I hear you on this one. When my kid was there (pre-mod), they always complained about two things. The first was that AP and IB exams were at the beginning of May so they had less than a full school year to cover the material AND it was really a drag to continue with the class after the exams, especially if they ended up covering material that had been on the exam.
The second thing was that with less seat time than their global counterparts because of the school calendar, they had to do a fair amount of summer reading and work to actually be ready for the exam in May. It felt lousy to “waste” that time in May post-exam and then to have to make up for it with a mountain of the next year’s work in July/August.
When I look at the sample schedules on the website, they say that they will finish classes that have exams in mod 5 or 6, so that does address the issue of completing the class before the exam, and the “gap” to the exam is at most 5 weeks. That seems good! It does, though, mean that the students will be moving through a ton of material in the mods when they have these classes. I can see how this could be overwhelming and stressful for some. I can also see how others might find it easier to focus with fewer other obligations. There are colleges that do one class at a time (Colorado College is probably the best known), and there are kids who LOVE it. I would never have been one of them, but it clearly works for others.
The other thing I noticed in the sample schedule is that kids can now start the next year’s class in that last mod of the prior year. That does provide more seat time (which is a problem all US schools struggle with for the IB) and might relieve some of that summer pressure. But it does, as you point out, give kids some time to forget what they learned over the summer so they’ll still have to invest in review. This seems like an improvement but nobody’s actually gone through the exams with this “early start” arrangement and won’t until next year, so the jury is still out as to how helpful it will be.
It’ll be interesting over time to see how the schedule works for kids taking those exams. I can see pros and cons for everyone involved and hope that they’ll continue to tweak as these become apparent. It does seem like a big adjustment for everyone, even new freshmen, especially on the heels of the pandemic, which exhausted and stressed everyone.
I truly hope it works for you (and anyone else who is questioning whether this is good for their learning style) and that maybe you can reap the benefits of some of the travel and other things that the schedule has enabled.