I am enrolled in the diploma path but i have yet to start it. I’ve asked kids that go to my school about their experiences on the whole diploma thing and most if not all have told me it was HELL, they said they barely get enough sleep, usually sleeping at around 1-2 and waking up at 6. I’m wondering if this is because all these kids are master procrastinators or is the IB really that demanding when it comes to time even if i do things the day they are assigned. Also, how hard does IB get when compared to honors classes? Is it the work that dramatically changes or is it the actual difficulty of the material covered?
One warning: Not all schools will give you credit for IB classes. That surprised me! My daughter’s friend just found this out the hard way. 
My son’s school offers both AP and IB diploma path. Of the total class of about 360, approximately 100 initially chose the IB path. By end of sophomore year, though, the number for students remaining in the IB program typically drops below 50. By end of junior year, the number of IB students drops even further, albeit not that much. This past May when my son graduated, there were only 43 or so IB students, and by my estimation, I’d say only half of that number end up actually receiving the diploma.
When IB students tell you that the program was HELL, they actually mean during junior and senior years, NOT all four years of high school. My son’s life indeed was hell during these two years but then he had an incredible amount of EC commitments, LOT more so than other typical IB students. For a typical IB students, I really wouldn’t characterize their lives during those two years as HELL. It all depends on the type and the number of your EC commitments, really. Sure, IB tends to demand more of your time, from mandatory community service hours (which AP students do anyway), more homework, the Personal Project and the Extended Essay. More time, yes, but I’d say better preparation for college life, particularly the last two and especially the Extended Essay. Because more time is required to accomplish the tasks, the chances are you’ll end up acquiring efficient time management skills.
My son and I feel that, in spite of having gone through hell during the last two years of high school, if he had to do it all over again, he’d choose the IB path without any hesitation.
Just one anecdote: when my son and I ran into my son’s older class friend who came home after a year at Stanford, we asked him how was his academic experience there. His response was: “oh, it was about the same as the IB program” at the high school.
Depends on your goals. As for myself, it was definitely worth it. I learnt to manage heavy workloads, organizational skills, and time management. I met many new friends and it was good to know that I was not alone.
If you ask my Class of 2018 student, he would tell you it’s not. Does your school allow you to take the IB courses without being a “diploma candidate”? His does and that’s the path he would have taken if he did it all over again.
The hardest part so far for him has been the Internal Assessments - he had two due at the same time last year, along with large essays and projects in his other classes (all due within three week of each other). He was dragging for about a month, not getting enough sleep, just existing, feeling miserable, etc. He almost quit his sport because it was just too much and his body couldn’t handle working out on basically no sleep.
His coach told him to just come to practice when he could and we encouraged him to go a couple days a week just to have some sort of social outlet.
This is an excellent student - 3.95 unweighted GPA, 35 ACT, likely NMSF, someone that hardly had to bat an eyelash with homework or schoolwork before starting IB his junior year. And he learned very quickly that it is no joke. It IS that much harder than a regular honors course (at least at his school).
So he would say to just take the courses you want in IB and do the others as regular classes. Unless you want to apply to an international university.
Rigor is a factor considered by admissions officers. IB is more work and is more rigorous than the normal AP path.
If you are applying to your normal flagship university it probably doesn’t make a difference. However if you are shooting for a highly selective college, it probably would help. You have to keep your grades up.
Time management is key with the IB Diploma program, most especially in junior and senior years. There is no need for a student to get only four hours of sleep in any high school program; if that’s the case, either it is too challenging for them or they have too much on their plate besides the academics. My D had no problem with the IB program, managed to have one outside EC, belonged to one club at school, worked a few hours each week, travelled one hour each way on public transportation to get there, and still managed to get 8 hours of rest time/sleep each night (which I required in my house as a parent).
But more likely, probably not. But that’s a discussion the OP needs to have with the GC. If in the very unlikely event that IB rates a “most rigorous” designation, but an AP schedule only warrants a “very rigorous,” Then yes, it could be an issue. But there is no designation of “super duper rigorous.”
The are valid reasons, which AO’s will know, why an IB track is not appropriate for even the academic superstars, including potentially being unable to maximize math and science offerings.
However, the OP did not ask IB vs. AP; s/he asked IB vs. honors, and AO’s will view IB as the more challenging schedule.
My daughter is starting grade 12 and is an IB Diploma student at an IB school. She is a top student and very organized and diligent. She has found the IB workload to be very heavy - but not impossible. There is a reason that colleges view the IB with such favor - it certainly will graduate students who know how to write, know how to manage a heavy workload, know how to balance demands from a variety of courses.
I have a younger child also in IB and I can see the way that the IB prepares kids for the eventual IB diploma - the problem is most schools in the US are only IB in the last years of high school and not all the way from first grade.
I agree with @skieurope, in the end the IB didn’t do much to increase chances at highly selective colleges. It did, however, prepare my D for college in ways that none of her peers from the local high schools can compare. For those out there there is a list of colleges comparing acceptance rates for traditional diplomas and IB diplomas and there are a few dozen selective (think 20-50% acceptance rate) schools where the IB diploma significantly improves odds. Sorry, don’t have the handy but google is your friend 
IB is brutal—but for the kid who chose it because it TRULY suits their learning style, it’s an acceptable amount of brutal. If the deciding factor is because you feel it will “look better” for college admissions, you will be miserable.
We are getting D ready to move-in to college. I told her that after watching what she went through her senior year, I would be more sad to have her here for another year, knowing she had to repeat the incredibly brutal amount of work required for senior year. I will miss her, but it was not fun watching her last year.
The IB Diploma program does require a lot of work, but students are prepared to complete that work by the time they need to submit it. My S’s oral presentation skills improved dramatically and he honed the ability to write a high quality paper in a short amount of time (often a few days or the night before the paper was due–so don’t believe that every top scoring Extended Essay paper took months and months to write!). Looking back, my S is happy he did the full diploma because he feels prepared for college. If he could change anything, it would be that he would have tried to pick a schedule so that he could have taken some of the exams after his junior year. Having to take the exams for all of his classes (something like 13 exams) in a 3 week period at the end of his senior year was the worst part of the program!
@WildLupine --exactly. And it’s not just writing a standard paper with an introductory paragraph, three main paragraphs, etc. It’s the ability to pull out the meat and analyze tough information and present it in an informative way. I didn’t learn those skills until well into college.