<p>I'm a full IB student, but I have some questions.</p>
<p>Do colleges care which course you get better in? ie If i get 7s in HL Math, Physics, Chem but then like 6's and maybe a 5 in english, french, etc SL is there a differnce? Do HL courses mean any more in terms of admission?</p>
<p>How do they look at predicted grades?</p>
<p>Do you colleges like to see that you've done the full IB? ie Do they recognize the difficulty/work load and take that into consideration?</p>
<p>Do they care if you take 4 HL, instead of the required 3?</p>
<p>Each college may be a bit different, but here in Florida, it comes down to whether you actually got the diploma or not - how you got it(based on how many HL’s versus how many SL’s and extra points from essay), is not really relevant as long as you got the necessary 24 points to earn diploma. I’m not sure how you cannot be “full” IB?? I belive they take the workload into account, but that is usually reflected in your higher, weighted GPA for those classes. If the college application asks you what the highest level of classes were at your HS, and then they ask if you took that track, it is probably important to them. I believe you can still get credit from IB exams, similar to AP, even if you don’t ultimately earn the diploma. The IB diploma can, in some cases, also give you credit for other classes, i.e. at FSU, my son did not have to take a required speech class since he was getting the IB diploma - this type of credit will be unique to each college.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply! There are quite a few people at my school that are not doing the full IB diploma, and instead are simply taking a few classes to get the IB certificates. There are also people doing half IB and stuff like that. I’m not too sure how it works either.</p>
<p>I’m also in IB, but I’ve decided to go on the AP route rather than IB. Most people think about the main difference between AP and IB is the courses they take.</p>
<p>IB requires you to take all the IB classes, whereas in AP you can choose which classes you take, as long as it fulfills the graduation requirements.</p>
<p>IB is more about the process, how things work, and why they work, and sometimes that not the best plan for people. IB is well rounded, which can be a positive and a negative, depending on how you look at it. The positive is that students in IB are either those that manage to succeed in all subjects, or the negative side is that there are way too many classes to keep up with, which in return, drops their scores for other classes lower.</p>
<p>I’m doing AP because I’m not a fan of the experimental sciences, and IB requires you to take a range of sciences, from biology to physics and chemistry, all which I’m not interested at all in. I want to major in political science, and move into business and law, and I can’t see the point in taking IB, if I’m forced to take science classes. I’d rather take AP, where I have chosen to take AP U.S. Gov and AP European Studies. I feel that these two classes would better benefit my major and my college planning than taking sciences.</p>
<p>And about the credits and stuff, the credits that IB gives is different for every state and every college. I live in Colorado, but I don’t plan on going to any school in Colorado, but here we have a state law stating that ALL Colorado colleges MUST supply a student with a DP diploma 24 credits. Like I said before, this changes with every state, so look into your state and find out what colleges you want to go to first and what major you want to study before you make a decision.</p>
<p>Hope this helped you at least in some way! :)</p>
<p>“IB requires you to take a range of sciences”
IB requires you to take one science, possibly two. I do agree it focuses more on being well-rounded though, because of the six mandatory categories there is english, a second language, a science, a socials/humanities type course, math, and an optional arts or some other topic course.</p>
<p>Colleges want to see the diploma; they are not as concerned with the individual test scores. That being said, in order to get the college credit I suppose you will need to earn a certain score on the test. For example, a particular college may require a score of 6 or 7 on HL English. Colleges recognize the rigor of IB, and at our high school IB courses are weighted the same as AP. Northeastern told us that they consider SL to be honors level and HL to be AP level. SUNY Binghamton admits IB diploma students in as sophomore status ( not sure how this works in terms of test scores). At my daughter’s HS you are not permitted to take more than 4 HL classes per semester.</p>