His top choice school said that they put the IB Diploma candidates in a separate pile from students who just take IB classes (because the full Diploma is the "most rigorous"offered at his school), which is why we are struggling to walk away from the Diploma.
@WildLupine …up to this point, what has his highest math class been?
Math studies is statistics and some pre-cal. He can truly self-study this IF he will be given an off period and the time to do the work and IF the IB math studies teacher will make himself VERY available as he is planning his IA.
Agreed, and I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.
The only situations I can think of where abandoning IB would have serious adverse consequences would be (1) if the guidance department will no longer classify his program as “most rigorous” if he’s not an IB diploma candidate any more, or (2) if he has to transfer to another high school for his senior year if he drops out of IB.
Because attempting to do any extra academic courses on top of a full IB program is generally regarded as insane.
@Marian …I’m a parent of an IB student. I don’t think it is insane.
IB Seniors at Ds school have 5-6 classes. There are 8 periods in the day. D could EASILY take an online class to fill up those empty spaces. She has classmates who are taking two off periods. What is the difference in taking an off period or going home and taking an online class?
D has two open spots in her schedule and that IS with a full IB Diploma schedule. She is taking Calculus and Physics.
To,the OP…is your kiddo the only one with this scheduling conflict in the IB program? If so…why? If not, what are the other parents doing about it?
Our HS is small, and frequently there is only one section of something like an AP course. My DD really wanted to take AL Modern Euro…but it met at the same time as honors wind symphony. Every senior IN Honors Wind Symphony had the same conflict. So guess what…none of them took that AP course. They took AP Gov (which I should add, my kid absolutely hated) instead.
The AP Modern Euro teacher pitched a fit, because guess what? Most of the kids who wanted to take his course we’re in Honors Wind Symphony. That schedule conflict never happened again.
Smaller schools have difficulty providing multiple sections of courses, especially for smaller numbers of students.
And really? Some school told you they put IB diploma kids in a better admissions pile? Where is that?
Reed told us that. But Reed is notoriously weird.
How many students do the diploma program? I have never heard of a school calling IB Math SL calculus in the first place. Very odd. We have about 90 Diploma candidates every year and offer 2 sections of IB Math SL and one section of HL yr 1 and one section of yr 2 each year. Math Studies is not offered.
I have a similar question to Thumper’s. Is it common for kids on the IB Diploma track to have schedule conflicts that prevent them from completing? I would think if the school Has a track that the kids would just follow it. How could the school let this happen?
And I personally know more than a handful,of recent Reed students who did NOT complete an IB program…at all. It’s not like Reed only accepts IB diploma kids.
Of course they do but all they were saying when we talked to them was that they look at them differently so they put them in a different stack
And no I have never heard of a kid at our school who couldn’t complete the diploma program because of a scheduling conflict. We offer three different HL Sciences multiple sections of both maths multiple social studies options there’s always a way to do it.
@thumper1 There are apparently a few other students who will be doing the independent study in Math Studies, but we don’t know who they are at this point. Carleton told us IB Diploma students are in a different category.
@“Erin’s Dad” At my son’s really small school, the schedule is always a challenge. One would think they would create a schedule that works for the 14 or so IB Diploma students, but both last year and this year they scheduled single section courses at the same time. We ended up skipping our son to a higher level of his language last year to “make the schedule work.” That turned out okay, but it feels wrong to hold him back by having him take a class that will mostly be review. My husband has been rehearsing his angry speeches about the school’s inability to create a workable schedule. Should be a fun meeting today.
There are variations within the program in terms of students’ levels of readiness when they come in and the curriculum choices they make when they get there. Kids come in with different math levels and different foreign languages and foreign language levels. And many IB programs allow some flexibility. For example, a student may have a choice of three sciences and three or four electives (sixth subjects). Some of these choices involve two-year course sequences, so a kid who takes the first half of the sequence as a junior could be kind of trapped in the sequence senior year.
This is different from my daughter’s experience. She went to a school where you had to take classes all 7 periods. So if IB didn’t fill all those periods (as was the case for her in her senior year), you took something else in addition (she took AP Economics). Taking an online course on top of that type of schedule (with 7 classes, most of them IB) would be very difficult. Taking an online course on top of a 5 or 6 course schedule in a school with 8 periods might not be.
It’s quite common at our IB school to take additional courses online. Our program is young and due to limited course offerings, many of the higher achieving students take APs through the virtual school. One of my son’s friend has taken a quite insane number of them - I haven’t any idea how. My son signed up for two over the summer. He quickly realized one was a mistake and dropped it during the grace period. But he is having no issues taking Calc BC online while maintaining his grades in his regular IB diploma courses.
I’m not quite understanding all theIB students taking BC calculus. Doesn’t HL math cover all the same material and more?
@VickiSoCal …our school does not offer the 2 year HL Math class. We have Math studies and Math SL (2 year)–they both touch on some pre-cal but not in-depth calculus.
@Marien …yeah that would not work if it was in addition to seven full classes. Yikes!
It does, but (1) not all IB schools offer HL math, (2) HL math is considerably more difficult than BC calculus but generally gives students the same amount of college credit, and (3) of the 6 subjects in which an IB student takes exams, either 3 or 4 must be HL and 2 or 3 must be SL.
There’s a fairly large population of IB kids who do not want to take HL math but also want to take calculus in high school.
Some IB schools offer a hybrid course that combines one of the SL math curricula with enough calculus to give the student a good shot at either the AB or BC calculus test (depending on the course content). This is exactly what many students are looking for.
@VickiSoCal My son was already taking HL physics so he was reluctant to take HL math. Our SL is taught so as to prepare them for the AB exam so when he got a 5 on that, he decided to continue online.
HL Math goes farther than BC Calc.
And the curve is ridiculous, and the test is hard. There’s a reason why most schools don’t offer it. We had only eight people take the test this year, and no one passed.
@whitespace … I wouldn’t even want to see the IA for HL Math! To do all that work and not pass the test!! Soooo rough.
Okay you guys are making me feel very good about our school. We had 20 take the test with a 90% pass rate.