<p>Do you know how colleges view IB Economics vs. AP Economics? I’m considering doing AP Economics (the class prepares you for the AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics tests). </p>
<p>I don’t care about college credit.</p>
<p>Also, do American colleges care what type of IB classes you do, or do they just like that you’re doing IB classes in general?</p>
<p>I’m not sure about what colleges think, but one thing to consider is that IB economics is more than just micro and macro- it also includes international economics and development economics (fascinating topics!).</p>
<p>the AP exams do cover international economics but probably not as in depth as the IB test does.</p>
<p>Look honestly do adcoms really really care if it’s “AP” vs “IB”? NO. Do you know why?</p>
<p>Because its their jobs to determine if a candidate is 1) qualified, 2) ambitious. AP/IB are both higher level courses. A high school typically does not offer both IB Economics and AP Economics. If it does, my high school did, I just took IB Economics and AP Microeconomics. At the end of the day, colleges don’t care don’t worry about it. As long as you challenge yourself and you take the most challenging courses available to you.</p>
<p>IB students are in a disadvantage when it comes to SAT II. SAT II are structured in such a fashion that they mirror the AP curriculum, several of the topics included in the exams might not be covered by the IB curriculum, or might be covered very superficially. Such is the case in Physics. Optics, for IB students is merely an optional topic, while it mandatory for AP students. When I took my SAT II physics exam I ran into 5-10 Optics question (a topic I had never seen in my life) which obviously will hinder my score greatly. Such is the case with other subjects such as both histories, chemistry, both biologies, and even math II (polar coordinates are not part of the IB Math HL syllabus)</p>
<p>Schools should take this into consideration and consider lower scores appropriately for IB Candidates.</p>
<p>“Schools should take this into consideration and consider lower scores appropriately for IB Candidates.”
That shouldn’t matter. There are plenty of people that prepare for SATII exams without taking an AP class. If someone wants to do well on an exam for which they aren’t familiar with all the material, then they’ll study it.</p>
<p>Avelez… </p>
<p>IB/AP have nothing to do with SAT II’s. THey go Wayyyyy beyond the SAT II curriculum. SAT II tests fundamental physics— not the stuff that IB/AP covers. Any basic physics class should cover optics. Also, the curve on the SAT 2 Physics exam is routinely 10+ questions, meaning you usually can miss that much and still score an 800.</p>
<p>I am not saying, by any means, that a SAT II is designed to test your AP ‘skills’ (for lack of a better word) but you would <em>never ever</em> find any topic within a SAT II that isn’t covered in an AP class of the same subject. This however, is not the case for IB courses. As I said, Optics is not a mandatory topic in IB physics, obviously hindering IB students performace. so if there are 4-8 Optics questions in the exam (i think I had 7 in mine) that means that IB students have to do 4-8 points better than any other person to score the exact same.</p>