Columbia_Student

Don't kid yourself about the grade deflation part. I've seen kids graduated from top boarding schools such as Exeter, Andover, etc.. with GPA 3.5 uw and got into schools such as USD, NYU, JHU. Your ranking is also very important. Top 10% of your high school is better.

dconcerned

i'm sorry but i think i need to say a bit more. every year int'l students attending ib full diploma 2-yr program apply to ivies/elite schools in us, having no gpas but only ib predicted scores bc actual scores will come out after the final exams in first half of may. based on predicted scores or a levels etc., colleges can review the students application and notify them of either ed mid-dec or by may 1 for rd. of course, these students still need to take sat 1 and sat subject tests if required. some int'l students are new to cc and i don't want them to be confused or discouraged by some inaccurate info.

there's a big difference between ib full diploma 2-yr program having 3 higher level (hl) subjects and 3 standard level (s) subjects plus tok and cas, and individual ib subjects taken. ib full diploma 2-yr program is perfectly fine for admissions requirements for all top tier schools in us.

for reference, we can check websites of, i'm pretty sure, all ivies/elite schools clicking admissions/int'l students and we can find most of info there.
my son and i had been thru all this process. when he applied to us (engineering) schools, he used predicted score (41 plus bonus points), sat 1 and sat 2 subject tests (math & physics) in his college applications, and no gpas. he was accepted to u michigan, cmu, cornell and upenn (which were the only two ivies he applied). he will be going to u penn this fall.

dconcerned

microblaster:

come to think of it, i'm not sure if you're taking the gpa system as main study program and take individual ib courses as additional. but since you said you have a predicted score of 38/45 (thus bonus points already included), i must then assume you're taking ib full-diploma 2-yr program. so what is the case?

Hunt

At IB schools in the U.S., typically letter grades are given in addition to IB scores. Perhaps his school is like that. If that's the case, I have to think that U.S. colleges will focus on those grades and not on the predicted score. Obviously, if there is nothing but the predicted score, they would have to rely on that, and, as dconcerned says, on standardized tests. Dconcerned, did the US schools give a conditional admission based on the final IB score being close to the predicted score, as I understand schools in other countries do?

dconcerned

hunt:

yes, you're right, some schools in us offer both ap/honors program and ib courses for their hs students and grades for ib courses are also given. i'm confused bc microblaster said he goes to int'l school in india; so i thought he was taking full ib.

for most int'l students doing full ib are not offered grades (except maybe at int'l american schools). for comparison with aps and a levels, ib score of 6 is equivalent to a. in the us, schools offer an unconditional offer to ib students but have a general statement that they have the right to withdraw the admission if the student scores found to be significantly lower than their submitted ones which is not really considered conditional and which i think is applicable to admittees in general. uk schools still offer conditional offer asking students to meet at least the minimum requirement.

as a matter of fact, i found out a few years ago at exeter bs when my other son was studying there that us schools have the right to give any student admission even without hs diploma as long as other requirements (sat scores, ecs, essays etc.) are met, which really surprised me. you're right most other countries (commonwealth in particular) do give conditional offer to ib students. in case of my son, he was given conditional offer at uk imperial college with minimum ib score 39 vs his predicted 41.

microblaster

no i got to the american international school, and yes its the IB Diploma and after asking, my predicted grade is a 40/45.

And once again yes, my school assigns letter grades per quarter, I went and asked my teachers for my predicted scores though.

Its not that im insanely stupid or something, well i least i think not. I took AP MicroEcon and AP Calc and got 5's. Its just that my school grades the IB kids specifically really really tough and when I asked my consuelor if I have to send my GPA she said yes, even though the colleges im applying to said that it wasnt necessary.

I will try to argue it out over the coming year, and thank you all so much for your help thus far

aspasp

To be truthful, the chances of you getting into those schools are pretty low because international admission to Ivys are very hard and most students have much high GPAs with better scores and ECs. Just a thought.

microblaster

im a US citizen and so im not considered a intl student at some schools and the % of kids that get a 40/45 or higher is less than 1% of all ib students, so im in the top 2000 IB kids world wide which I dont consider to be that bad.

dconcerned

microblaster:

as long as you do good essays, have good tech recs, add a few more safeties with middle 50% sat score of around 1,900-2050, and keep up with 40-point ib score, you should be doing fine. i really suggest that you consider adding cornell for a somewhat high reach. dartmouth, upenn and u chicago are quite hard, much harder on your list anyways. out of these 3, maybe you can get one, of course with a little bit of luck.

it all really boils down to how you can tie all your stats and figures, ecs, passion, essays, in your application that makes you stand out. all ingridients you have are pretty good. you really should improve your gpas, though. can you just submit your ib score which to me sounds much more impressive than your gpa.

microblaster

Just an update, the schools i posted were only my reaches, a few of which may be deleted. My safety schools are the University of Florida, Syracuse, University of Miami and George Washington U, oh and edinburgh in england, an incredible school that has low acceptance requirements IB 32 or something

dconcerned

microblaster: i think you also have a shot at imperial which requires 30 ib score if you're interested in engineering. ucl, warwick and bristol are worth considering too, all pretty much within reach.

dconcerned

sorry let me correct the figures. as for computer engineering, ib score required for oxbridge is 38-42, oxford 38 plus, imperial 38, ucl 34, edinburgh 30, bristol 34 and warwick 36. these were the figures for entering class '08. you may double check at their websites.

UphillBattle

microblaster, I don't understand how you can take the IB diploma and still have a GPA?

I take the IB Diploma but I don't have a GPA, just IB grades every term and a set of predicted grades that I never see.

And I disagree with Hunt that US schools will not look at predicted grades for admission. I only had predicted grades and SAT scores when I applied this year and I'm pretty sure my predicted grades and high school transcript were used to determine academic record. I applied to two schools on your list and got into both and I'm estimating I have about a 39/42 predicted w/o bonus pts.

dconcerned

uphillbattle, that's what i was wondering too. normally taking a full 2-yr ib program is time consuming. you're given quizzes, mock tests from time to time to check progress and for instructers to predict your grades before you have the final comprehensive tests in may. that's why students are only given predicted grades unofficially and school sends predicted grades direct to colleges together with other stuffs.

some american system schools overseas have gpa/ap/honors program but also give students an ib individual courses as an option, but not the full program, which means students get individual grade (5-6-7 or whatever) for each course taken but no tok, cas, comprehensive paper/research project and so on. that is usually the case but it could be different elsewhere that i'm not aware of.

UphillBattle

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.