IB and AP conflict

dodosol
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 13:04:24 +0000

I don’t think you will have more acceptances with an IB diploma.

We visited 20+ colleges/universities in the US. The admission officers don’t think there is a difference of rigor between the IB and AP programs. Of course, we didn’t ask that question at every college, but we did it for a couple of times. All we were told was they were looking whether the kid was on the most rigorous path or not.

It is true that IB Diploma Program prepares well the students to the life after high school But there is a price.

Kids suffer a lot, especially if they don’t have good time management skills. IB courses are very time consuming.

Doing the full IB is even more time consuming then taking some IB+AP courses (due to EE, TOK, CAS, IAs, etc).

Even if you learn well a topic, this doesn’t necessarilly means that you’ll perform well in the related IB exam because most questions require the integration of other topics.

Getting good grades in IB is much more difficult (no one ever got a uw GPA of 4 out of 4 in my kids’ school). It is the same with the final IB/AP exams. Getting a 7 in an IB exam is more difficult than getting 5 in an AP exam.

Advanced Placement Credit policies are not the same at every university. But it is true that IB Math HL does not cover the C part of AP BC if your IB Math option is not Calculus. Even if it is, there will be few more topics to learn in order to cover all BC topics.

For a science oriented kid I find AP program to be more satisfactory. You have the possibility to take all science courses you want. Whereas in IB, you can normally take only 2 (I understand that the situation can be different in the US). I find the IB system to be similar to the core programs of liberal arts & sciences colleges where you have to take some courses in every different areas.

I didn’t quiet get what you meant by saying “newly upgraded” for the school offering the AP program. If your class will be the first one to start the IB program, I would say it will be much more difficult for those kids since the system will be new to the teachers too.

Btw, I think California.is one of the best things in the US.