Is an IB student allowed to go to a college they have been admitted without taking the final IB exams?
I don’t know why you’d want to do that, there’s a good chance you can get credit for some of those HL classes at most schools.
Will the student have a high school diploma? You can get credit for AP courses without the exam but I don’t see how you can do that with IB.
The better question: does the college want to have a high achieving source of 4 years of tuition come through its doors in September?
I just passed your question on to D (full IB diploma). First she got a horrified look and said, “No No No, you don’t want to do that!” Then she said, if you’ve made it this far, just take the exams. Her words, “Go in and write ‘I love Lollipops’ all over it if you want, but take the exams, man”. At her school, they have already ordered them, and they aren’t cheap.
If you have already submitted the EE, and taken most of your IAs, then why wouldn’t you just give it a shot rather than have it on your transcript that you essentially dropped out of IB after you did enough to get admitted?
@lotsofquests At D’s school, the IB diploma is considered the Highest Honors Diploma. Then they have Advanced, and then Standard. You would essentially default to Advanced if you didn’t get the IB for whatever reason.
At my school if you take IB classes and you don’t sit for the exam you have to pay for the exams in full for not showing up.If it’s fro a trip can you take a later version on the tests?
Why wouldn’t you want to try to get credits for college? You can get alot of credits at some colleges! My daughter saved over a year of tuition with her IB Credits! It won’t hurt if you don’t do well, but it could save big bucks/provide options!
hey guys i have a questions.
im currently an IB student.
however, i cant take the exams due to lack of prep due to health reasons.
do you think i can defer my exams and apply next year. do colleges accept you if you defer your exmas
I’ve known kids who cut out of their end of year IB and were able to do so without consequence from their high school or their chosen colleges. But it can depend. It seemed that the issue was more with the high schools than the colleges.
Where the system takes a hit, is in your high school profile for future college candidates. If too many students do not take the final IB or do poorly on it, it gets reflected on that profile that gets sent to colleges. It then devalues the IB courses on a seniors schedule since the chances a given student will do well on that exam, ore even will take it goes down. Future performance is evaluated by past. SO that’s why a high school might balk and put obstacles in front of those who ditch the final IBs. It hurts the school.
For European and other international schools and whatever colleges that make this a condition, it’s a whole other story. From what I can gather, certain universities will not accept you at all without that IB completion when it comes to the international scene.
@whateverharvard That is known as hijacking a thread and is considered rude. Start your own discussion.
So they admitted you based on the predicted scores, right? If you don’t sit for the exams, and the exams count for up to 75% of the final marks, how do you manage not to fail that class? (S is also in IB and that’s how I understand it, but maybe it’s different in different schools?)
As I understand it…You were accepted as an “IB Candidate”. This indicated that you took the most challenging curriculum available at your school. You were also admitted with the caveat that you maintained at or near your current performance level. The key metric will be your GPA during the final grade periods and whether you graduate. If you can avoid the IB exams without impacting your grade, there should be no cause for rescinding your offer. You do, however, give up the potential for credit and discard a credential that you’ve worked hard for during the last 4 years. My daughter is an IB candidate. I see several of her peers burning out due to the workload. When there are questions about whether she is working too hard toward the IB diploma she responds that she has put too much into it to give up now. So…How much value do you put on your time and skills? Will you look back in a few years and regret not finishing the race? One last comment…I have a friend whose son was accepted to his dream school but the offer was rescinded due to his performance the last semester…It does happen.
I would check with your IB coordinator. At D’s school they must sit for the test, but don’t have to pass them, in order to have fulfilled the requirement of being a diploma ‘candidate’.
For the IB program, they are excused from some standard diploma requirements (like PE), but if they don’t fulfill all those requirements, they are no longer candidates and then would have to somehow do those standard diploma requirements in order to get any diploma.
To get the actual IB Diploma you do have to pass the tests.
D applied as a diploma candidate, and as far as I know didn’t have any predicted scores. Where do people get predicted scores? Since she was accepted as a diploma candidate, I think that really just tells the colleges that she is 'full IB", but we haven’t seen anything from them saying her acceptance was dependent on her getting the diploma.
The credit for the IB tests may or may not help you depending on the college you are headed to. At most schools it they will give you some credit for the HLs.
That’s interesting. Our school never gives anything but predicted scores. That’s what is on the semester report card. Only predicted. So S has no real GPA and won’t until the IB exam results are in, as far as I know. We’re overseas so it might be different in the US, but isn’t IB supposed to be the same everywhere? Hmmm.
Anyway, maybe I’m misunderstanding, but as one example, in English HL, the whole course grade includes at least 50% from the IB exams (Paper 1, 25% and Paper 2, 25%). In Biology it seems that 80% of marks come from the “papers” (e.g. IB exam). Hard to pass those courses if you earn a zero for 50% or 80% of the final grade by not sitting for the exams … Am I missing something?
After all the IAs, CAS, TOK, orals, presentations, and EE why oh why wouldn’t you just sit for your final exam? That’s the easiest part! Would your IB coordinator even let you not take them? Either you’ve paid for them or they have and it’s not at all cheap.
Yeah, seems like it’s handled differently here @MomOnALaptop . Here, IB is a supplemental program to the established high school curriculum, so IB scores have nothing to do with report cards, grades, gpa or anything. Tests, quizzes, homework, exams, classwork is what counts for grades, and “IB stuff” like IAs and papers are done just for IB. Sometimes a completely separate project grade will be included in class grades for IAs and presentations, but basically everything else is completely separate.
So they get a grade for the IB course from the school and another grade from IB? In other words, the course is treated on the transcript as if it’s a high school course (“IB English”), and the school issues a grade based on its own determination (totally independently), and then the IB grade from the powers that be at IB Central (IAs, etc) might only be submitted to colleges for college credit?
Yes, basically. Transcript is all high school courses, and IB scores, predicted or otherwise, aren’t usually included.
After we get the word from the powers that be if we were awarded our diplomas, a transcript gets sent to our college with our scores, where they can award credit if possible.
Wow. You lucky dogs. Well, we’ll all be very happy if S’s predicted score ends up being his score, but it’s frustrating that none of the class discussions, class writing, etc seem to count in the least. Very “British model.” And it definitely is making this coming two months a stressful time. The end of senior year is the absolute opposite of slack time!
Interesting, is your son finishing up IAs and orals? We just finished them here. Four weeks of class until we start exams, so just focusing on papers. We’ve only just gotten to enjoy what little slack time we have. Always interesting to see how IB is done elsewhere in the world.