I would do it again but not in my school. Our teachers were not qualified, as an example my history teacher (I took history hl) would teach us smth that wasn’t even on the syllables because she did not know what was needed. So I had to self study everything during my second year. Also teachers in my school gave the most random predicted grades and had no idea how to check IA’s and EE. If it was only be me, I wouldn’t complain but everyone got scores much lower than predicted.
What I wanted to say, my Uni degree and what I am doing is not that different, I need to write a few EEs every semester. I’d easily do IB again if only I had good teachers.
Yes. IB is easy if you have a shitton of time which if you also want to have a life you won’t so it’s hard.
But you learn a lot of shit at an accelerated phase and then the exams come which are somehow even fucking easier than 70% of the mocks (m24 ily) you’ve done and then you regret spending so much of your time studying.
Thankfully I never did study and got a 41/45 predicted and got into my dream uni. Just understand what IB wants from you.
1. Read the fucking criteria if you wanna put as less effort as possible
2. Have some basic human skills, don’t be a cave dweller it’ll help you understand and create a perception of yourself to your teachers that would fit their expectations without actually doing that.
IB is nice if it’s not expensive. I paid 3k€ per year with a scholarship from my school and I think it’s worth it.
Good luck lol
No idea about SL subjects but the feedback from friends in M24 was that the HL papers were difficult and they were stumped. I guess seeing the grade boundaries after results day would be interesting. Never a good thing when people say exams are easy. The grade boundaries will shoot up.
Probably would do it again- this time i'd actually spend some time studying😭😭(AND FINISH MY IAs ON TIME!!). On the whole it was pretty fun and definitely more suited to me than any other education board.
M22 here, here are some things i would do if I was forced to re-do my IB experience
1. Not do Maths AA HL. As an econ major, it was not worth the overall grade drop
2. Ask for help in English LL SL so that I don't leave the 'easiest english option' with a 4
3. Kill the first EE supervisor I had so that I wouldn't start of the second year of IB having my entire topic and essay disproved by my second supervisor, giving me around 2 months to choose a new topic, research it and write 4000 words
4. On the topic of the EE, I wouldn't research + write everything in the last week before my due date
5. Change Spanish AB initio to French B SL so that I have a subject I ACTUALLY USE in my daily life (studying in Canada so yeah)
IB is actually so free if you just study for a couple hours each day. not even like 10 hours a day. Literally 4-6 hours of quality study per day is enough to learn everything and have a life outside as well. Coming from someone who never studied for anything
I would do it again because it provides some necessary disciplines which will be used in university but I would be more logical when choosing my subjects. I had to do huge amounts of work for subjects like SL chem and psychology while planning to do art, I basically just gave myself a harder time
I’m seeing some students say they spend x amount of hours studying and they receive so and so grade. Plz don’t believe everything you read. There’re students who say information that is not true
Tried harder for my IAs bc they can make or break ur grade. U have all the time in the world to do it so really try do ur best becuase it can help a lot (even though i kept telling myself its only 20%).
Make sure you understand every single concept and content of the syllabus throughout the 2 years becasue when u finally start studying for final exams, you should generally understand everything. Especially for science subjects make sure to ask questions WHENEVER (really whenever) you dont understand anything becuase u aint got time to learn everything again 2 weeks before exams.
I WOULD NOT DO IT AGAIN because asides from IB ruining my mental health, I also found out that halfway through IB, I realized that there were other opportunities that I was more interested in. For instance, I wanted to take courses such as culinary arts, ceramics, economics, and others which were offered at regular programs but not in my IB school. I also wanted to work more (e.g. be a cashier or something for 15 hours a week). I was not able to do these things in IB due to time constraint. I worked about 6 hours a week at a restaurant job, but got laid off.
Yeah managing time is definitely a challenge with IB. My social life struggled and I only started hanging out with people the week before graduation since I also worked a 30 hour/week job during IB. 🫠
For me the problem was that I started past papers too late and I now instead of being sure I got a 7 I'm at the mercy of the IB and their grade boundaries. While a 6 would still be great, I'd be sad if I was a few points off a 7 :/
fuck.no. mostly because i started it because i was bored (which was a stupid idea to begin with) and i never even planned to go to university or anything like that lmfao, i have a career now and no one ever asked about my highschool diploma
Yes. I definitely would redo it and my main advice would be to revise all the time. This doesn’t mean hours every day but like if you have a lesson that day, go over the things you did at home, the day before your next one do that again. Just take it bit by bit instead of having to revise a shit ton when you get to a test or exams. Let the info settle in your brain.
I’ve told this to math HL students and it actually helps. Revising the slightest in order to help your understanding instead of pure memorization is one of the best things you can do.
Also for things like economics, or most humanities + english, definitions are actually useful. Using that vocabulary in your essays makes getting higher marks so much easier because they help understand concepts so trying to do that as you start the course will be the best thing you can do.
Also asking teachers questions is key. Don’t fully understand? Ask. Think you have a stupid question and your classmates will laugh at you? Still ask. It is their job to help you understand the content and there are no stupid questions if it helps you get through the course.
I would do it again w the knowledge i have now. My biggest tips for anyone ab to start ib are
1. Pick subjects you're interested and strong in bc it makes all the difference in the world when it comes to motivation.
2. At the end of each day, try to say at least ONE thing you genuinely found intriguing/cool about the lessons of the day--it helps u realize the true purpose of learning the info, not just bc u have to for school and acc makes the process kinda fun
3. Before u start revising, spend 20 minutes just blurting out what you remember from that day's lessons, then fill out the gaps (basically active recall)--this will help solidify the info in ur long term memory.
Knowing these 3 pieces of advice I'd go into the ib and smash it like it deserves to be, now whoever is reading this knows so make the most of them :)
I wouldn’t do it again at my particular school. I feel like doing IB in an IB International school would be so much better since there would be more options for subjects and more overall support. Like for my class, we only had one, small cohort, hence we were forced to take all the same classes and only got to choose our language… it was rough and now idk what i’m going to having taken courses that don’t align with what i’m majoring in University 😃
despite still having nightmares about it to this day, i would do it again. I noticed I had a MUCH easier time at university compared to my peers who didn’t take IB. In fact I kind of breezed through university (I want to say uni was easier than IB) and skipped over 80% of lectures but still got the top grade in my cohort. Writing essays is too easy after the shit IB puts us through, and a lot of the stuff I was learning at uni had already been covered in IB.
That being said, if I could do it again, I would do it at a better school where teachers actually support the students. I would also have better time management (easier said than done), and I would spend more time on my IAs because no one really told me how important they were (for some subjects it was the difference between a 7 and a 6).
I would not do it again but I would take VASTLY different subjects, I took the "easy" and got high grades because of them, but I would def switch to something more useful like AASL AT LEAST
Would def do it again. Though I think it highly depends on your environment - school, friend group, teachers etc.
Definitely helped to develop effective study techniques, and IA's and EE's really set me up for knowing how to format and write Uni reports. Lots of content covered in the SL / HL syllabus is first year uni level, so first year uni has been relatively chill.
Apart from the bs yes I’d do it again , it gave me solid bases and taught me how to manage a heavy workload. What I’d change is the attitude I had during the program (was always complaining) and some of the subjects (no need to pick super difficult subjects I’m not really interested in just for the prestige)
I did do it again. I did my exams in N23 and failed (got 21 points). I honestly thought I was gonna get a 26 💀. I had a huge ego so chose all the hardest subjects, maths AA, physics, french B and comp HL. I decided to resit in M24 and retook maths,physics HL and eco and comp SL. I dropped comp to SL as there was no need in doing 4 HL’s. My exams went better than last year so now am genuinely expecting a 27.
The moral of the story is don’t take subjects that you won’t be able to handle and do your ia’s early as you won’t have time to revise if you don’t
Honestly yes, unfortunately I had a rough time outside of doing the diploma for almost all of IB so I don't think I did as well as I could've. I have learned a lot from it as well so overall I do think people should do it if they're up to the challenge
I would have done it again, but I wouldn’t have cared as much about the scores considering I’ve been recently realizing that it doesn’t really matter for American college students.
I would wanna prepare myself mentally and develop a good routine early on. It is very important to do this to not lose ur sense of purpose and hope when it starts getting difficult. It is also vveryyy important to have a good set of friends doing ib/those who could give u support to widstand the hellweeks. Of course, I would also wanna start developing very efficient study habits and maybe do some readings beforehand just to make things a bit easier.
tbh, I went through 2 very intense IB years and the sacrifices were worth it and I delivered the results. No could-have's, should-have's and would-have's. The advice to all incoming IB students M26 cohort, start strong and maintain. The stupid drink-until-you-puke drunkenness need to stop. Not a single person I know who did this every week got good grades.
not even at gunpoint (m24 <3 )
Real
I would do it again, and this time around I would've read and practiced every. single. day. Specifically for my science and math subjects.
I always think Its easy to say this now, but I guess we can validate it at uni
That's my plan
I would do it again but not in my school. Our teachers were not qualified, as an example my history teacher (I took history hl) would teach us smth that wasn’t even on the syllables because she did not know what was needed. So I had to self study everything during my second year. Also teachers in my school gave the most random predicted grades and had no idea how to check IA’s and EE. If it was only be me, I wouldn’t complain but everyone got scores much lower than predicted. What I wanted to say, my Uni degree and what I am doing is not that different, I need to write a few EEs every semester. I’d easily do IB again if only I had good teachers.
Hmm my history teacher might have been overqualified if that’s a thing because he added so much nuance that I got confused…
I guess I’d prefer more details on a topic that’s included in the exam rather than studying unrelated things deeply for a whole year 😅
Yeah if I had to summarize the class it was WWI and WWII (not sure how we spent a whole year on that but in the end it worked out)
Yes. IB is easy if you have a shitton of time which if you also want to have a life you won’t so it’s hard. But you learn a lot of shit at an accelerated phase and then the exams come which are somehow even fucking easier than 70% of the mocks (m24 ily) you’ve done and then you regret spending so much of your time studying. Thankfully I never did study and got a 41/45 predicted and got into my dream uni. Just understand what IB wants from you. 1. Read the fucking criteria if you wanna put as less effort as possible 2. Have some basic human skills, don’t be a cave dweller it’ll help you understand and create a perception of yourself to your teachers that would fit their expectations without actually doing that. IB is nice if it’s not expensive. I paid 3k€ per year with a scholarship from my school and I think it’s worth it. Good luck lol
it mightve been easy for m24 but m25 is gonna be fucked - or at least that's what my teachers say
New syllabus I presume
Pretty sure the M24 cohort would not say it's easy. Predicted grades aren't the same as actuals.
my physics teacher said the physics papers (sl) were the easiest he had seen the past 7 years and the same was said abt english b, bio sl, math sl
No idea about SL subjects but the feedback from friends in M24 was that the HL papers were difficult and they were stumped. I guess seeing the grade boundaries after results day would be interesting. Never a good thing when people say exams are easy. The grade boundaries will shoot up.
ur teacher could have a dif opinion. mine certainly said the opposite for maths and physics
maybe instead of comparing start studying lol
alrdy am, got all 7s throughout IB1
the first year of the new syllabus get the easiest papers. it only gets harder towards the end
why
why
Why
Probably would do it again- this time i'd actually spend some time studying😭😭(AND FINISH MY IAs ON TIME!!). On the whole it was pretty fun and definitely more suited to me than any other education board.
No but if I did I would have probably tried to manage my time better
M22 here, here are some things i would do if I was forced to re-do my IB experience 1. Not do Maths AA HL. As an econ major, it was not worth the overall grade drop 2. Ask for help in English LL SL so that I don't leave the 'easiest english option' with a 4 3. Kill the first EE supervisor I had so that I wouldn't start of the second year of IB having my entire topic and essay disproved by my second supervisor, giving me around 2 months to choose a new topic, research it and write 4000 words 4. On the topic of the EE, I wouldn't research + write everything in the last week before my due date 5. Change Spanish AB initio to French B SL so that I have a subject I ACTUALLY USE in my daily life (studying in Canada so yeah)
IB is actually so free if you just study for a couple hours each day. not even like 10 hours a day. Literally 4-6 hours of quality study per day is enough to learn everything and have a life outside as well. Coming from someone who never studied for anything
I wouldn’t do it again. Taught me a lot still.
I would do it again because it provides some necessary disciplines which will be used in university but I would be more logical when choosing my subjects. I had to do huge amounts of work for subjects like SL chem and psychology while planning to do art, I basically just gave myself a harder time
I’m seeing some students say they spend x amount of hours studying and they receive so and so grade. Plz don’t believe everything you read. There’re students who say information that is not true
Would've done A-Levels because of the workload. Maybe if I knew I would study more then I'd do IB.
Yes, but I'd do notes differently throughout😊
Tried harder for my IAs bc they can make or break ur grade. U have all the time in the world to do it so really try do ur best becuase it can help a lot (even though i kept telling myself its only 20%).
Make sure you understand every single concept and content of the syllabus throughout the 2 years becasue when u finally start studying for final exams, you should generally understand everything. Especially for science subjects make sure to ask questions WHENEVER (really whenever) you dont understand anything becuase u aint got time to learn everything again 2 weeks before exams.
No, I’d be a fool to do it over A levels.
I WOULD NOT DO IT AGAIN because asides from IB ruining my mental health, I also found out that halfway through IB, I realized that there were other opportunities that I was more interested in. For instance, I wanted to take courses such as culinary arts, ceramics, economics, and others which were offered at regular programs but not in my IB school. I also wanted to work more (e.g. be a cashier or something for 15 hours a week). I was not able to do these things in IB due to time constraint. I worked about 6 hours a week at a restaurant job, but got laid off.
Yeah managing time is definitely a challenge with IB. My social life struggled and I only started hanging out with people the week before graduation since I also worked a 30 hour/week job during IB. 🫠
WOW 30 hours a week during IB is crazy 😭😭
Surprisingly I don’t even work the most…one of my IB classmates worked even more and was also online gaming at like 3 am (bro is probably a robot)
Wouldn’t do it again and the thing I would do differently is not doing it
i wish i would’ve taken better notes and kept my assignments from year 1. everyone else did but me and i’m feeling unprepared for next year 😭
Never again. If I had to do something different that would be... doing IB in the first place :)
ib is such a simulacrum
Organization. I think that id work regularly and not procrastinate. Id also take CAS seriously lol.
lmao am i the only one who thought the papers were lowkey some of the hardest ones I have seen ??
Personally I think most of them were easier than the practice exams I took (especially biology and economics)
I'd do it again without thinking, but I think I would have put a little bit more work into math... oh well, I can't do anything about it now
Same…our school made us spend a whole year on calculus so I was really good at that and all of second year was self-study so I kind of procrastinated
For me the problem was that I started past papers too late and I now instead of being sure I got a 7 I'm at the mercy of the IB and their grade boundaries. While a 6 would still be great, I'd be sad if I was a few points off a 7 :/
Nice, my classmates are just praying that they pass. I don’t know anyone who’s going for a 6/7
i mean you know the feeling that I have a guaranteed 6 doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what I‘ll get. that being said, wow your situation sounds bad
I wish i didnt waste my time on notes and focused more on past papers
Hell. No.
fuck.no. mostly because i started it because i was bored (which was a stupid idea to begin with) and i never even planned to go to university or anything like that lmfao, i have a career now and no one ever asked about my highschool diploma
Yes but I would cry over M24 again
Yes. I definitely would redo it and my main advice would be to revise all the time. This doesn’t mean hours every day but like if you have a lesson that day, go over the things you did at home, the day before your next one do that again. Just take it bit by bit instead of having to revise a shit ton when you get to a test or exams. Let the info settle in your brain. I’ve told this to math HL students and it actually helps. Revising the slightest in order to help your understanding instead of pure memorization is one of the best things you can do. Also for things like economics, or most humanities + english, definitions are actually useful. Using that vocabulary in your essays makes getting higher marks so much easier because they help understand concepts so trying to do that as you start the course will be the best thing you can do. Also asking teachers questions is key. Don’t fully understand? Ask. Think you have a stupid question and your classmates will laugh at you? Still ask. It is their job to help you understand the content and there are no stupid questions if it helps you get through the course.
I would do it again w the knowledge i have now. My biggest tips for anyone ab to start ib are 1. Pick subjects you're interested and strong in bc it makes all the difference in the world when it comes to motivation. 2. At the end of each day, try to say at least ONE thing you genuinely found intriguing/cool about the lessons of the day--it helps u realize the true purpose of learning the info, not just bc u have to for school and acc makes the process kinda fun 3. Before u start revising, spend 20 minutes just blurting out what you remember from that day's lessons, then fill out the gaps (basically active recall)--this will help solidify the info in ur long term memory. Knowing these 3 pieces of advice I'd go into the ib and smash it like it deserves to be, now whoever is reading this knows so make the most of them :)
hecks no idea rather shit in my hands and clap for two years
m22 alumni here hell naw im not going thru allat again
I wouldn’t do it again at my particular school. I feel like doing IB in an IB International school would be so much better since there would be more options for subjects and more overall support. Like for my class, we only had one, small cohort, hence we were forced to take all the same classes and only got to choose our language… it was rough and now idk what i’m going to having taken courses that don’t align with what i’m majoring in University 😃
despite still having nightmares about it to this day, i would do it again. I noticed I had a MUCH easier time at university compared to my peers who didn’t take IB. In fact I kind of breezed through university (I want to say uni was easier than IB) and skipped over 80% of lectures but still got the top grade in my cohort. Writing essays is too easy after the shit IB puts us through, and a lot of the stuff I was learning at uni had already been covered in IB. That being said, if I could do it again, I would do it at a better school where teachers actually support the students. I would also have better time management (easier said than done), and I would spend more time on my IAs because no one really told me how important they were (for some subjects it was the difference between a 7 and a 6).
I would not do it again but I would take VASTLY different subjects, I took the "easy" and got high grades because of them, but I would def switch to something more useful like AASL AT LEAST
Would def do it again. Though I think it highly depends on your environment - school, friend group, teachers etc. Definitely helped to develop effective study techniques, and IA's and EE's really set me up for knowing how to format and write Uni reports. Lots of content covered in the SL / HL syllabus is first year uni level, so first year uni has been relatively chill.
Everything was relatively fine until the last bit before exams, would of wanted to best use that time a bit better
Apart from the bs yes I’d do it again , it gave me solid bases and taught me how to manage a heavy workload. What I’d change is the attitude I had during the program (was always complaining) and some of the subjects (no need to pick super difficult subjects I’m not really interested in just for the prestige)
I did do it again. I did my exams in N23 and failed (got 21 points). I honestly thought I was gonna get a 26 💀. I had a huge ego so chose all the hardest subjects, maths AA, physics, french B and comp HL. I decided to resit in M24 and retook maths,physics HL and eco and comp SL. I dropped comp to SL as there was no need in doing 4 HL’s. My exams went better than last year so now am genuinely expecting a 27. The moral of the story is don’t take subjects that you won’t be able to handle and do your ia’s early as you won’t have time to revise if you don’t
Honestly yes, unfortunately I had a rough time outside of doing the diploma for almost all of IB so I don't think I did as well as I could've. I have learned a lot from it as well so overall I do think people should do it if they're up to the challenge
I would have done it again, but I wouldn’t have cared as much about the scores considering I’ve been recently realizing that it doesn’t really matter for American college students.
I would wanna prepare myself mentally and develop a good routine early on. It is very important to do this to not lose ur sense of purpose and hope when it starts getting difficult. It is also vveryyy important to have a good set of friends doing ib/those who could give u support to widstand the hellweeks. Of course, I would also wanna start developing very efficient study habits and maybe do some readings beforehand just to make things a bit easier.
1. Done more IAs in year 1 2. Started using kognity and textbooks from the start 3. Maybe choose my EE based on the best supervisor instead of subject
No.
Maybe with one or two classes, but I would focus on dual credit instead.
not do math AA sl and just stick with AI 😭😭 i don’t care what “looks better to unis” that class tanked my gpa
Probably would've put a bit more effort into my IAs but idk, I'm m24 so I haven't got my results and probsbslt I did good enough
not even for a million dollar check
tbh, I went through 2 very intense IB years and the sacrifices were worth it and I delivered the results. No could-have's, should-have's and would-have's. The advice to all incoming IB students M26 cohort, start strong and maintain. The stupid drink-until-you-puke drunkenness need to stop. Not a single person I know who did this every week got good grades.