<p>S2 attended the same program and Hunt’s and Marian’s students. </p>
<p>They were accepted into the program beginning in 9th grade and the first two years were pre-IB courses, taught in the IB manner and with the increased workload and expectations. For example, all IB students took AP US Govt and AP USH in 9th and 10th grades – but they were taught in the style of IB. Pre-IB 9th grade English was tougher than AP Eng Lang/Comp – my older S was taking AP Lang at the same time S2 was taking IB English 9, and there was no question whose class was tougher. He had TOK, SL Philosophy and HL Euro senior year – and was one happy camper. That said, the stress of the TOK paper, EE, college apps, a 25-hr. week helmet sport and being captain of a major EC was not fun. However, he was also bound and determined to have a life outside of school. He got eight hours of sleep a night and did not grub for every last point. </p>
<p>My math/science S did not even consider IB. Calc BC and Comp Sci AB were baseline minimum courses for him, taken soph year. IB could not get him what he needed in those areas. </p>
<p>As for credit/placement – he took APs to make sure he got credit for his SL coursework, and took a couple of APs to make sure he’d get a good enough score between AP/IB for credit/placement. Wound up with 11 APs and full IB. I wouldn’t do IB for credit – but for the education.</p>
<p>S really didn’t study for his IB or AP exams. The crazy workload throughout the years was sufficient preparation.</p>
<p>S found freshman year at Tufts to be easier than he expected, mainly because he had learned to crank out those big papers and manage his time. </p>
<p>Here are some previous threads that have postings from a number of the regular IB parents posters, as well as student perspectives.</p>
<p>Another satisfied IB parent here, but I think it depends greatly on the implementation of the program at the partical school. S’s program was started in the early 80’s, so they’ve had plenty of time to learn how to do it. The program is a selective admit magnet program or about 120/class, and the teachers took advantage of the fact that they had a well-defined group of students all in the same program to do things like meeting the TOK requirements over 2 years with special events, field trips, guest speakers, and some time stolen from other classes now and then rather than making the kids fit another class into their schedule. They also, as a matter of course, took AP exams in all of their IB classes, and the teachers planned their curriculum so they would be prepared. An excellent benefit was the peer group and sense of community–the IB program made a huge high school feel much smaller. </p>
<p>One difference between IB and AP that I think is important is the assessments. IB assessments includes in addition to the exams, significant writing projects–not just the EE–but in most courses and speaking. For HL English, for example, S was given a poem and 10 or 15 minutes to prepare, and then had to give a verbal analysis. AP has only the written exams. A teacher who “teaches to the test” for AP might (and I know of this happening) spend the entire year prepping students to answer DBQs (a question format that appears on the APUSH test and involves writing a couple of paragraphs based on some material given in the exam) but never get around to assigning a term paper. This may be (I’m not sure) effective at increasing the pass rate on the AP exam, but it certainly isn’t the best preparation for college.</p>
<p>Another fan of the IB program here. My DD elected to do the IB program at her high school, AP is also offered for students who prefer that option. The students who opted to take the AP route wanted to focus in certain areas of class strength or interest. A full IB regiment does not allow you to pick and choose your curriculum.</p>
<p>She was also on a varsity team as well as a year round sports club. Was it stressful, yes, there is no doubt about it. Ask her today if it was worth it and if she do it all over again and the answer would be an emphatic yes. She believes it helped her get into her dream school and prepared her for a very challenging school.</p>
<p>To the poster who was concerned about lack of preparation: I actually was sort of “recruited” in 8th grade for IB. I had to be rezoned to my current high school. However, IB does not officially start until next year, and I am essentially getting cold feet. I am going to take the advice given here and turn everything over for the next few months until we make scheduling decisions in January. </p>
<p>In D’s high school, students committ to IB at the end of sophmore year. D loves the IB program, it just suits her. The high school is in year 11 or so of offering the IB diploma.
The school has a very high success rate with canidates earning their IB diploma (90%+).</p>
<p>How the program is implemented at YOUR high school can make all the difference in the world. We have many varsity athletes (recruited athletes in the program). We have music kids in the program. The principal is committed to making it all work, and it shows.
Junior year is tough for everyone–IB or AP. At D’s school most of Junior year is AP classes for the first year of what will become HL classes. Senior year is IB courses. Some of the students take some of their IB tests in May of Junior year, along with AP tests…it’s intense but doable. As D put it, you just study once for both tests.<br>
The college admission results (tracked over multiple years) show that IB seems to help. And comments from graduates say IB is the best prep for college—and they have all taken both AP and IB.</p>
<p>“For them, IB was much too light on math and science” - It probably depends on the hs offerings. In fact, the best advise on IB/AP decisions will come from students and parents at the HS in question. </p>
<p>I’ll admit that IB is heavy on non-math/science courses. But I didn’t consider it light on math/science. Ha, it’s heavy on everything and is a big commitment. DS’s courses (incl HL Math and HL Physics and SL Chem) prepared him very well for his engineering studies. </p>
<p>He made time for lots of music in hs too, but it kept him very busy! I had another kid that tried IB, but it was too intense. (Hint - most kids should not do two IB sciences simultaneously, unless they really like writing up labs.)</p>
<p>When people here say that IB is light on math and science, we’re not necessarily criticizing the content of IB math and science courses. It’s more that the structure of the program does not allow math/science-oriented students to focus their attention on these subjects to the extent that they could if they were not in IB. </p>
<p>The other demands of the IB program, the fact that not all subjects are offered at all levels in IB schools, the requirement that some subjects be taken SL, and the requirement that HL subjects (or the final year of a two-year HL course) must be taken in 12th grade (not earlier) all tend to work against the focused math/science person.</p>
<p>Another factor that a math/science oriented student in an IB program may need to think about is the SAT Subject Tests. Students who intend to study math or science in college usually want to take their subject tests in math and a science (and if they are thinking of majoring in engineering, this is pretty much a necessity). But the structure of IB courses is an awkward match for the need to have completed a rigorous course in a science by the end of 11th grade in order to do well on the Subject Test. Often, an HL science is taught by covering half the topics in 11th grade and half in 12th. A student in this type of course is not ready to take an SAT Subject Test at the end of the first year of the two-year course without a lot of self-study. And IB schedules do not allow a lot of time for self-study.</p>
<p>A few kids in my daughter’s class solved this problem by taking AP Chemistry in 11th grade in addition to the IB program just so that they would be very well prepared to take an SAT Subject Test in a science at the end of that year. But this takes a degree of dedication well beyond the norm.</p>
<p>My D did HL Biology and HL Chemistry. She took the Biology Sat II at the end of the first year (sophomore) and the Chem subject test at the end of junior year and came close to acing both. At least in our school, the first year of those courses covered a basic curriculum, the same as SL, and the second year had the more advanced topics. They also proved to be excellent preparation for her college bio and chem courses, last year. She also took a year of physics junior year, and while I have seen others comment that IB physics is weak compared to AP, we’ll see when she takes physics this year at college.
Obviously, if a kid is taking calculus sophomore year, then IB math would not be enough. But for anyone else HL math is very challenging and covers a lot.</p>
<p>D2 went to a prep school from K-10, then she moved to a new school where IB was offered, and it was considered to be the most rigorous curriculum. She is a senior whose focus is more on humanities courses. </p>
<p>She dislikes IB. She thought her curriculum at the previous prep school was more rigorous and creative. She feels IB courses are too strict and formula based, and that includes “creative writing.” For her science lab, if she wrote it in the exact format, she could be guaranteed an A. If she didn’t write her paper in the exact format, points would be taken off. She feels there is a lot of unnecessary amount of busy work. Recently she went back to her old prep school, the dean asked her about her IB experience because they were considering IB for the school, D2’s response was absolutely not. That being said, D2 has mostly A+ in her classes, that is because she has figured out the exact format to spit back the information.</p>
<p>A student from D2’s current school last year did not do IB, but went the AP route. He was the student who got into Harvard, Princeton and Columbia. </p>
<p>Marian is absolutely correct about IB courses do not match up to SAT subject tests. D2 had to self study for those tests, which was also waste of time.</p>
<p>The required course sequences can make IB course scheduling a real pain. In a small hs, the problem can be really bad since many subjects (for IB and non-IB) have only one section. Then once the student has made long term plans for which 3 (or 4) HL 2-year sequences, it’s hard to switch. AP has more flexibility, especially if the hs offers many AP courses. </p>
<p>“She feels IB courses are too strict and formula based” - Another IB disadvantage. DS felt this the most in English, but part of the issue may have been related to the teacher. </p>
<p>“But the structure of IB courses is an awkward match for the need to have completed a rigorous course in a science by the end of 11th grade in order to do well on the Subject Test” - Perhaps it depends on how the school chunks out the material across the 2 years of HL courses. It would be worthwhile to do careful checking. (We didn’t know enough to do so - just got lucky.)</p>
<p>My son took the Physics and Math2 Subject tests at the end of junior year, after only first year of HL courses. He got 800 on both without studying. I had encouraged him to self-study a bit, but after he aced practice tests I gave up. Admittedly he is a good test-taker and those are his areas of strength… but it seems like he must have been exposed to the required material. </p>
<p>Thinking more, I seem to recall that Chem (and maybe Bio) at same hs were set up differently. They may have been more vulnerable to the SubjectTest-snafu.</p>
<p>One other consideration: what specific IB courses are offered at your school, both SL and HL? In the earlier years of our h.s.'s IB program, there wasn’t a tremendous number of IB course offerings and all IB students effectively HAD to take an HL Math or HL science class to complete the diploma. Twelve years into it, we now have a whole panoply of IB courses, and kids have a lot more choice. </p>
<p>Junior year is a headache from a scheduling perspective. Many – perhaps even most – IB diploma students took online PE or health classes from BYU to make room for choir, band, orchestra or drama. IB Bio HL was a particular problem as students needed to take both the IB Bio HL class and a semester of Biochem. </p>
<p>I would ask about what data is available on student performance on IB exams. Not a great advantage if the school doesn’t have good results, imo.</p>
<p>For the chem and bio subject tests that D2 took after the first year of each course, she did a couple of practice tests, reviewed some stuff she missed and that was it. She did not feel there were any gaping holes in her knowledge. It may well vary among schools, although I don’t believe it is supposed to.</p>
<p>As for IB courses being formulaic, well I hadn’t heard that complaint from Ds but I have seen written that a lot of APs involve more rote memorization and that an advantage of the IB program is that it goes deeper rather than broader. It has been said that the changes they are making in some of the AP curriculum/exams (bio and I don’t know what else) are going make them more like IB.</p>
<p>At S2’s school, the pre-IB bio class in 9th grade was pretty intense and they made sure they hit what needed to be covered on the SAT-II. The Bio teachers encouraged the kids to take the SAT-II at the end of 9th grade, and the kids tended to do very well. Note that most engineering majors want either chem/physics SAT-II and a math. A BME major I know found this out the hard way (thought she could use the Bio SAT-II for her science) and had to take the physics SAT-II senior year after one year of SL.</p>
<p>My math/CS guy’s HS offered many post-AP options in his areas of interest. Because there was a place for these sharply focused kids to go in our school system, it meant the IB program S2 attended didn’t have to be all things to all people in that regard. IB will not let you avoid or hide from your weaknesses. </p>
<p>Oldfort – creative writing? In IB? Heck, all S2 did was literary/critical analysis for four years straight. He would have killed for a persuasive essay assignment (but solved that problem by doing LD debate, where he fulfilled that need).</p>
<p>Interestingly there is one more thing that I would like to share. At the Freshman kickoff for my D’s College here in Mumbai there were 8 kids and all of them from IBDP curriculum.</p>
<p>I think it can’t be emphasized enought that what matters the most is how IB and AP are delivered in the specific school. Either one can be great or weak.</p>
<p>^^^agree. At S1’s school (non-IB), the content of BC Calc was done in one semester so they just kept on going deeper, AP Stat was calc-based and one semester, the old Comp Sci AB was one semester and went WAY beyond the AP curriculum, and their special version of AP Physics C had a pre-requisite of MV/DiffEq and was based directly on our flagship’s intro honors sequence for physics majors. Half of the class S1’s year made the top 100 in USAPhO using what they learned in the course and without extra studying. </p>
<p>For these “angular” kids, this was a far better option than our very highly regarded, long-standing IB program at a top UNSWR school.</p>
<p>"think it can’t be emphasized enough that what matters the most is how IB and AP are delivered in the specific school. Either one can be great or weak. " - Soooo true! </p>
<p>Also important is the student fit for those factors. I have two very bright kids. One did great in IB at our district magnet IB hs. I can’t say enough good things in that case. The other did pretty well in the pre-IB courses but had a dismal Junior year (more intense courses, and in retrospect too many of them)… causing IB drop-out and severe confidence issues afterward. </p>
<p>For the one that struggled, maybe IB was still a good thing because it alerted us (while she was still living home) to organization challenges that were not obvious with normal hs level rigor. Or maybe it was a bad thing because with 2 more years of maturity she would have handled it better. We’ll never really know. </p>
<p>Bright kids that like “wing it” mode for academics (which can work in MS and easier HS classes) won’t be a good fit for IB. There’s just too many labs, projects, TOK, CAS requirements, etc. The same may be true of AP, if student takes many AP courses simultaneously.</p>
<p>^^^ +1, esp if the IB program has a sink-or-swim mentality. S’s schools prided itself on its 98-100% full diploma rate, and did not always think about whether expectations and workloads were reasonable.</p>
<p>IB requires extremely careful compliance with very rigidly defined rules. For everything. This comes more naturally to some personality types than others.</p>
<p>Taking a lot of APs may be difficult for some students because of the quantity of work, but the compliance aspect is not that difficult. You pay for the test. You show up at the right time and place. You don’t bring in your cell phone or any other forbidden objects. That’s about it.</p>
<p>Interesting…we find D’s IB program to be less rigid, offer more opportunity for creativity. I suspect this is another case of “see how it works at YOUR school”. That really can’t be emphasized enough. While AP test compliance is fairly straightforward, AP classwork is very rigid, teach to the test, go at the same pace. IB is in depth, find your interest, paced to the needs of the class.</p>