My D22 is a full IB diploma candidate at a suburban public high school in a large metro area. Prior to starting the IB program in 11th grade she took some AP classes and scored well on the AP exams. Although she is not able to objectively explain why she likes IB better than AP, she still says she is glad she took the IB route.
She is in the top 20% of her large high school class, and scored in the 85th-90th percentile on the ACT and SAT. She only applied to six large, public universities…one in-state and five OOS. She has been accepted to three of the OOS schools and is awaiting decisions on the other two. From her in-state flagship (which focuses almost exclusively on class rank) she received an offer to study one year at a satellite campus before being able to transfer (i.e…a soft rejection).
The three OOS publics which offered her admission (and scholarship money) appeared to do so based only on her GPA and ACT/SAT scores. I do not think IB helped, per se, but I certainly do not think it hurt either. If she is able to gain admission to her two remaining OOS schools, I do not anticipate any merit money from either school because their admission rate(s) are both significantly more competitive than the schools which have offered her admission already.
It has been interesting to see how individual universities view IB. All seem to emphasize the fact that it is (along with AP) considered the “most rigorous” course of study in high school, but there are vast differences in how each school awards credit for IB classes. Just within the six schools to which my D22 applied, the amount of IB credit hours and IB course subjects each school considers does not follow any definitive pattern.
Despite the hard work needed to obtain the IB diploma, my daughter has enjoyed the challenge and the smaller classes at such a large high school. As parents, we continue to feel that it was the right program for her. She made good grades but not great grades, and her ACT/SAT test scores are very good but not exceptional. Nevertheless, she has enjoyed being in the IB program and proving to herself that she could do it.
Ultimately, she applied to schools which interested her and not ones which offer IB scholarship money or ones which offer a lot of placement credit for an IB diploma. Hopefully, her main benefit and reward for having made it through such a rigorous program will be her confidence in knowing that she is more than prepared to handle a college course load.