<p>Your S will not have his total IB score by the time colleges make admissions decisions, assuming he’s going straight from HS to college! </p>
<p>BTW, a 33 is the 75th percentile for all full diploma candidates. Not exactly chopped liver, since those who complete it tend to be the top students. A 40 is the 96th %tile. </p>
<p>I think your GC is wrong on the GPA not being important – the colleges will look at GPA, and will take the IB grades (not exam scores) and convert them using whatever metric that school uses. </p>
<p>I know of only one college last year that required predicted scores from S2’s high school – McGill.</p>
<p>If your son graduates in November, I could see sending the final scores to schools where he is applying. Otherwise, the US schools want to know if you are a diploma candidate, what exams you are taking, and what scores you earned on your junior year SLs.</p>
<p>Marian, I really diasagree with you. I know IB very well. One of the teachers at our school taight AP Chem for over 15 years and our school switched to IB…He says the IB curriculum for Chem (which is a TWO year class) blows AP out of the water! Our IB Vio teacher that has a PH.D agrees with that too! I know that if you are science and math oriented IB is head and shoulders above AP. You are not tested in one 3 to 3.5 hour test…You submit labs and a portfoliio of work AND have a test…There is just no comparison. A student who takes an IB class and does well, will be extremely prepared for college!</p>
<p>carpeveum, I have to wonder if it’s the school. My experience was similar to Marian’s – that science was better in AP than IB. The other area where the teachers said AP was superior to IB was (surprisingly) foreign language. The teachers at my kids’ school combined the classes and followed the AP standards because they said they were higher. </p>
<p>I think IB is superior in terms of writing, research, critical analysis-- all important when it comes to humanities and social science. My music kid loves, loves, loves IB Music. My problem is that the curriculum is so inflexible that advanced kids actually have to be held back in math, foreign language and maybe even science. (I don’t think it’s as much of an issue in English or Social Studies.) By not being in IB, my science kid was able to take 7 years of science in high school and my foreign language kid was able to take AP language and lit early in high school. Top math kids at our school start calculus in 10th and go on to m/v.</p>
<p>As far as college admissions, I would say it’s a mixed bag. I know of kids who struggled to get through a full diploma with Bs or even Bs and Cs and did not have good admissions results HOWEVER they did do well once they were in college. None of these kids had amazing SAT scores though so maybe that played into their admissions.</p>
<p>“I think your GC is wrong on the GPA not being important – the colleges will look at GPA, and will take the IB grades (not exam scores) and convert them using whatever metric that school uses.”</p>
<p>CountingDown I agree with you that the college will convert the IB grades (what is called in progress/ predicted grades here) into GPA. However, S’s school only provides the “predicted grades” as the IB transcript grades. During Jr year, the kids will have tests, essays, and IAs and one final exam in May (year end). These grades produce an ongoing average, each component weighted based on the IB norm, and at year end the kids get a final Jr year IB grade. Only this final grade per course will appear on the transcript. In October/ November Senior year, the JR year IB grade will be averaged with Sr year progress + EE to obtain the predicted grades. Only the Jr year final IB grades and Sr year predicted are reported to colleges. In practice, these “predicted” grades are within +/- 0.3 pts of the school’s achieved IB diploma results. </p>
<p>At S’s school, similar to many international IB schools, it is critical that the IB grades/ predictions match up to actual diploma results since many kids will go to the UK. To my knowledge, what Marian outlines about the IB in the UK is accurate with one small caveat. UK destined kids have the added stress of “making their IB prediction” since most UK offers are conditional on specific IB diploma results. They may not have to take SAT etc, but they can not afford to have a bad IB test day.</p>
<p>I am going to calculate a working GPA based on both a 4.0 unweighted and 4.5 weighted to at least give my S some reference point for his school search. Do you know if 4.5 is the most common weighted scale used for IB schools in the US? </p>
<p>“Do you know if 4.5 is the most common weighted scale used for IB schools in the US?”</p>
<p>I think a 5.0 scale would be more common - 1.0 extra point for each IB class taken jr and sr year and 0.5 extra for each pre-IB class taken fresh and soph year. I am basing that on reading forums here and talking to other parents I know from all over the country, which is totally unscientific and anecdotal.</p>
<p>Some schools do use a 6.0 scale, but I think that is uncommon.</p>
<p>I think if you want to estimate the weighted GPA, this is a reasonable conversion:</p>
<p>WhereTwo, your school sounds a lot like my school where the predicted is everything. But is it really true that a 42 is no better than a 36 for IB?</p>
<p>On the point of AP being better for math/science (potentially) a few points:
The IB program CountingDown and Marian describe (which my D attends now) is a magnet program in a county that has a separate math/science magnet. I think that alone results in the IB program being a bit weaker in math and science. So you need to look at the particular school.
I think in general, IB is more humanities/social studies-oriented. This may vary by school, but it isn’t really set up, in my opinion, for the most advanced math/science kids.
IB may not work well for kids who are already advanced in math before high school, because of its limits on when you can take higher level courses and exams.
The relatively rigid IB curriculum may make it difficult for kids to take extra science courses.</p>
<p>Is there a way to tell if a school is on AP or IB program? I’ve been trying to understand my D’s school program. They have their sciences in two years and thought to be quite rigorous. They use textbooks that are meant for college freshman majoring in sciences and engineering, calculus based. Does that mean it is modeling after IB if not in the program itself? What should the humanities look like if modeling after IB? I do know they don’t go for AP tests. Anyone who takes AP tests has to study on their own.</p>
<p>“S’s GC feels that the US GPA calculation is meaningless, and insists that the US school will just look at the IB points for admissions.” - That could be tough. My son took 5 of his 6 IB scores in May of senior year. I know people have mentioned predictions, but not sure if a college would consider that accurate.</p>
<p>“Is there a way to tell if a school is on AP or IB program?” - Ask the GC. Ask other parents in your district.</p>
<p>Students cannot do IB exams self-study. A school must sponsor the program and have teachers trained, etc., even if the school is offering courses just for certificates, not the full diploma. IB scores are based on much more than one day of testing – there are internal assessments, portfolios, papers, etc. that are scored throughout the year. This is a significant difference from AP, where a student can pick up a couple of books and with diligence, self-study the course.</p>
<p>S2’s IB program used books which are used in college Bio (Campbell) and Euro (Colton) courses. S2’s math/science program used lots of college-level books. They didn’t call the classes AP, so they wouldn’t have to follow AP’s requirement of submitting the curriculum. Nevertheless, students took the APs and got 5s without difficulty, in large part because the teachers went so far beyond the AP guidelines. There are some high schools who have abandoned teaching AP courses, feeling they can provide a better course themselves. Scarsdale HS in NY is one school rather well-known for thumbing their nose at AP and College Board.</p>
<p>Putturani, I think there is a difference between US IB students and international IB since the schools report progress/ predicted grades in very different styles. For international (at least at our schools), the progress/ predicted grades are very accurate to actual diploma results and in their own way are a percentage gpa. Selective US schools definitely view a 36 predicted grade (gpa?) as a weaker result than a 42; though both are very good. A 42 is within the world’s top 3% while a 36 may be top 15% (?).</p>
<p>The standard US GPA does not usually have A+ or 7 while the IB system established 7 to differentiate the top 3-5%. 6 is still an A, but just not an A+ and perhaps as suggested only an A-. It seems in the US, most schools would not differentiate the IB 6/7 in their progress grades (ie Jr term grades); and the student would just receive an “A”. I know in NY state, many schools (maybe all) report a % scale and so 7/ A+ are usually 98%-100%. Perhaps these NY schools have a similar issue when converting to standard GPA since 90% - 100% range will all just be an A. However, I think the colleges will also look at the NY % to differentiate the type of 3.5 / 3.7 etc GPA. Because there are so many reporting variations within the US, grade reports are viewed within context of the area.</p>