At my high school, instead of being offered AP courses and such, students have the opportunity to get the IB Diploma. It’s pretty stressful, with the Extended Essay, and the Internal Assessments, and External Assessments. Theoretically, this all looks super good to colleges. However, students don’t actually receive their diploma until after they’ve already started attending college, which seems counterintuitive. To me, this begs the question: Is getting the IB diploma even worth the time? It seems like for most US schools, not really. However, I did apply to McGill University, which is in Montreal, and they told me that my acceptance was contingent on me receiving the diploma.
Regardless of anything, I’m still going to get the diploma (I didn’t do all this work for nothing!); I’m just curious what people’s thoughts are.
my daughter is an IB student, she’s a senior, she will get her IB diploma after she’s already admitted to the university but her test scores will help her get college credit (much like AP or Dual credit classes) I can tell you that it has helped her get great scholarship offers so far! Colleges have been very impressed as they know that IB is very rigorous
I think the IB Diploma is worth it if you get satisfaction from the work and challenge itself. D22 is also getting her IB Diploma (our high school does offer AP as well), and at all the colleges we visited and asked, the admissions officers said they did not consider IB any different from AP. It seems some of them don’t actually even really know what the IB Diploma is (at one college visit - Cal Poly SLO - the response we got was “what’s IB?”). As you point out, it’s the universities outside of the US that recognize the rigor behind an IB Diploma.
As far as college credits go, the really elite schools don’t seem to give credit for AP/IB at all. And for the schools that I’ve seen that do, sometimes only the HL tests will get credit and SL will not (varies by school). With the IB Diploma you will be capped at how much college credit you can get since there are only six subject tests, whereas if you loaded up like crazy on AP classes/tests then that cap could be higher. Our high school also offers AP classes, some which D has taken, so she’ll finish with the IB Diploma and 5 AP classes altogether. If she ends up in a large public university, whatever credits she gets will help advance her toward having sophomore standing so that she can get earlier registration for classes which may make a big difference in getting a schedule she likes.
Back in my day (decades ago!) I also got the IB Diploma. My college had no idea what it was. I felt like I worked harder in high school than I ever did in college. So if that makes you feel better in any way, I think the IB Diploma program thoroughly prepares you for college level work. So congrats in advance on your IB Diploma and be proud of your accomplishment. It was a lot of work, you did not take the easy way out, and you rose to the challenge. You’ll do great in college.
It sounds like you are already in the IBD program rather than deciding whether to do it. In that case, although it’s true you won’t receive your final grades or the diploma until after all US college admissions decisions are made, it is still worth it in my view, for two reasons. First, colleges know the IBD program is rigorous, with no real opportunity for grade inflation, and that it requires students to develop their research, writing and analytic skills - so colleges like to see the IBD and pursuing this program may give you an edge in admissions (there is some oldish data to support this). Second, the program does actually prepare you very well for college-level studies.
However, the higher admission rates to colleges found in one document could also be due to a selection effect, since only relatively strong high school students will choose the IB DP due to the workload.
Definitely worth it. My three daughters were all IB Diploma students. I do not know if it helped in the admissions process, but it certainly didn’t hurt: University of Chicago/Smith/Northeastern. The biggest benefit was the rigor of the program. They had to work hard to get the diploma and thought the IB program was great prep for the college workload.
My D22 is a full IB diploma candidate at a suburban public high school in a large metro area. Prior to starting the IB program in 11th grade she took some AP classes and scored well on the AP exams. Although she is not able to objectively explain why she likes IB better than AP, she still says she is glad she took the IB route.
She is in the top 20% of her large high school class, and scored in the 85th-90th percentile on the ACT and SAT. She only applied to six large, public universities…one in-state and five OOS. She has been accepted to three of the OOS schools and is awaiting decisions on the other two. From her in-state flagship (which focuses almost exclusively on class rank) she received an offer to study one year at a satellite campus before being able to transfer (i.e…a soft rejection).
The three OOS publics which offered her admission (and scholarship money) appeared to do so based only on her GPA and ACT/SAT scores. I do not think IB helped, per se, but I certainly do not think it hurt either. If she is able to gain admission to her two remaining OOS schools, I do not anticipate any merit money from either school because their admission rate(s) are both significantly more competitive than the schools which have offered her admission already.
It has been interesting to see how individual universities view IB. All seem to emphasize the fact that it is (along with AP) considered the “most rigorous” course of study in high school, but there are vast differences in how each school awards credit for IB classes. Just within the six schools to which my D22 applied, the amount of IB credit hours and IB course subjects each school considers does not follow any definitive pattern.
Despite the hard work needed to obtain the IB diploma, my daughter has enjoyed the challenge and the smaller classes at such a large high school. As parents, we continue to feel that it was the right program for her. She made good grades but not great grades, and her ACT/SAT test scores are very good but not exceptional. Nevertheless, she has enjoyed being in the IB program and proving to herself that she could do it.
Ultimately, she applied to schools which interested her and not ones which offer IB scholarship money or ones which offer a lot of placement credit for an IB diploma. Hopefully, her main benefit and reward for having made it through such a rigorous program will be her confidence in knowing that she is more than prepared to handle a college course load.
Probably because IB courses’ content is less aligned with typical college frosh courses in US colleges and universities.
There may also be options and variations for any given IB subject. For example, even math can have considerable variation, as shown by the advanced placement recommended by one math department for various kinds of IB math scores: https://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/high-school-exam-credits (note: 1A, 1B = calculus for math, physics, engineering, etc.; 10A, 10B = calculus, statistics, etc. for biology and pre-med; 16A, 16B = calculus for business).
Our experience with IBD is that the Humanities kids like it but for the more mathy kids the math just isn’t robust enough, and isn’t timed right for them. So those kids end up dropping the diploma and taking Mvc or similar at a local college.
And yes, I know in theory the IB HL math can be stretched to fit. But in practice it rarely makes sense for a school to do that for the small group of math whizzes.
Yes, good point about the math part. D22 took Algebra 1 in 6th, Geometry in 7th, Algebra 2 in 8th, and in order to make the IB math work, took a detour and took AP Stats in 9th (which in retrospect was a fantastic decision as it gave the framework for interpreting studies that rely on stats), and she tested out of IB Math SL in 11th (didn’t find out until 11th grade that the school was going to offer IB Math HL for this year’s 12th graders, and by then the path was already set). Currently taking AP Calc BC and will have a very solid math foundation entering college.
A very mathy student at our high school took AP Calc BC freshman year, IB Math SL sophomore year (students are allowed to take IB classes if they need to at our school, even if they are not IB students) and has been doing MVC at the local CC. The IBD was not a part of her pathway, and as her older brother went off to GT at 16 yrs old, her parents knew that IBD would not make sense for her either (she will also graduate at 16).
One change I wish IB would make is allowing the tests prior to the final two years. This would allow math kids who are out of synch to take IB courses and test in math as sophs, then move on to more advanced math while continuing to pursue the IBD. For whatever reason they wouldn’t allow that (last time I checked, which was a few years ago).
I agree with the previous two posts. I was attending an IB school my first year, but then transferred to my neighborhood high school for my second year. I am a STEM student who was accelerated in math (Calc BC as a freshman), and found the IB Math HL curriculum (covering precalculus and calculus up to BC) to not be nearly challenging enough for my sophomore and junior years when I would be pursuing the diploma. The science curriculum as well wasn’t that strong (most SL), but that was likely a school specific issue. I ended taking three years of math at community college (and later at a state university), along with above-Physics C physics courses and some CS and Bio as well. I think this, rigor-wise, would likely have been more impressive than taking Math HL as part of the diploma. Even if it makes no difference with respect to college admissions, when I talk with my peers who were freshmen as well in my AP Calc class, I will have 40-50 more college credits than they will purely because I took a mix of community college and AP courses versus the IBDP.
For non-STEM students, thought, the IBDP seems awesome.
My daughter is currently a Junior pursuing IB Diplomat program. Could you please share the universities your daughter applied to? I was told some universities love IBD students and it is easier to get admission.
She applied to a bunch, bunch! like a crazy amount. Mainly looking for merit scholarships though. She’s a high stats kid (4.0 unweighted GPA and 1520 SAT w/800 math plus crazy amount of EC). The main one I found that gave $ directly for IB was SMU they give $7,500/yr. !
As a general reminder, which IB classes your school chooses to offer can make a huge difference in whether this is a good fit for you. And it makes a big difference in what the IBD program at one school looks like versus another. While most US schools offer this as their most academically challenging path, there are also ways in which it can be much more accessible to less driven students - but that’s rarely the student profile for which American schools design their programs.
Some schools do a better job of offering more in the way of advanced math and science in their IB program but the "balance " required by the degree will always make it hard for students to double up on classes in their area of interest. I agree that overall, in most places, this may be a harder sell for an advanced STEM kid.
Overall, this is great prep for college though. Very well thought out, regularly updated by educators around the world, and comprehensive.
From my completely unprofessional (purely just my opinion) perspective I think colleges would likely consider it as strongly as rigor achieved in other ways.
