I volunteered every year from elementary school through high school and would’ve continued but it all came to a halt in March 2020. All I did was ask if they needed any parent volunteers, and helped in whatever tasks the counseling admin asked me to do.
The reason for not doing Diff EQ in high school was that it would be a logistical hassle to arrange daily transportation to & from the college for dual enrollment, but also it’s not like my kid had a compelling desire to learn Diff EQ in high school. The repetition was ok and not having to stress about learning new material in face of all the other workload from IB classes and extracurriculars worked out fine. Diff EQ in college was a good, and challenging, experience.
I’m not sure why you assume my kid is a he? I didn’t use that word in my post.
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Well, then why would anyone want to put much stock into what you have to say? Consider that the sum total of your contributions to CC since joining appears to be furthering this mission to diminish the usefulness of IB for STEM students (who you interchangeably refer to as “top students”). If one didn’t know any better, one would you assume you’re on the College Board payroll. Your profile is that of the poster who drops in with an axe to grind.
You raise some good points, but your approach lacks nuance or room for the possibility that others have experience that is different than yours, or, long shot here, that you might learn something from someone else. For example, you basically tell a stranger on the internet to dismiss what his/her school officials tell him/her about IBD rigor relative to that of AP. I mean, that’s pretty aggressive. In fact, my kids heard from many college officials during tours, “that’s the most rigorous thing you can do,” when learning they were IDB candidates. Maybe they didn’t mean to do a side by side comparison with AP, which you seem so fixated on doing. But they said it because I heard it myself.
Again, some nuance would help. I don’t think you know what “all colleges” think about anything. We get it. You don’t like IB and don’t find value in it. The point has been made and the horse has been beaten. It’s now become a weird flex.
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I’m glad you got that off your chest, hope you feel better.
The point is to give a OP a balanced view because people that have kids through IB are prone to overstating the benefits of the program. Often you hear arguments that are demonstrably false like IB classes go deeper, are more rigurous etc, or likely false as the claim that AP course work would not get the most rigurous checkbox, but IBD would. It defies common sense that you can get credit at MIT for AP Calculus BC, but nope, not rigurous enough for Podunk High School.
It’s perfectly fine to say IB will get the most rigurous check mark if IB is the only option for advanced coursework at the high school, or that you won’t get it if you drop out of the IB Diploma, but that’s not what posters are arguing in this thread.
It’s not a coincidence that a lot of these claims are invariably based on someone saying something that can’t be verified, Including your anecdote about the “college official”. I bet you can’t find an admissions link or document to substatiate what you belive the “college official” said during tours. When they say its the “most rigorous thing you can do” they refer to taking challenging advanced coursework in a variety of areas, that’s not a secret and it’s posted on all admissions pages. Somehow you interpret this as “IB is the most rigorous thing you can do, bar none”? Or you don’t, but then I’m not sure I understand what you are trying to say with that story. I’m not disputing that IB is a way to demostrate rigor, if that’s what you’re angling for.
For the benefit of the OP, make an effort to refrain from speculating on my personal motives and address the content of the argument.
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The point of taking classes is to learn new material, but if it gets overly stressful I agree with finding a way to mitigate it. If I understand correctly your child was three years accelerated in math, plus took AP Stat in 9th, that’s quite rare. Essentially they slowed down in the last two years of high school with the IB math, even though it looks like the college major had some higher level math courses.
Some people might see this path as not ideal, especially if they want to continue their math progression. On the other hand IB is one of the few ways for a highly accelerated math student to slow down and still check the most rigorous box.
“He” is generally used when the gender is unknown, but gramatical norms are changing.
Those norms changed years ago. “They” is preferred on the Internet when referring to a user of unknown gender.
Regardless, let’s return to the OP (although admittedly they seem to have abandoned ship). The sidebar conversations are more appropriate for PM.
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