| I don't understand why people think that the AP kid would have so much more free time than the IB kid does.
A top student in an AP-heavy high school program equivalent in rigor to IB would be taking about four APs in junior year and another four in senior year, with probably at least one additional academic subject at the honors level, plus nonacademic courses required to fill up the program and fulfill graduation requirements. At least half of such a student's AP courses would be "hard" APs (where "hard" is defined as a year-long AP course equivalent to a year-long college course and "easy" is defined as an AP course equivalent to a semester-long college course but taught over a full year in high school).
Such a student would need to spend plenty of time studying and working on school assignments, just as IB students do.
My daughter took two "hard" APs outside her IB program -- AP U.S. History and AP Macroeconomics/Microeconomics. Both courses required substantial amounts of study time, just as IB HL courses do. |