<p>There are scores of students who got IB Diplomas as high school students at UVa. Jay Matthews has thought that all SL exams deserve college credit. Do you think Math Studies SL should get college credit? </p>
<p>Get a 5, 6, or 7 on a Higher Level IB exam and you get credit in many areas.
Getting credit for an AP exam requires a 4 or 5 in some subjects and a 5 in a few.</p>
<p>We’ve discussed this before. See the last few posts in this thread:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-virginia/911371-looks-like-good-news-new-students.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-virginia/911371-looks-like-good-news-new-students.html</a></p>
<p>And this one:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-virginia/1089990-uva-wont-accept-my-credits.html?#post12023956[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-virginia/1089990-uva-wont-accept-my-credits.html?#post12023956</a></p>
<p>BTW, I think it’s great that a few of the comments on that opinion piece are from students who went through IB. There are very interesting perspectives there.</p>
<p>Thank you, very interesting, and I see that all schools award credit differently. One Va. public university gives you college credit for Theory of Knowledge and the Extended Essay if you receive an IB Diploma. Just trying to make some decisions.</p>
<p>As an IB Diploma recipient currently at UVa, I would say that in the end, getting lots of testing credits is not what’s really important. I took a mixture of IB and AP exams and got 13 credits from UVa. What I learned from IB is a lot more valuable to me than getting test credits. If you’re looking for something to show from all your hard work, you’ll be entering college having already written more 4-5 page papers than you can count, not to mention a 20-page extended essay. That is actually an incredible advantage. So, yeah it’s not ideal, but at the end of the day I’m still able to take tons of classes that really interest me and I wouldn’t give back my IB diploma for anything.</p>
<p>Thank you, Larry! It’s good to see that love of learning is alive and well!</p>
<p>But it is nice to graduate in about 3 years instead of 4, right? as a lot of my friends have done.</p>
<p>It is all well and good to talk about “Love of Learning,” but with the cost of a college education continuing to skyrocket it would be nice to graduate in 3 years with less debt. The SL IB classes are very rigorous so I think many of them should be given the same status as an AP course.</p>
<p>Not everyone has the luxury of going to college purely for love of learning.</p>
<p>Different schools treat the IB differently. If you want to get through college you might want to look at some other schools policies. Tech for example has a very generous IB credit program. </p>
<p>Having done the IB myself I will say that there are pitfalls to taking HL exams in subjects like history and English. They are graded by individuals all over the world. I remember writing my extended essay and two English teachers got upset because i was using a comparison to Christianity. They warned me that it would be a BIG mistake to write something that could be viewed as less than politically correct.</p>
<p>Additionally, taking endless hours of IB HL exams at the end of your senior year is rough. You are writing constantly for hours a day and there is no scantron portion of IB exams. </p>
<p>The Washington Post Education columnist Jay Mathews actually tried to sit for a HL history exam about 6 years ago. He said he couldn’t do it and called his good friend the President of Cal Tech to challenge him to take one. </p>
<p>As for the question of should IB SL exams count? In some cases I think they should. Only fluent speakers of a language can take HL the AP doesn’t have any such requirement. An IB exam at the SL requires five years of a language. Also IB math SL should be given consideration. I had to have surgery in my junior year and had to withdrawl from the class. Taking college calc at a local university was a piece of cake compared to IB math at the SL. UVa gave me credit for that course which I would not have received otherwise. IB Math HL was described as “mind bendingly difficult” by both the head of student services and the IB coordinator at my high school. I watched some smart people (now at Hopkins, and MIT) crumble under the weight of that course. It is IMHO only for math naturals.</p>
<p>I honestly believe that while admissions people understand and appreciate the rigor of the program, most deans simply don’t understand it and therefore try to liken it to AP. I didn’t know some UVa students were trying to engage the University in this discussion. One of the people quoted in the article was a classmate of mine. I will hit her up on F/B and see what is going on. </p>
<p>Be careful what you wish for though, you don’t want to end up in too many high end courses at UVa right out of the gate. You might never see the outside of Clemons again.</p>