The Upcoming IB Exams and University
Is there anyone in this forum currently enrolled in the IB programme or is considering it?
Post your stories here. I'll start with mine.
I kind of regret having signed up for it. I'm doing 4 Higher Level certificates in Calculus, Chemistry, Biology and English A1. A lot of people said I was crazy and certain teachers even discouraged me. I used to think I could manage it. Now I think otherwise.
I'm going to the US to study, unlike most of my peers who really had no choice as to whether to do the IB or not. I chose to do it because many universities acknowledge the IB as a rigorous programme. Also, there is the possibility to get credits in uni. However, it looks like most schools require a 7 in order to award credits.
It looks like now that I no longer have to work too hard for the IB as I've gotten accepted to 3 universities in the US. I'm having a dilemma. Study really hard or not too hard? Put equal efforts into all 4 or concentrate efforts on the one that I can do best in? It?s a lot of work and material and getting a 7 in Calculus or Chemistry looks impossible. Alas, English too as it is not my native language. I'm Chinese but I grew up in Italy.
So the point of this thread is to listen to each other's IB stories and discuss the IB.
How are you all going in the programme? Are you going to England, and thus you need to meet requirements or are you going somewhere else? What schools have you applied to?
P.S. I'd appreciate it if anyone with knowledge of UIUC, UCSC or Purdue to share their opinions of these schools with me, as I'd have to eventually make a choice.
Any comments are welcome.
Post your stories here. I'll start with mine.
I kind of regret having signed up for it. I'm doing 4 Higher Level certificates in Calculus, Chemistry, Biology and English A1. A lot of people said I was crazy and certain teachers even discouraged me. I used to think I could manage it. Now I think otherwise.
I'm going to the US to study, unlike most of my peers who really had no choice as to whether to do the IB or not. I chose to do it because many universities acknowledge the IB as a rigorous programme. Also, there is the possibility to get credits in uni. However, it looks like most schools require a 7 in order to award credits.
It looks like now that I no longer have to work too hard for the IB as I've gotten accepted to 3 universities in the US. I'm having a dilemma. Study really hard or not too hard? Put equal efforts into all 4 or concentrate efforts on the one that I can do best in? It?s a lot of work and material and getting a 7 in Calculus or Chemistry looks impossible. Alas, English too as it is not my native language. I'm Chinese but I grew up in Italy.
So the point of this thread is to listen to each other's IB stories and discuss the IB.
How are you all going in the programme? Are you going to England, and thus you need to meet requirements or are you going somewhere else? What schools have you applied to?
P.S. I'd appreciate it if anyone with knowledge of UIUC, UCSC or Purdue to share their opinions of these schools with me, as I'd have to eventually make a choice.
Any comments are welcome.
Comments
No one in the IB?
However I can tell you a tiny bit about Purdue. I applied as an undergraduate but had better options and went elsewhere; my father formerly taught in Krannert Business School and lived in West Lafayette. Purdue is a decent school overall, very much oriented towards business and engineering. I couldn't tell you a thing about the IB program.
As far as W Lafayette/Lafayette well they suck. Lafayette is an icky industrial town set kind of off by itself in the middle of Indiana with not too much going on culturally or socially. The campus is not bad but nothing to get excited over. If you are With Car then Chicago is a two hour drive and Indianapolis is an hour or so. I wouldn't want to live there but of course that is just my opinion. Not that it is horrid or something, it's just not that great and if you have better options then take htem.
IB as far as I'm concerned is an all-around AP level program, with some extra twists thrown in, namely internal assessments and the Extended Essay. It's a great program if you want to develop a well-rounded education, and should you decide to pursue a major that requires a good deal of writing, you won't have quite the shock that other students may have if oen of your first essay that a professor requires of you is something along the lines of Extended Essay length.
Given that, higher level 7's are fairly difficult to come by, depending on how well the teachers have prepared you. The school I came from had some excellent higher level teachers, so there were always a decent number of 7's in both english and history. I think history is reasonably doable to get a 7, considering how many "scripts" that they give you to choose from for essay portions. As for english, since it's not your native language I doubt you'll get a 7, as you have to do well on pretty much everything (orals, essay and the exam). Just for reference, I got a 7 on US History, and 6 on Eng A1.
Biology - a seven is darn near impossible to come by... at least at the place I was at, though I've heard that at a nearby school 7's were fairly frequent. So try and find out what past students have averaged before you try to sweat out the exam.
Chemistry - no clue, though I did get a 7 on SL Chem.
Math - I heard that Math is usually a fair test, and that if you have a solid grasp of the material, you should be able to get a 6 or 7.
The easiest way to determine what to go after is based on prior student avg's at your school... that basically gives an idea of how good the teachers are at delivering the IB curricula for that particular subject, and what you'll probably get given how good you feel about a given subject. It's pretty easy to get 4's across the board (the requirement for IB dipoma), as 4 represents being an average student.
As for what colleges accept, some state colleges will accept a bunch of IB Credit (basically anything 4 and above, even on SL), some colleges (usually higher tier ivy-league and others) may say 6 or 7 only on HL are accepted for credit.
I hear that UIUC is supposed to be quite good for engineering, but that's about it. No clue on the other colleges.
[ 03-10-2003: Message edited by: MCQ ]</p>
How common is the IB in American high schools?
UIUC=University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
UCSC=University of California Santa Cruz
I've got my Biology Mock exam today.
Actually English A1 doesn't seem so hard. I've gotten sevens on all my Orals and I always scored high on the writing a commentary mocks.
What University did you go to?
When did you finish or are you still there?
I think I'm going for the 7 in Biology. Yes, our Bio teacher is the most incompetent one in our school and past students most always got a 6 or below with the exception of a handful of sevens.
At this point of the year, we haven't even covered much of our material.
But its ok. Its not that hard and through my internships and because I read alot of Bio related stuff for my own sake, I'm ok for it.
MCQ,
Did your teachers prepare only 2 options or all of the options for you to choose from?
As for the options, you're talking about essays? I think most exams you had two options to pick, but many to pick from. So my teachers had prepared us for about 4 or 5 that they figured had a likely chance of appearing, in case we went blank on one of the options. Preparing for all of them is a bad idea IMO... you usually spread yourself too thin and end up not remembering enough specifics to achieve the high score.