<p>In a story on the front page of its Metro section, the Washington Post [url=<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/24/AR2008022402191.html?nav=rss_education%5Dwashingtonpost.com%5B/url">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/24/AR2008022402191.html?nav=rss_education]washingtonpost.com[/url</a>] (2/25, B1, Mathews) reported, "Across the Washington area, International Baccalaureate (IB) is booming," and "[c]ollege admissions officers say they love seeing IB courses on transcripts." However, "students usually can't get college credit for one-year IB courses, even though they are similar to one-year Advanced Placement (AP) courses." In addition, students who "get credit for passing tests after two-year IB courses" find that "credit is equivalent to one year in AP." Now, "in many local high schools, bewilderment and frustration are growing among students and teachers" regarding "policies about IB that seem at odds with the colleges' oft-stated support for more challenging high school curricula." And according to the Post, "some IB teachers fear that the credit quandary will discourage some students from seeking the challenge." In order to "bolster their argument for credit, IB educators in the" D.C. area "cite a November study from the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute." In the study experts were asked "to compare AP and IB English, math, biology and history courses." The results "concluded that one-year IB and AP courses were about the same in content and rigor."</p>
<p>Silly silly silly silly all around.</p>
<p>Of course the IB courses are equivalent (or better) to the AP courses.</p>
<p>Of course, the colleges are hesitant to award the equivalent of 1-1/2+ years of college credit to IB diplomates. What is college worth if you can get it all in high school?</p>
<p>And College Board and the IB folks aren't lobbying furiously about this, oh no no no . . . </p>
<p>A mini version of this played out at my kids' school when it introduced a small pilot IB program a few years ago. They had to decide how to weight the IB courses for GPA purposes.</p>
<p>First, they were going to weight them all like APs. Ding! All but one or two of the top 20-ranked kids in the class signed up for it immediately. Lots of them were legitimately interested, but all of them believed that the IB kids would have a huge advantage in class rank because it was impossible for juniors to take a full load of AP courses. </p>
<p>When the faculty realized that all of the top students were going to get sucked into the IB program, they revolted. A new decision came down: 11th grade IB courses would be weighted like honors courses, 12th grade like APs. The result was an immediate loss of interest on the part of the most competitive students, since that would have handicapped them significantly with regard to class rank after 11th grade. (Interestingly, as far as I can tell the school has never quite "gotten" the fact that the kids care more about class rank at the time of college application than they do about class rank at the time of graduation. The school has some nice prize endowments, and it is definitely worth some money to finish first or second, but only three or four kids are ever in that race.)</p>
<p>After a lot of sloshing around, they came up with some kind of custom weighting scheme that provided a very mild boost to the IB kids, and maybe four or five of the top 20-ranked kids wound up in the program. (Some other problems emerged that made it unattractive to specific sets of the kids -- impossibility of taking two languages, schedule coordination problems for kids with scientific research projects going on, and no appropriate math option for kids who were ahead of the pack there.) Anyway, it was fine. But nothing happened easily.</p>
<p>It's not quite as big a deal as it seems. First, a lot of IB students just take the AP exam that matches the standard level IB course (sometimes, the SL IB course is essentially identical to the the AP course). Second, a student taking the IB diploma has to take 3 or 4 classes at the higher level--for which colleges generally give credit. But yes, it would be nice if the IB SL exam could give credit without the need to take the AP exam too.</p>
<p>The expensive, time-consuming, and altogether irritating solution for some high schools is to incorporate extra AP material into already-challenging IB courses (especially one-year SL courses) and for the students to then take both the AP and IB tests at the end of the course.</p>
<p>My daughter, who graduated from a Washington-area IB program, is a good example of how IB is viewed less favorably than AP. She got exactly zero credit or advanced placement for her IB exam scores, even though she had four 6s and two 7s (on a 7-point scale). She didn't even get credit for her HL subjects (this particular college only gives credit for a score of 7 in one of her three HL fields, English, and it doesn't give credit at all for the other two -- history and music). She also took eight AP tests -- some based on IB courses, some on AP courses that she took outside the IB program. She got 4s or 5s on all of them (everybody knows that AP is on a 5-point scale, right?) and got credit for all of them, for a total of 30 credits, with advanced placement or the option to skip certain courses in most of the subjects. </p>
<p>However, advanced placement and credit are not what IB is all about. Its real benefit is the extraordinarily good preparation for college that it provides. When IB students get to college, they already have a good general education, they know how to manage their time, and they know how to write. Many other students, including those with multiple APs, cannot say the same.</p>
<p>Yep, at S's college, credit was given for higher level IB classes but no credit for standard level. I've heard it said that a standard IB course is similar to a regular college prep course, but it seems to be tougher to me.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>The expensive, time-consuming, and altogether irritating solution for some high schools is to incorporate extra AP material into already-challenging IB courses (especially one-year SL courses) and for the students to then take both the AP and IB tests at the end of the course.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Except for a handful of courses, the courses at our local high school are AP/IB. The kids in the IB program often take both tests; the kids who aren't in IB take the AP test. That seemed like a big waste to me. Both of my kids chose not to be in the IB program.</p>
<p>The easy solution to this madness is to CUT DOWN this entire advanced credit non-sense and restrict the numbers of credit drastically, if not a minimum . While an IB class *might *be at the level of an AP course, it is still a HIGH SCHOOL course that suffers from very uneven performances among different schools. Witnessing how IB programs are introduced in Texas schools that barely crack 800 on the TOTAL of Math and Reading SAT test shows the lack of consistency of a program that should have been scrutinized a lot more before its adoption in the United States.</p>
<p>IMHO, schools that are restricting the credits for AP or IB deserve applause for trying to return some common sense to a system that has spun out of control. Let high schools be high schools and colleges be colleges, and let stop pretending the level of education is the same.</p>
<p>AP (and IB) should be used for a single purpose and that is Advanced Placement. After all the courses were not called Advanced Credit or International Credit for a reason. This shameful commercialization of those programs as a tool to shave college years ONLY hurts the students.</p>
<p>I agree with you, xiggi, that colleges are handing out way too much credit for APs as well as IBs. That being said, this statement -- "Witnessing how IB programs are introduced in Texas schools that barely crack 800 on the TOTAL of Math and Reading SAT test" -- is a bit of a red herring. Nobody is talking about awarding credit for mere participation in these programs, but rather for achieving high marks on the standardized IB exams. Thanks to Jay Mathews and his silly Challenge Index, a lot of schools are funneling underqualified students into AP courses as well, and I've seen no evidence that IB's audits are any looser than AP's.</p>
<p>Bottom line, though, is that anybody who thinks a student who self-studies "Human Geography" for a couple of weeks and scores 5 on the AP exam deserves credit for a semester college course is dreaming.</p>
<p>If an IB student isn't sufficiently prepared to earn a high score on an IB test, of course that student shouldn't get college credit or advanced placement, just as an AP student with a low score would not.</p>
<p>But IB SL differs from AP primarily in emphasis, not rigor. And, based on the experiences of my daughter and her IB classmates in Maryland, getting top scores on IB tests, especially HL tests, is considerably more difficult than getting them on AP tests.</p>
<p>I kind of agree with Xiggi about credit--I'm not looking for my son to cut a year off his college experience. However, I do think it would be unfair to put him in an intro course that AP students can skip, if his IB course (and score on the SL exam) is equivalent to the AP.
But I have a question--in what subjects can a student really expect to get significant placement at selective schools? Math, science, and foreign language are the obvious examples...but it was my understanding that at selective schools you don't really get much out of AP English or History, at least in terms of placement.
In my son's IB program (which I suspect is the same one Marian's daughter came through), all the students end up with HL English and History. My son is a junior, and will take SL math--but will also take the AP calculus test. (I think this is an example of a combined subject that goes beyond the IB SL math.) He will also take SL French, but is going to take French again next year, so may take the AP test then. I will say that his IB schedule has essentially made it impossible for him to take more than one science in his junior and senior years, because physics is a two-year program.</p>
<p>If I had known how few credits I would get for my Bilingual IB Diploma (one, for French A1 HL), I would have taken AP tests in math, biology, and chemistry, but no one at my DC high school (not featured in this particular article) ever mentioned to us that it might be a good idea, so I didn't. As it is, I'll have to retake introductory calculus and statistics if I ever want to take, say, any economics beyond the intro course, since IB Mathematics SL doesn't count for anything here. It's pretty frustrating.</p>
<p>Artichoke: Are you sure? I would bet that a five-minute chat with the director of undergraduate studies or department chairman would get you out of the prerequisite.</p>
<p>To Hunt:</p>
<p>At my daughter's college, you have to have a 7 on the IB HL English exam to get exempted from one of the two semesters of required freshman writing seminars. A 5 on either the AP English Language or AP English Literature test will get you the same exemption.</p>
<p>My daughter wanted to try to get the exemption but knew that her chances of getting a 7 on the IB HL English exam were about the same as her chances of winning the lottery. (English is not her best subject.) So she took the AP English Language exam in 12th grade just to try for the exemption (one of the advantages of being admitted Early Decision is that you can pick and choose your AP tests in this way). Despite taking the AP exam cold (I mean really cold -- she did not prepare at all), she got her 5 and got out of one of those writing seminars. But she only got a 6 on the IB exam, a score that is worthless at her college.</p>
<p>My daughter did not bother taking the AP Euro test, but a lot of people who take IB History (Europe) do, and some get good scores. But I have been told that there are some topics that students must cover on their own to be truly prepared for this AP test. I don't know how much credit colleges give for AP Euro; I do know that my daughter got credit and an exemption from an introductory course for AP U.S. History, but since she doesn't intend to take more U.S. history, the exemption is kind of meaningless.</p>
<p>D got no credit at the college level for AP tests passed. Not that I mind taking the AP classes (good teachers and motivated classmates), but why bother to pay to have the kids take the tests? By the end of their senior year, at $80+ a pop, that $$ could have been spent buying books at the college level for a semester or two.</p>
<p>I was thinking that my son could take some AP exams at the end of senior year if he wants--that way he would already know where he was going to college, and thus whether it would be worthwhile to take them for credit or placement...and a low score couldn't really hurt him in any way.</p>
<p>I am not familiar with IB program, but AP classes (which are almost always the best classes that students can take at schools that offer them) are no where near the level of teaching at top colleges and universities. Not surprisingly, many schools become more and more stingy about awarding credit - many give it only for 5s, and only in select subjects. Stanford, that used to be quite generous, cut their credits in more than half few years ago. Some schools that do award credit limit the number of credits you can use, or even telling the students that it will be better for them to retake the class instead of using AP credit (this is especially true for lab sciences).</p>
<p>
[quote]
I was thinking that my son could take some AP exams at the end of senior year if he wants--that way he would already know where he was going to college, and thus whether it would be worthwhile to take them for credit or placement...and a low score couldn't really hurt him in any way.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Unless he applies ED or EA, he won't know what college he's going to at the time when he has to sign up for and pay for the tests. He might have to make his plans based on the placement/credit policies of a variety of colleges.</p>
<p>However, the theory that the score couldn't hurt him is entirely valid. If your son does indeed go to the same school that my daughter did, the Powers That Be will discourage him from taking a lot of extra AP tests as a senior because the pressure on the kids from the IB exams is already quite heavy. But they will not actually prevent him from taking any test that he wants to take. They will just grumble a little.</p>
<p>In our school the first year of IB is IB SL/AP classes and the second year is IB HL. So the credit problem is solved, though it makes the first year more hectic than it should be doing stuff to meet the requirements of both programs. I don't think it's really an expensive solution, it's just harder for the students.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But IB SL differs from AP primarily in emphasis, not rigor. And, based on the experiences of my daughter and her IB classmates in Maryland, getting top scores on IB tests, especially HL tests, is considerably more difficult than getting them on AP tests.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is so true. IB students can often get 5's with very little or no prep on AP tests (as someone else has mentioned in this thread). Why not take them both? An IB Diploma student is essentially testing for 2-3 weeks straight, when do you want them to take 6 AP tests?</p>
<p>Also as someone else has mentioned, 7's are very very hard to obtain. A very small percentage of students break 40 on their Diploma, but how many people score six 5's on AP tests? Lots. They are all over the boards right here. Oxford / Cambridge generally hand out conditional acceptances for 37-38 points on the 6 tests.</p>
<p>Cut back the AP credit, or give IB what it deserves.</p>
<p>"Unless he applies ED or EA, he won't know what college he's going to at the time when he has to sign up for and pay for the tests. He might have to make his plans based on the placement/credit policies of a variety of colleges." </p>
<p>True--but I guess the biggest downside risk is the cost. If he ends up going to a school where the AP won't help, he can still decide not to take the test, or to take it without extra prep.</p>