Marian, and others with IB experience...

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Could you please explain the difference and / or importance in an IB diploma at a magent school versus taking a heavy AP schedule at an indistrict school.</p>

<p>My 8th grade granddaughter showed me an info packet for the IB program at the one high school in their county that has IB. It is suggested that they start the school in 9th grade. Prior to 11th grade, they choose either a Math/Science IB focus or a Humanities focus.</p>

<p>Looking at the requirements for the program was a real eye opener for me, especially the HUGE 2 year essay project. My granddaughter is really interested but afraid she will not pass the entrance exam. She is in the highest classes available at her middle school. she wants my advice but I am really ignorant about IB.</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

2

<p>I am a Harvard alum who is a volunteer interviewer for Harvard. The below comes from what I’ve heard Harvard admissions officers say as well as what I’ve heard admission officers at schools like Duke say at information sessions.</p>

<p>Admissions officers do not rate IB or an AP intensive course load higher. There can be good reasons for a student with the potential to go to a top college to choose either AP or IB. For instance, a student who has a deep interest in all academic subject areas probably would find IB to be the best fit. A student who is more lopsided may find AP to be a better fit.</p>

<p>My area has both AP intensive and IB options. I’ve seen students get into places like HPYS from both types of programs. What matters is what the student does overall – ECs, etc. – not just whether they do well in AP or IB.</p>

3

<p>My son went to an IB only private school, <a href=“http://www.wis.edu%5B/url%5D”>www.wis.edu</a>. The IB program there starts at the primary school level. I do not think most public school districts know how to handle the IB program. They start the program too late; do not offer sufficient higher level courses that would allow students to get an IB diploma; and, they lack the foreign language offerings that are essential to the IB philosophy and requirements, The IB program is a structured, highly demanding approach to educating young people with an internationally set curriculum. It stresses critical thinking, writing, and internationalism. </p>

<p>Take a look at IB.org, which is the website for the international accrediting organization for the IB program. The information there will give you a better understanding of the educational philosophy involved.</p>

<p>If you just want get get your grandchild advanced standing in college go AP. If you are interested in the creating a child with critical thinking skills and an understanding of the larger world around them go IB. Do make sure of the course offering available.</p>

4

<p>IB can be a great program – if it’s implemented well by the school system AND if the student is a good fit for IB. But it’s not for everybody, and I certainly don’t think that a student who takes a rigorous program at a non-IB school is at any disadvantage in the college admissions process.</p>

<p>In the school system where my daughter was in IB, almost all of those who would eventually be IB diploma candidates in grades 11 and 12 were in special pre-IB courses in grades 9 and 10. I think that at least this much preparation for IB is a good idea because IB differs substantially from the standard U.S. curriculum. Just dropping a kid into the program in 11th grade is not a good idea.</p>

<p>Do not worry overmuch about the Extended Essay. It is necessary to do it, yes, but it is not necessary to do it well. The student’s score on the Extended Essay plays an extremely small role in the overall diploma score.</p>

<p>Regardless of the science vs. humanities focus (a choice my daughter and her classmates did not have), IB does not allow students to specialize as much as they could in a regular high school that offers AP courses. There are some choices within the program, but the program pretty much dominates the student’s academic life. </p>

<p>My other child, who had a strong interest in computer science and a dislike for foreign language even before he started high school, would have been miserable in IB. In his regular high school, which also had plenty of APs, he was able to take seven full-year courses related in some way to computers, including such exotic things as digital art and pre-engineering, as well as more conventional courses like AP Computer Science. If he had been in IB, he would not have had room in his schedule for this many computer-related courses. Moreover, if he had been in IB, he would have had to continue his detested foreign language at least through level 5; in the regular high school, he dropped it after level 3 (after determining that none of the colleges he aspired to required 4 years of foreign language).</p>

<p>A few things to watch for (or ask about) if your granddaughter is considering IB: </p>

<ol>
<li><p>What proportion of the kids who start the IB program actually get their IB diplomas? If the kids are selected for the program appropriately and the program is implemented well, the proportion should be reasonably high.</p></li>
<li><p>Does your granddaughter have any special interests that require participation during the school day (such as band, orchestra, chorus, or journalism)? If so, will there be room in her schedule for such courses/activities if she is in the IB program, or will she have to give them up for one or more years during the program?</p></li>
<li><p>What do kids in the IB program do about SAT Subject Tests? Which tests are they prepared to take and when? This is especially important for students contemplating majors in science or engineering, who may face very specific SAT Subject Test requirements.</p></li>
<li><p>Is your granddaughter strongly committed to a single extracurricular activity? If she is, she might resent the CAS (creativity, action, service) requirement, which forces kids to choose a broader range of outside activities and therefore might take time away from her main area of interest.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I think that IB prepared my daughter extremely well for college, but I would not recommend it to everyone. It required a LOT of work, and she felt that she was under a great deal of pressure. She also had to take advanced courses in subjects she did not like – something that students can often avoid in a regular high school program. If she had it to do over again, she would do it – mostly because she liked the prestige of being IB and she liked being in the company of students who took academics as seriously as she did. (It was an absolutely glorious experience for her to spend four years in classes where discipline issues were nonexistent.) But I’m not sure that every IB graduate would be as willing to do it all over again as she would.</p>

<p>Edited to add: Don’t choose IB in the hope of getting college credit. AP works better for that. My daughter got 6s or 7s on every IB test she took, but because some of the tests were standard level and some were not recognized by her college, she got ZERO college credits as a result of her IB scores. On the other hand, she took 8 AP tests (four in subjects in which she also took the IB test, the other four in subjects where she actually took AP courses outside the IB curriculum), and ended up with 30 credits – the equivalent of a full year of college work.</p>

5

<p>[ul][<em>]The IB Diploma program is only for juniors and seniors. Freshmen and sophomores are in pre-IB (Middle Years IB).
[</em>]The IB program usually consists of six classes, three at higher level (two years) and three at standard level (one year). Higher level classes are more demanding and cover more material than AP courses; standard level classes are less demanding. Usually colleges only give credit for HL exams.
[<em>]A unique part of the IB program is the Theory of Knowledge class, which is usually taken senior year. It’s kind of a philosophy class that ties all of your subjects together. It’s a really awesome class, and the essay you have to do isn’t that hard.
[</em>]The “HUGE essay” you referred to is the Extended Essay. It can be in any subject and on pretty much any subject you want. It’s ~4000 words, which really isn’t that bad (12-15 pages). I had done an ecology research project the summer before my senior year, so I easily turned that into an EE in less than a week.
[li]There’s not much difference between AP and IB classes, although HL classes do cover more material (e.g. HL chemistry covers environmental chemistry, advanced organic chemistry, fuels & energy, etc.). Rather than the material covered, it’s the WORK that sets IB apart. IB has all sorts of extra requirements- math Portfolios, Internal Assessments, Group 4 Projects, World Lit papers, etc. IB also requires 150 hours of community service (50 hours each of action, service, and creativity), which AP doesn’t.[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>AP vs. IB really depends on the student. I took seven IB classes and extra AP classes and went for the IB Diploma. My sister wanted more flexibility in her schedule because she wanted to take orchestra and writing, so she’s doing IB Certificate (only three IB classes). It really depends on how much time you’re willing to put into it and how much flexibility you need.</p>

<p>

Maybe not at Harvard, but there can definitely be a difference at some schools. Some schools have never heard of IB and would thus favor AP. Other schools prefer IB applicants and have [special</a> scholarships](<a href=“http://www.ibo.org/diploma/recognition/scholarships/]special”>http://www.ibo.org/diploma/recognition/scholarships/) for them. It varies.</p>

6

<p>Thank you, all. I now have some questions to pose to her and her parents. They knew nothing about IB either. I am the info getter, they will be the decision makers.</p>

<p>And the “HUGE paper” were her words, not sure she realized 4000 words was 15 pages. I did not stop to calculate it out either.</p>

7

<p>Wow! After following the rant sessions going on at the Washington Post boards right now and that often accompany the AP vs. IB debates I am honored to witness this very balanced and I think accurate account of the pros and cons of IB. One question I would also urge you to ask is about the actual workload for IB students at the school your granddaughter is considering. (And try to get the answer from actual IB parents, not the school.) At our IB school the workload is, in my opinion, atrocious, though I know it varies from school to school. As I write this, I have a house full of IB kids spending their day off from school sweating over a lab writeup. They’ve been at it all day with no end in sight instead of finishing up their college apps or, heaven forbid, enjoying a beautiful fall day.</p>

8

<p>cmbmom, another thing you may want to do is ignore the fact that the magnet your granddaughter is considering is IB, and just consider the pros and cons of magnets versus neighborhood schools for a few minutes.</p>

<p>Some questions you might want to think about:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>How far away is the magnet school? How difficult will transportation be? What will happen if your granddaughter needs to stay after school for an extracurricular activity or to see a teacher? How will she get home on those occasions? How much earlier will she have to get up in the morning if she attends the magnet rather than the local school? (At our house, the answer to that question was 40 minutes.) If your daughter needs to work on a group project with other kids from the magnet program (who probably live much farther from one another than kids at the district high school do), will it be possible to manage the transportation?</p></li>
<li><p>Does the magnet draw so many of the academically oriented kids out of the regular schools that the regular schools become a poor fit for academic kids? Or can an academically oriented kid be happy at either school?</p></li>
<li><p>Where will her friends be going? Hey, this matters to kids. One of the reasons that my daughter said yes to the IB program was that five other kids from her middle school, including three who were (and still are) among her close friends, were going there, but none of her close friends was going to the district high school.</p></li>
</ol>

9

<p>I went to a non-magnet public IB school (no AP, neighborhood school). IME, which is basically just from talking to random people, public IB schools are generally more than adequate, however one has to keep in mind if the school is only offering IB (and not AP as well) then they will probably be running a “certificate” program as well where students can elect to take individual courses rather than fulfilling the diploma requirements. My school had no honors, and if you wanted to a language past level 3, it’s only IB. So there were a lot of kids in my IB french class who weren’t doing diploma. Of course under these circumstances a much smaller percentage of the class gets a diploma. In magnet programs, you’re usually required to, or you have to drop out. Magnet programs are self selecting and you can’t really compare your average public school to that. Usually the IB program at a public school is no worse than whatever else would be there. </p>

<p>So I guess that would be my main question. If she drops diploma, then what? I wouldn’t want to switch schools. If my base school had been AP, then I would have done that. I enjoyed the program and I think it suited me, more or less. You’re limited in the college credit you get in a lot of instances (although it can be favorable in some) but I’ve learned that doesn’t usually matter as much as people might think.</p>

10

<p>I wrote a long post on this:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=3708459&postcount=200[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=3708459&postcount=200&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>My D did an AP track and my S is doing an IB track. In theory I agree they are both good tracks. But sometimes a particular school’s IB or a particular school’s AP track will shine within a town. It seems like you might want to look at that for your town: which-- overall-- looks more appealing?</p>

<p>The main advantage of IB in my area is that the IB teachers are better trained/prepared/overseen than the AP teachers. Something changed from when I was in HS. Back then the best and most senior teachers were usually the AP teachers. At My D’s HS <em>some</em> AP teachers are great and some are terrible (can you imagine teaching AP Govt with no text book?) </p>

<p>In IB your students are evaluated by the other teachers from other schools; there seems to be more quality control. </p>

<p>Anyone else out there notice this or is it just my town?</p>

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<p>I do not think there is a difference in college admissions. AP tests definitely give you significantly more college credit (or chances for college credit).</p>

<p>IB is extremely writing intensive (essentially no multiple choice on any IB exams), and your final score is composed of work done throughout the year, or two years in a class.</p>

<p>In my experience, the IB Program consumes students significantly more than “a heavy load of AP classes”, for better or worse.</p>

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<p>Well, if one is a magnet program and one isn’t, then because of that it is possible the IB program gets more resources or more parent involvement or something. In my high school county, where all the IB programs were non-magnet, I think the quality of the teachers is about the same.</p>

<p>However I suppose you could say the IB curriculum is a little less standardized than AP. A lot of the test questions in humanities subjects, while they obviously get at certain points, are relatively open ended. So you might find that teachers are teaching something they are more passionate about or taking an angle they find interesting, and that passion and interest is somehow coming across a little better. I find this is somewhat true for the students too. Although we moaned about the workload and all the papers, a lot of times we had a great deal of choice in what we wrote about (within reason obviously) and people tended to stay somewhat engaged in their research. I’m not going to say it was all terribly interesting and we loved it, but maybe more so than if it was a less open curriculum.</p>

<p>Although in a nearby state the IB programs are mainly magnets, and now I know some kids who went to those. Those maybe kept it down to a little more of a “science” with extended essays and internal assessments, because everyone is in diploma and everyone had to do it. Our TOK (philosophy) was a full year of discussion, and to date, the most interesting and thought provoking class I’ve taken. I always looked forward to that class and our teacher chose very interesting themes with input from us. Someone from a magnet program told me theirs was half just doing the knowledge issues, and the rest of the year they worked on their extended essay research (we did ours completely outside of school). They also did it junior year; I think doing it senior year added a LOT to the whole experience. There was a big difference between how much we had learned in terms of analysis, etc, from first semester junior year and last semester senior year.</p>

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<p>There is flexibility built into IB at least in part because the people who designed it realized that it would be used all over the world and that the kids in each country would have to fulfill local or national graduation requirements as well as the IB requirements.</p>

<p>Thus, for example, on the IB History (Europe) higher-level exam (which is entirely essay and requires FIVE HOURS of writing, spread over two days), there is a wide range of different essay questions for the students to choose from. The teachers know this in advance. They don’t know the exact questions, but they know what topics will be included. Individual IB schools design their higher-level history curricula in order to prepare students for the IB exam AND cover the topics mandated by their own countries or states at the same time. Nobody attempts to cover all of the possible topics – it would be impossible.</p>

<p>This is a good thing in one way, in that it enables IB to be taught all over the world, but it’s a bad thing in that nobody can ever say that all students who have taken the IB History (Europe) higher-level exam have mastered the same body of material. They haven’t. They may have learned the same skills (essay writing, document analysis, etc.), but they haven’t necessarily mastered the same topics. </p>

<p>This may be one of the reasons why U.S. universities are more reluctant to accept IB courses for advanced placement or credit than they are with AP courses. They don’t know exactly what the IB kids know in terms of specific content. With AP, they do know.</p>

15

<p>

I wouldn’t say that. Many of the IB courses have fairly specific guidelines (e.g. [chemistry](<a href=“http://ibchem.com/IB/ibsyllabus-2009.htm]chemistry[/url]”>http://ibchem.com/IB/ibsyllabus-2009.htm)</a>). The main exception is English, which gives a list of books that teachers can choose from, but AP English does that too. History is also a bit of an exception, although IB works around that by having multiple classes (I took History of the Americas).</p>

<p>I do agree that Options add variety to the mix.</p>

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<p>You have a good point, warblersrule86.</p>

<p>Perhaps you have explained why my daughter’s college will give credit for scores of 6 or 7 in higher-level IB sciences but will not give credit for any score, no matter how high, in any of the IB history tests. This would make sense if the science courses have a more rigidly specified curriculum than the history courses do.</p>

17

<p>I was wrong about the school being a magnet school. It is a regular high school and happens to be the only school in the county that has an IB program. It also has AP classes and the sample IB progression they printed shows a few AP classes they recommend the student takes while in pre IB. Granddaughter would be out of district for this school and transportation may be an issue. I have printed your repsonses and thoughts and her parents thank you, they will be addressing all the points you have all mentioned.They will be visiting the non IB high school next week to see what AP classes they offer.</p>

18

<p>I actually think that universities don’t give credit for IB history courses because there is rarely a mapping between the IB syllabus and the syllabus of any history course at a given university. It’s very different for the sciences and math, in that respect.</p>

19

<p>Yeah, that’s true. Although I got credit for history, it was for history electives or something weird (I took history of the Americas, but the HOA part is only the paper 3.) The other two parts are the general themes. We prepared for the China paper 1 question, I suppose you could have worked more of America into the Cold War-ish one. Paper two, depends, my two essays were about the rise of the CCP and something about wars (the Cold War I’m sure, haha). More like world history. The HOA exam isn’t really American history. I don’t think they really know what to do about it. It’s unfortunate though because my one set of credits for a 7 on IB HOA could have been like four years of AP history and credits for each. Sigh. Keep telling yourself that it doesn’t really matter in the end :slight_smile: </p>

<p>We don’t get any credit for IB business…which kind of sucks since that was one of my HLs. If I could go back, I wouldn’t make something like that with questionable policies among schools an HL. I would have done french HL since our class was an HL/SL split, meaning for two years I basically did an HL class then took the SL exam at the end and got no credit. Actually our french teacher was really surprised SL languages don’t get any credit really at US universities (at least the two top ones in state here). She thought the curriculum would be adequate for something. Guess not.</p>

20

<p>Can there be a best of both possible worlds? Child attends suburban high school with 3500 students. Approximately 500 in IB program. It offers many AP courses (possibly 20-30). Many of the IB students will have taken 6 to 10 AP courses in addition to the IB curriculum.</p>