<p>I would still argue that getting 3 7s on your IB HLs is much rarer %wise than getting 4 5s out of all the APs you can take. A student can take umteen APs over the course of 4 years and may get a handful of 5s some 4s and even some 3s (omg, a failure! - jk). The IB exam is taken over the course of two weeks at the end of senior year. One shot...</p>
<p>So obviously 7s are given, and of course there are students who get multiple 7s. I have no statistics available to track that.
Using these stats, in 2003 there were a maximum of 2220 (22747<em>.08) different students world-wide who received even one 7 on the IB, whether HL or SL. Assuming the best students may get two or more, we are probably down to a pool of maybe 1200-1500 *worldwide</em> in a given graduating year that are receiving 7s at all and many of these are obviously on SLs which apparently are disregarded as credit-worthy by most US colleges.</p>
<p>If anyone can post similar stats on APs I would love to see them.</p>
<p>In 2005, there were 35,366 IB candidates in the USA, and a 14,041 presented more than 3 exams.</p>
<p>The scores of 7 were distributed as follow:
Language A1 2%
Second Language 8%
Social Sciences 3%
Science 1%
Mathematics 8%
The Arts 2%</p>
<p>There were 95,474 tests given. The distribution is as follows:
Language A1 17%
Second Language 16%
Social Sciences 25%
Science 20%
Mathematics 17%
The Arts 6%</p>
<p>Now you can do the math. The maximum possible number of US students having 3 scores of 7 is 720, and realistically fewer than 300 do have such scorecard. Does the term trivial mean anything in this context? :)</p>
<p>You only get the diploma for taking 6 subjects + (3 HL and 3SL + EE and TOK). What would be the point of presenting for less than 6? </p>
<p>Anyway, I think my point, and I did have one somewhere back there, was that comparing an AP 5 to an IB 7 is not exactly even-steven, and certainly getting 3 7s is an unbelievable accomplishment that should put a student at the very top of his/her peer group worldwide. </p>
<p>Thanks again xig-meister for your sleuthing abilities.</p>
<p>
[quote]
marite - I wonder if those 7s are all in their HLs. Our teachers have consistently told us (parents) <em>not</em> to expect 7s in multiple HL subject areas. Int'ls may have advantage on Language 2 if they are fully bi-lingual. I will be thrilled with 6s from my kids, and not worry about advanced standing at Harvard.
[/quote]
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<p>I researched Harvard's policy for a good reason: that's where my S is. I do know that other schools grant credit for 6s just as they grant credit for 4s on APs and sometimes for 3s. But Harvard has chosen to grant credit only for 5s on APs and 7s on IBs. And these 7s have to be on HLs. Interestingly, Harvard has more international students than ever before; some come with A-levels, some with the German Arbitur, some with the French Baccalaureate and some--possibly a plurality-- with the IB. </p>
<p>If students at a school cannot do well on 3 IB HLs, it may have to do with the quality of the teachers, as another poster suggested--just as many schools that claim to have AP programs ar an 83% failure rate on the exam.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I have a French baccalaureate, on which the IB is modelled. We took exams over the course of two weeks-everything from foreign languages to PE. Several exams had both a written and oral component. The total number of exams was more in the order of 8-9. not counting PE or the orals. And despite the fact that lots of French students fail the baccalaureate, lots do manage to pass. My nieces and nephews have done.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The relationship between successfully completing an AP course and taking the AP exam has become very murky, and that is partly the result of the high schools' use of the AP exam, which is primarity as indicated in the NYT article: to advance rank. My daughter's HS blackmails kids into taking the AP exam by wiping off the AP designation from their transcript if they don't. You can ace AP Physics (supposedly the toughest class in the school) but if you don't take the exam it just shows up as an A in Physics. And of course, this public school, which is using the AP exam for their own purposes, does not pay for you to take the exam.</p>
<p>Many private high schools where we live have opted not to offer AP classes. To satisfy the squawking, they offer honors and advanced sections which will weight the grade. This allows teachers far more freedom in how they teach the class, giving them the opportunity to go for quality or quantity. But these schools do not need the Newsweek ranking.
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<p>I'm not sure I follow the argument. The relationship between an AP class and an AP exam has indeed become murky, but that's because so many students in so-called AP classes do not take the exam. How validate a Physics class where a student gets an A if students do not take the exam? It may be the toughest class in the school, but it is really an AP-level class? </p>
<p>It is fine for schools to get rid of AP classes if they feel they can do a better job teaching what the students need to know. I am at one with critics of the AP curriculum. However, I believe that the schools that have gotten rid of the AP classes are in the more affluent district and the students do take the AP exams even if they do not take the AP classes. These schools are known to adcoms and the exams validate the quality of the learning.</p>
<p>xiggi - is this from the IBO site? According to these numbers, < 3000 candidates were even eligible for an IB diploma last year. That seems incredibly low to me. Esp the 15% taking 5. that makes absolutely no sense. something doesn't smell right here. Is the full IB diploma truly that rare?</p>
<p>marite - there is 'doing well' on the IB, and there is scoring in the top 1-2% of all diploma holders, who mostly represent a self-selected high-functioning student population to begin with. I don't take our school's lack of perfection in the eyes of the IB graders as a failing of our students or teachers.
For the record, I think the numbers xiggi and I have put up substantiate the argument that Harvard's policy favors the AP over the IB in terms of Advanced Standing by equating AP 5s with IB HL 7s. And for better or worse, they do set the standard that many other schools follow. </p>
<p>I have heard that the French Bac is as hard or harder than the IB, and that you need to do very well indeed to get into 'les grand ecoles' where 30% of the French education budget funds 4% of the students. So congrats to you and your family.</p>
<p>xiggi - I thought so. At least that's the Kool-Aid our school admins are feeding us. It is a 2 year process and a good portion of the curriculum is not taught until the second year, so I don't think a student could spread it out over two years.</p>
<p>I just wanted to underline that passing the Bac is not such an extraordinary feat. I have hordes of nephews and nieces. The only two who did not pass have LD.<br>
As for Harvard and other top schools, they do consider IB more challenging than APs. Which is why you need only 3 IB vs. 4 full-year APs (in other words, Physics C M and E& M, not M alone).</p>
<p>But again, let me point out that practically no one gets 3 HL 7s on their IB as xiggi and I showed above, while the chance to take 10-15 APs over one's HS career gives one a realistic chance at achieving 4 AP 5s. </p>
<p>And I agree merely passing the IB with a 24 is not 'rocket science' but getting a 40 or better probably is. :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
10-15 APs over one's HS career gives one a realistic chance at achieving 4 AP 5s.
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<p>10-15 APs? Yikes! Our school offers 12 but 4 of these are in languages which presumably students cannot take concurrently and two are Calc BC and Calc AB which, again, cannot be taken either concurrently or in sequence.</p>
<p>I think if we get to the point where vast numbers of high school students are taking 10-15 APs, we need to go back and look at our definition of "A". Except if we live in Lake Webegone.</p>
<p>marite and 1Down2togo, I had no sense of how rare this (10 AP) was until this past week's senior awards ceremony. My D never took an AP because it was an AP, she just signed up for classes that she liked and then, this year, decided to get tutored in Music Theory (not offered by her school) because she wanted to take the AP exam and place out of it in college. Has ended up with 11 AP [10 classes (1 as a soph, 4 as a jr, 6 this year) just because this was what she wanted to take. I thought most of the kids did the same thing (her school offers a total of 21 APs, though 5 are in languages) until the senior ceremony last week when the head of school announced that he was proud that the seniors took, on average, 2 to 3 APs. Where the heck was I when she was signing up for all these things? The school doesn't weight AP grades and doesn't rank other than quartiles, so it didn't matter to her if they were AP classes or not. It didn't seem to matter too much...did cost her one B+, but, other than the 3 she got on the AP Euro exam as a soph, her scores were excellent, so I assumed she learned the stuff. And had lots of fun.</p>
<p>Well, I see some students on CC (definitely Lakewoebegone) who take many many APs; usually, they are on a block schedule that compresses one year-long classes into a semester. But I do not know of any kid at our school who took 10+ APs. Maybe it's because many of the students take Extension classes so the school does not offer as many APs as it could do (no AP Latin, for example). And maybe some students graduate early (Rhodes scholar from Yale graduated early from the school) before they can take all the 12 APs the school has to offer.
The school does not weigh AP grades, either.
Quiltguru: The important thing is for students to have fun learning. Your D sounds like she had lots of fun with all those APs and that is all that counts.</p>
<p>as a high school student, i think that high schoolers need to stick to high school classes and enjoy high school. Instead of toiling over college classes when they need to be outside or with friends, enjoying these precious years.</p>