IBs (4HL, 2SL):
Jr: Lang, USH, Calc BC, Bio (both AP and SL)
Sr: Lit, Econ (both tests), Stats, Physics C (mech) + Philo HL, English HL, Math HL, Latin HL, Econ SL</p>
<p>If I do IB, I won't do Multivariable at UCI.</p>
<p>Will my chances at Berkeley COE be reduced if I don't do full IB.
I am also in MUN, three clubs, and play JV Soccer and Varsity Tennis.</p>
<p>If your school does offer IB, I say you give it a shot :p! Although IB doesn’t guarantee a 100% percent admission over AP, it still show that you’re willing to take on rigorous courses! Don’t over stress yourself though! It is your last year of high school, so enjoy it :D! </p>
<p>I’m not sure how Berkeley selects their students, but from what I heard, they see if you school offers AP or/and IB. If that’s the case, it might be a disadvantage for you if other students in your school that have IB. Plus it might show that you’re not challenging yourself enough (but really, AP is already a challenge itself, so I doubt they’ll slam a rejection just b/c you don’t have a lot of IB).</p>
<p>At the end, just think about what you can handle. I doubt taking less IB classes will hurt your chance tremendously. They look for more than just what courses you take. With your sports/EC, they’ll understand why you don’t overload yourself with IB. I say go with the option that you know you’ll do well in.</p>
<p>I hope I wasn’t that confusing XD! Good luck ^_^!</p>
<p>Thank you! I think both ways would be a challenge. I just don’t see the need to over stress and do a bunch of extra testing. The only reason I am having reservations is that full IBers take Philosophy HL in place of compulsory religion (which is academic). So they get a GPA boost. My max gpa is 4.82 and max gpa for full ib is 4.88. Would it be better to just work hard and get a 4.82 in full AP or get maybe like a 4.84 in full ib with 2 or 3bs? Full IB is just a lot of duplication and extra stuff (some of which is a joke like CAS and TOK). Plus Full IB would preclude me from taking Ancient Greek SL IB as TOK uses up my elective slot.</p>
<p>Can you take tok out of school?our school offers that, it’s mainly so that music kids can do band/chorus/orchestra and still take IB music. You may want to check into it :)</p>
<p>I’m going into IB and with my school we take AP exams according to the subjects we take (I.e We take AP US history next year since we take IB Us History, and AP English Lit. & Lang for IB English) </p>
<p>So check that out!
But in my eyes IB is practically same as AP.</p>
<p>IB is more suited to humanities students. It requires a lot of writing. My daughter is in the full IB program at her school. She feels it’s a lot of busy work. She thinks she was getting a much better education at her previous private school which didn’t offer IB.</p>
<p>Berkeley’s admissions process isn’t competitive enough for 12 APs and 2 IBs vs. 9 APs and 6 IBs to matter…both plans are comfortably good enough. Just make sure you get good grades and do well on your SATs. </p>
<p>Your question would probably be more relevant on a Harvard or Stanford forum.</p>
<p>Seconding Singh2010’s comment there.</p>
<p>If you’re looking at Berkeley, you should just go through the College of Engineering Handbook, find the AP/IB credit section, and see which courses let you get out of what. Given the options available to you, you should be able to get out of a good portion of your lower-division coursework (AP can free you from Chem 1A, Bio 1A/1B, Physics 7A, Math 1A/1B, and 2 humanities credits - possibly more; IB may offer some additional stuff. CC credit can get you out of Math 53 and 54. Bear in mind that you’ll need some understanding of cell biology and differential equations for your upper divs, though).</p>
<p>I actually just went and looked, and IB credit offers about the same benefits as AP. What I posted for AP is the full list for both.</p>
<p>CC credit can get you out of a lot more, though, and can make life a lot easier. If you can find a CC credit equivalent to Physics 7B, you may want to go with that instead of gambling on having an opening in your schedule when Zettl’s teaching it.</p>
<p>Multivariable (Math 53 here) and Linear Algebra+Differential Equations (Math 54 here) are…well, probably worth taking here, though Multivariable’s definitely the better choice to do elsewhere. I strongly suggest taking Linear Algebra at Cal.</p>
<p>Ancient greek? So not fair. :(</p>
<p>I know! The class has about 10 kids, really good teacher. Anyways, would it be beneficial to take Math 2D (first part of multivariable at UCI) after junior year? I would still take Math 53 at Cal but I would have a really strong foundation and demonstrate initiative. Plus I like math.</p>
<p>And as far as credit goes, AP and IB routes are essentially the same. However, due to H/SS cap in COE, AP would give me more credits.</p>
<p>I’d say to go through and try to get all of Multivariable out of the way, honestly. I see no benefit to taking it at Cal if you can do it elsewhere, especially since it’ll free up a slot for you to take more BioE courses/have an easier overall schedule/do more research.</p>
<p>(again, DEFINITELY take 54 here…Caltech/MIT/Princeton/Harvey Mudd can probably stand up as equivalent given the nature of the schools and the quality of their students, but I’d imagine those would all be pretty expensive to do over the summer)</p>
<p>When I was in HS, I ended up doing the full IB program, but I complemented each of my IB classes by taking the respective AP examination too. I don’t think you’ll hurt your chances with either path, but I would recommend doing an IB/AP dual combination if you really want to challenge yourself. The only difficult thing (from what I remember) is that IB tends to have a lot of projects due in late April and early May, which may conflict with your studies for the AP exams. Also, since my school offered both IB and AP tests, I would have some exam days that would go from 7am until 5pm straight (i.e. 1 hour for an IB exam, 3 for an AP, another 3 for an AP or IB…)</p>
<p>It’s tough but well worth it. I came to Berkeley with about 70 units (which helped out for registration and whatnot).</p>
<p>I’m also a full IB students studying overseas. Just wondering, are you doing a full IB Diploma or just IB courses because I don’t see a Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class, which is needed for the Diploma. I personally think your schedule is too much since if your doing full IB, you need 150 hrs of CAS, a 4000 word Extended Essay, as well as Internal Assessments for every single class. I would suggest you to either focus on IB or AP, as IB will be a lot of work. As for admissions to Berkeley, I don’t think admissions would reject you just because you didn’t do IB.</p>
<p>I will most likely do what my school unofficially calls full AP. However, we have no AP Latin so I’m taking HL. Same situation for Ancient Greek but everything else is AP only.</p>
<p>Thank you for your comment Spontaneity! If I did full IB I would also do an AP/IB combo. However, I really don’t want to burn out in high school. I have never gotten a B. However, I think I know my academic threshold (at least my ideal level of challenge). Other than Latin and Greek, I am less into the humanities as I am math and science. Dpesite the GPA boost (full IBers get to take Philo HL vs compulsory religion), I think IB has a little too much busy work and some unnecessary, superficial aspects (CAS and TOK). I just think AP might be a better, more enjoyable route.</p>
<p>And one last question on summer 2012. Which would be more beneficial to do: multivariable calc at UCI or biomedical research at UCI (space availability and time constraints are a concern)? MV is a 5 week course whereas BME research is most likely all summer.</p>
<p>I would definitely take the research. No need to rush the math.</p>
<p>So, if available, do research. If not, do MV.</p>