<p>At the same school as Counting Down’s son, my IB graduate’s program looked like this:</p>
<p>Junior Year:
SL/AP Spanish (took SL Spanish exam)
HL English (year 1)
HL European History (year 1)
AP AB Calc/SL Math (took SL Math exam)
TOK
Symphonic Band (something she insisted on taking all four years to maintain her eligibility for All-State Honors Band, which she qualified for twice)
Honors Physics (for the same reasons as Counting Down’s son)</p>
<p>Senior year:
TOK 1st semester/Law elective second semester
SL/AP Environmental Science
HL Music (this required a prerequisite taken in grade 10, as well as the ability to play an instrument at a fairly high level)
HL English (year 2)
HL European History (year 2)
Symphonic Band
AP Macro/Microeconomics (taken as an elective; this is an AP/IB course, but she did not take the IB exam because she already had a sixth subject)</p>
<p>She was something of a slacker (by this school’s standards) in terms of AP tests. She only took 8 of them. She got zero credits in college from her IB exams and 30 credits from her AP exams, by the way.</p>
<p>Her schedule was deliberately chosen to not be overwhelming, and some would question the absence of foreign language and math in grade 12, but these were still the hardest two years of her life. College (at a top-20 school) was considerably easier (and she ended up with a staggeringly high college GPA, which says something about the quality of her preparation for college). And now that she has graduated from college and is working, she says that work is easier than college! I wonder whether she will ever again face a challenge as difficult as IB.</p>