Taking an IB Course at HL when offered at SL

<p>I would like to take Physics HL for a myriad of reasons -particularly because I hate Biology. My school offers a two year Physics SL course so would it be possible to take it at HL with the teacher's support and permission? My understanding is a girl at my school is going to be taking French HL when it is not offered.</p>

<p>Has the teacher already agreed? I’d be surprised if the teacher is willing to put in that much more extra effort for just one student. Unless I am mistaken, an HL science class actually requires more teaching hours and more lab time, more assignments to be graded for the portfolio, etc. (at least it did when my kids were in school.)</p>

<p>Languages are different. It seems like they would be easier to do the extra HL material as an independent study.</p>

<p>S2’s school offered the two-year SL Physics course. It is NOT the same as HL. IB requires specific amounts of in-class time, labs and internal assessments for their program, which is why it’s not possible to do IB exams as self-study the way one can with AP.</p>

<p>Someone doing foreign language might be able to work with a teacher for the extra clock hours, but I don’t see that happening with something like physics.</p>

<p>I did IB in high school, and the policy seemed to be that you could only take an HL or an SL if we offered the class for it. For example, I took HL Math, which was a completely different beast than SL Math. We also were all required to take HL English because our school didn’t offer an option for SL. HL generally requires extra stuff like Karen and CountingDown mentioned, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to talk to your teacher if you haven’t already.</p>