| Yup exactly dconcerned, i think it really depends on the school/program you come from.
I think the IB predicted grades are given more value if you come from a school where the record has shown that predicted grades do match up pretty closely with final IB grades and that the "predicteds" can therefore be trusted as what the student will get in the exams (w/o bonus pts of course as those are nearly impossible to predict).
If you take the full IB diploma program like i have, with TOK, CAS, Extended Essays, World Literature etc. i'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a GPA. Predicted grades would be used in most cases as most people do the exams in May. I'm guessing if a school takes the November paper (as they run a January-November school year), though, that results would be out in time to be considered in that US school year's application cycle instead of predicted grades.
I also found that UK schools tend to look a lot more at academics than other aspects compared to the US, where the entire package is taken into consideration. For example, 3 kids from my school this year got into Cambridge (1 for cambridge med) and 2 out of them had perfect 42/42 predicted (and will probably go on to get 45's in the exams). Interviews also tend to be a bit more strange. One of my friends applied to Oxford for economics and was actually tested on his economics knowledge throughout the interview instead of the more relaxed question and answer style interviews in the US app process which aim to find out more about the person. Another Cambridge engineering applicant was asked, as soon as he entered the interview room, how he would find out the volume of Oxygen in the room using no tools or measurement devices whatsoever. |