Hi. I am a freshman at a Northern VA HS. I am looking to get into UVA. I take the highest level courses offered at my grade level, I take French 2, and I am in the highest level orchestra. I have all A’s except a B- in Algebra 2 Honors (2 years ahead). My school offers the IB diploma, and I’ve heard it drastically increases your chances of getting into a good college. I can handle a rigorous workload, however, I swim 6 days a week for an hour and a half, and I also participate on my school’s varsity swim team (which could mean practice twice a day in the afternoon if I go to both practices). With that being said, the HS swim team has about a 6 or 7 week long season. I am currently enrolled in the Pre-IB program, but I don’t know much about IB except that it’s extremely hard. I can do it, but I’m wondering if I wouldn’t have enough time. I also like to go to bed fairly early. I will not give up swimming and prefer not to take AP classes for an Advanced diploma because I have my heart set on UVA and they want you to take the most challenging classes offered. Do you think my grades will fall?? I would love some input because I am very torn about this… Thanks
This sentence is extremely confusing, no offense.
You said that you DON’T want to take AP courses b/c UVA wants you to take the most challenging courses offered?
Anyways, about the IB diploma - yes, of course it would help you.
I’m sorry, but most likely you will have to make a sacrifice one way or another; I’m referring to your “I also like to go to bed fairly early” comment.
I have no idea if your grades will fail, no one knows. But if you don’t challenge yourself, the adcom will see that. The deal is… whether it’s AP or IB, if your school offers it and you don’t take it, then adcoms will question why you didn’t take the higher level courses. Your counselor will have to indicate how rigorous your course load was on their recommendation.
It sounds that for you, the AP advanced diploma would be better than the IB diploma.
At NOVA schools, IB is extremely competitive and (insanely) rigorous, and I don’t think it’d be easy to combine with varsity swimming and keeping A’s.
You can ask your current teachers: do they think you can do the full IB program, maintain at least B’s in all classes, get a 37 on IB, and keep up with varsity swimming?
Then ask your guidance counselor: if you go for the AP advanced diploma, will s/he check the “most rigorous” box on your secondary school report?
Agree w/ @noemii I question whether IB would be right for you based on the way you talk about what you want versus what you will give or adapt your life to in order to achieve. A not insignificant amount of IB success depends upon organization and balance, IMO.
For swimming: A lot of the year rounders in my neck of the woods come up with agreements between their HS and club teams as to practice attendance. You could probably cut down on the number of days you double, M/W/F or T/TH only. My D (senior, full IB) maxed out at 8 per week during HS season and maintained all As in HL IB classes. She even missed a fair amount of days when post season hit.
Could she have gone to more practice? Sure. But she spoke with her coaches, and knew what she had to do to achieve the times and goals she wanted. It helped that the coaches also talked to each other about her training.
Another question to ask is whether you can handle doubles without getting physically broken down. By post season, there are a lot of shoulders and knees being iced and frequent fliers at the PT center.
TBH, the fairly early bedtime is probably less doable than, depending on what you mean by early. Hitting the hay at 9? Unlikely. But it also doesn’t have to be 2AM either.
@rlenard Are you a good enough swimmer to swim at college? A lot of swimmers from our high school end up at top colleges after being recruited to swim. If you won’t give up swimming think about putting in enough time to actually get recruited. Unfortunately that does not mean you can trade swimming for grades. No matter what top colleges will want to see mostly As. In high school athletes with top grades often give up sleep!