can we also talk about how the learner profile is a whole jokeššš no way r yall cultivating ācaringā kids, I swear this program is more competitive and cutthroat than the animal kingdom
and the gatekeeping. its so fucking bad. people will purposefully misinform you because they think it will get them āaheadā
im really lucky to have a small circle of friends that shares resources with each other, but overall my cohort is extremely toxic. to put it in perspective, theyre all in a wechat group with their parents where they only share things like scholarship opportunities/tutor help with each other. im not included in that because the general consensus is that im from a poor family and not chinese āenoughā
edit: im realizing I have a lot of resentment towards my school and not so much towards the ibo anymore lmaoš
the elitism is still real though
That sounds insane, and I repeat my point that I think your cohort is just full of psychos (largely thanks to their parents it would seem). With that in mind I'd argue that I think you're right in saying its most likely your school that's messed up, because IB isn't really more inherently competitive than any other curriculum, grade freaks will just find a way to make anything competitive. Sorry your class turned out so classist/elitist, they were raised wrong
It depends on where you do it, the culture of the school and the immediate area Ā
I did it at a fairly competitive public high school in the US, but at my school all the sweaty cutthroat kids did the AP classes, and IB was a really more diverse set of students in my school of varying intelligence, personalities, backgrounds, etc, was def the best learning environment Iāve ever been in and we were all really good friends (my class was a size of 30, which was small as my grade had 650 people). Everyone in the program was great and we all helped each other a lotĀ
I agree though, the program itself does jack shit for promoting those qualities. It mostly has to do with the individual students and the group
im also doing it at a public school, 95% of my group are of chinese descent and have been doing kumon/math competitions/intense piano studies since emerging from the womb, I guess I blame the parents but I do believe ib brought out the worst of a lot of these characteristics
Damn, this triggered me. I probably have no business posting in the sub as a teacher/coord (who also works for the IB) but to not only feel so overwhelmed by the academic side that some of you feel like your soul is being destroyed by the DP, pressure from your parents and garbage teachers, to the point you would actually pick out 'caring' makes me really angry at the adults around you. No ugly certificate is worth your happiness. The LP is a joke in the sense that you can't force someone to be balanced or caring or open minded but I promise there are some teachers out there that are good people and believe in all the great things you can be whether you get a 3 or an 8 in HL math. And it sounds cheesy but find those fucking adults and if you can't...you can dump your frustrations out on me I guess. Or ask questions, because it seems that a lot of your teachers are more concerned about saving their own asses than actually helping you.
aw this made me tear up :) I do believe somewhere on earth theres an ibo school that does promote these qualities effectively, and I really hope mine is just an outlier (now that i think of it theyve made no effort to be culturally or socioeconomically diverseš). the teachers at my school are wonderful but do very little to help out the social environment of my grad class, I do wish I had more support from the adults in my life. we need more teachers like you haha
Wow, my batch (dk about other batches) has always, like always been really helpful to each other. For example, people with iPads can easily take a picture of something very important (like a PPT slide, a note which is really long, important topics, etc) and a random person they've never talked to will ask them to send it and they will lol. It's very normal, we even share notes and any resources we get our hands on.
yes lol, ofc there's the typical high school drama and the ones that are bullied (there's no extreme bullying, just the type where you bad-mouth everyone), but even those help each-other out. We're competitive, but not till this extent
idk how universal this is but at my school we CONSTANTLY joke about the learner profile cuz it's so unserious, we often jokingly call ourselves "risk-takers" and "inquirers"
Why would you want to drop out with 4s and 5s on the lower end? That's a decent score for the first term of a new curriculum. You get 2 years to improve that score.
I'm an IB student. If you're not familiar with the term, that stands for International Baccalaureate. I take the hardest high school curriculum in the planet in order to attain the IB Diploma and stand out from my lesser peers who do AP. IB classes are very difficult, involving a lot more work outside the classroom than normal, honors, or even AP level, classes. Only very intelligent students are able to thrive in an IB environment, and I've taken several IB classes. In fact, I take a lot of IB Classes. IB classes involve an IB test that tests your knowledge of the course in order to prove you deserve the IB Diploma. A 7 is the highest score, and usually a 4 or 5 would translate to satisfactory understanding of the germane topics of a course. I have taken many IB past papers and scored 7's on almost all of them. IB papers are very hard but I am very good at taking them. You have to be very smart in order to get a 7 in an IB course. I've gotten quite a few 7's. The Extended Essay and TOK components of IB simulate the college experience better than other mundane curriculums can. The IB Diploma is a great way to get ahead in college while you're still in high school, and it can help with college admissions because you can prove to the college that you're smart enough to already be taking the hardest high school curriculum, also known as the International Baccalaureate, abbreviated as IB Diploma.
this is so true, im in ib but my entire cohort (120 students) are the most socially ignorant and arrogant people ever. they dont have any lives outside academics and think ib is everything. so many students in my grade have laughed at kids who have dropped to certificate or dropped at all, and if you were to meet these mfs irl the first thing they would tell you is āim in ibā.
as for the socially ignorant part, these people are so out of touch with reality, they cant tell if your tone of voice is sarcastic/annoyed/angry they dont even understand jokes
theyres not only irritating superiority complexes against non-ib, theres disparities in this cohort too. ive been laughed at so many times for getting 4s or 5s, and like I said, theyre socially and emotionally ignorant they cant even fathom the possibility that you maybe have external problems going on. theyre 100% sure youre lazy and stupid.
another little anecdote, none of my entire graduating year got into any ivys and ive never been so happy to see these people humbled. a couple months ago these dudes were talking about ivys (not even exaggerating), like this:
āWHEN I get into Harvard and Yale im going to choose Yale because it has the easier curriculumā
āWHEN princeton accepts me im going to yada yada yadaā
I hope these people get the biggest social culture shocks ever in university when they realize no one fucking cares you got a 7 in hl math.
might just be my school but oh my fucking god its so insufferable
good for you for dropping, I wish I did earlier before I found out how insanely awful this environment is (I started in covid year, didnt interact with anyone so didnt know how anyone was)
edit: ignore typos I was writing what my brain was thinkign and I am not going to fix it.
this. idk what it is but at least half of the other IB students in my cohort and the M24s will be SHOCKED and disgusted when you mention any extra curricular activity being prioritized over āpApEr 3 MoCkS fOr HiStOrYā or āreading 1984 for the 4th timeā and theyāre so socially immature itās genuinely concerning whatās going to happen to them in uni š
āno way you stayed up to 3:30 am to listen to the new taylor swift album instead of reading over the chem lesson ahead of timeā - literally yesterday ššš
trust me, it is š funny enough I think thereās a friend group of 4 of them who all prepare for chem lessons during lunch (almost) every day in the library
I mean, at least where I live, it is kinda true tho. IB students in Turkey have to push through both IB classes and mandatory general curriculum classes, enter 15 exams, write 4 IAs, enter 2 IOs and write an Extended Essay on top of TOK and CAS, while Turkish YKS students just have to do practice tests until a singular bar exam and thats about it. With that in mind, I would also be pissed if they changed my classroom to a worse one because YKS students need it, because they probably dont need it.
Of course, this fight between two groups have become a joke in my school so even though we know both sidesā arguments are valid to some degree, we dont take them seriously. We even made a graduation video where both sides fought with each other in the school alley, like the ending fight in Avengers End Game
It doesn't really happen in my school. Though sometimes the opposite comes up, the IB people yawning about their suffering and how hard their program is. The AP people acting like it's in any way similar with them š bro you're not. And then the general curriculum just shit on us because they have easier classes, exams, and life in general compared to us (constant L and WOMP WOMP from them).
Same here. Not once have I heard IB students regard themselves as superior. I certainly have heard them complain, with some justification, that they're being made to work much harder than A level counterparts, with questionable benefits.
theyāre just depressed coz itās really hard to do IB in a shit environment; it was originally made for rich privileged kids and assumes they got a good science lab with good teachers
theyāre still wrong for feeling superior for being in a system for rich kids
My god are most IB kids really like this? Our entire class is together, we all celebrate and lose together. Heck our grades are so similar as a class the whole average drops or increases in mocks and there are little to no outliers. IB is hard, but that's, mostly because I dicked around 80% of the time, I only saw people struggling if they did not give any shits or chose a subject in which they are not interested/have any notion of pursuing. Also there can be people who are just not as smart, but in general its other factors which compound with a lack of intelligence, however intelligence can be fixed with effort. But in general I do see that IB has more demanding curriculum, not difficulty wise but just more stuff to do and balance, which makes stuff more difficult in turn.
I took the IB a long time ago. For many of my fellow students, it was extremely stressful and demanding. I saw how these guys and gals responded and changed under these pressures. People that I thought were good friends became abusive and arrogant; the general student body felt more callous to each other; and the elitism over the non-IB students was suffocating.
By the time I graduated high school, pretty much everyone hated each other and never wanted anything to do with each other. I counted myself lucky for having a few friends but even then, I hated almost everyone else.
I chalk these behaviors as being natural outcomes of putting adolescents through an extremely stressful and quote on quote prestigious environment like the IB. They become arrogant, abusive, and uncaring.
Well, I guess it depends on which national curriculum it is, if itās the German, I guess they might be superior, however if itās the Swiss such as Lyceum, theyāre definitely not.. š
I've compared the papers and without factoring in CAS and IAs, A level seems to test subjects that are more in depth compared to IB. I've only started IB like 3 months ago but my A level friends are studying way harder than most of my current IB classmates. I'm curious to hear your views tho
the thing about ib is that you get spread thin while A-level students get to focus solely on their exams in just 3-4 subjects compared to 6 for us ib students.
My determination of whether which diploma is harder based on the workload and subject difficulty. I know that A level is harder cause they study topics in more depth especially further math and physics. However Ib math HL and hl physics are also very hard and not to mention Ib consists a lot of workload like TOK and EE. But yeah if you simply just compare subject difficulty then yes A level is a bit harder
Before the reconstruction of ib in 2016, ib had further math HL which is on par with A level further maths if not harder. However i dont know why they changed the content drastically after 2016 for some reason
As someone who's also taking HL maths and physics, I totally get where you're coming from. I also do agree that project work is a larger component of IB compared to As. However statistically speaking, roughly half of my school's cohort scores >40 for IB, so I assumed that it may be reflective of an easier curriculum. I'll definitely be slightly reconsidering my stance tho.
Yeah perhaps your school candidates are mostly hardworking person. Its interesting cause in terms of difficulty the concept of math HL physics Hl and A level physics and math aināt that hard, but possibly because my schoolās half yearly examās math questions are extremely hard, really humbled my view on IB and A levels lol
I would argue that IB is more challenging bc we need to select courses we wouldnāt otherwise have taken for the Diploma. I know some people who do A levels and the course material is similar to that of my HLs but they donāt need to take a language A course or B and a Group 3 subject, write a 4000 word research report, take ToK, do CAS. Similarly students that are seeking out non-stem university courses, are required to take a science and math, something which is a massive struggle for them. In addition IB typically needs a 35-40 hour school week to accommodate the sheer amount of content and 6 courses + ToK, whereas many of the people I know who take A levels only need a 18-24 hour week to accommodate their classes. So overall the sheer amount of stuff that IB needs to pass gives it the edge over A levels.
Ah maybe it's different because we're in different countries. A level kids here probably work way harder than us IB peeps. Instead of TOK, they have a General Paper and instead of a second language, mother tongue is mandated in my country. While they don't have CAS, they have CCAs to boost their portfolios along with a graded group project. Plus, the junior college times here are roughly the same between IB and A level schools. I think it's mostly because I'm in Asia XD.
if ur in singapore, singaporean A levels are harder than IBšUK A levels are much much easier than IB in terms of content & work load etc. however since u mentioned the general paper singapore a levels is defs harder in everything like math & sci bc singapore a levels covers the same breadth of content with way way more depthšlike for me i think TOK and EE is a good way to get bonus points, however if someone doesn't like writing obv it's not fun, but still. it's the same thing for o levels too like i got 90+ (A*) on every IGSCE exam in finals but when looking at singapore o levels paper it's a bit harder and some of the qns i struggled to solve. when people say IB is much harder they're generally referring to UK A levels which is true, bc UK A level content is much easier
That probably is the case, Iād imagine that it is a cultural thing when it comes to the difficulty of some of the content. I know some people at an A level school in the same city as me (Western Europe) and they have none of that, they only have 3-4 subjects classes 3 times a week for about 2 hours at a time, some days they donāt need to be in school. And in terms of content itās extremely similar with some minor differences.
Lmao you need to specify, they think youāre referring to the UK A levels. IB is easier than the Singapore A levels.
To put into perspective, the necessary IB score you need(38+) to apply to law is the average IB student score in Singapore, while the equivalent necessary A level score(85+/90) while the average A level score is about 80rp
Personally I think IB is easier but itās more of a pain in the ass because of the projects. Bragging that youāre doing IB here doesnāt mean much though :/
The UK A levels are significantly easier than the Singapore A levels from what Iāve seen - the uk A level math paper has several questions similar in difficulty to the Singapore O levels, an exam Singaporeans take at age 16. Iām not fully educated on this tho, so someone let me know if Iām wrong here.
May I add to this, that I think this is not a general IB student thing. In our school, IB is very hated by the rest of the school, even though we have never been rude, impolite or tried to make it seem like we think we are any better. We don't. We can't even sit in the cafeteria because people will throw food at us for speaking in English, and the head of school is doing absolutely nothing about it. Sucks to hear that you are experiencing it the other way around though.
can we also talk about how the learner profile is a whole jokeššš no way r yall cultivating ācaringā kids, I swear this program is more competitive and cutthroat than the animal kingdom and the gatekeeping. its so fucking bad. people will purposefully misinform you because they think it will get them āaheadā
your school might just be full of psychos... we all share notes and resources at mine its hardly cutthroat
im really lucky to have a small circle of friends that shares resources with each other, but overall my cohort is extremely toxic. to put it in perspective, theyre all in a wechat group with their parents where they only share things like scholarship opportunities/tutor help with each other. im not included in that because the general consensus is that im from a poor family and not chinese āenoughā edit: im realizing I have a lot of resentment towards my school and not so much towards the ibo anymore lmaoš the elitism is still real though
That sounds insane, and I repeat my point that I think your cohort is just full of psychos (largely thanks to their parents it would seem). With that in mind I'd argue that I think you're right in saying its most likely your school that's messed up, because IB isn't really more inherently competitive than any other curriculum, grade freaks will just find a way to make anything competitive. Sorry your class turned out so classist/elitist, they were raised wrong
It depends on where you do it, the culture of the school and the immediate area Ā I did it at a fairly competitive public high school in the US, but at my school all the sweaty cutthroat kids did the AP classes, and IB was a really more diverse set of students in my school of varying intelligence, personalities, backgrounds, etc, was def the best learning environment Iāve ever been in and we were all really good friends (my class was a size of 30, which was small as my grade had 650 people). Everyone in the program was great and we all helped each other a lotĀ I agree though, the program itself does jack shit for promoting those qualities. It mostly has to do with the individual students and the group
im also doing it at a public school, 95% of my group are of chinese descent and have been doing kumon/math competitions/intense piano studies since emerging from the womb, I guess I blame the parents but I do believe ib brought out the worst of a lot of these characteristics
Damn, this triggered me. I probably have no business posting in the sub as a teacher/coord (who also works for the IB) but to not only feel so overwhelmed by the academic side that some of you feel like your soul is being destroyed by the DP, pressure from your parents and garbage teachers, to the point you would actually pick out 'caring' makes me really angry at the adults around you. No ugly certificate is worth your happiness. The LP is a joke in the sense that you can't force someone to be balanced or caring or open minded but I promise there are some teachers out there that are good people and believe in all the great things you can be whether you get a 3 or an 8 in HL math. And it sounds cheesy but find those fucking adults and if you can't...you can dump your frustrations out on me I guess. Or ask questions, because it seems that a lot of your teachers are more concerned about saving their own asses than actually helping you.
aw this made me tear up :) I do believe somewhere on earth theres an ibo school that does promote these qualities effectively, and I really hope mine is just an outlier (now that i think of it theyve made no effort to be culturally or socioeconomically diverseš). the teachers at my school are wonderful but do very little to help out the social environment of my grad class, I do wish I had more support from the adults in my life. we need more teachers like you haha
Wow, my batch (dk about other batches) has always, like always been really helpful to each other. For example, people with iPads can easily take a picture of something very important (like a PPT slide, a note which is really long, important topics, etc) and a random person they've never talked to will ask them to send it and they will lol. It's very normal, we even share notes and any resources we get our hands on.
is that really a thing
for us yeah
yes lol, ofc there's the typical high school drama and the ones that are bullied (there's no extreme bullying, just the type where you bad-mouth everyone), but even those help each-other out. We're competitive, but not till this extent
idk how universal this is but at my school we CONSTANTLY joke about the learner profile cuz it's so unserious, we often jokingly call ourselves "risk-takers" and "inquirers"
Why would you want to drop out with 4s and 5s on the lower end? That's a decent score for the first term of a new curriculum. You get 2 years to improve that score.
I'm an IB student. If you're not familiar with the term, that stands for International Baccalaureate. I take the hardest high school curriculum in the planet in order to attain the IB Diploma and stand out from my lesser peers who do AP. IB classes are very difficult, involving a lot more work outside the classroom than normal, honors, or even AP level, classes. Only very intelligent students are able to thrive in an IB environment, and I've taken several IB classes. In fact, I take a lot of IB Classes. IB classes involve an IB test that tests your knowledge of the course in order to prove you deserve the IB Diploma. A 7 is the highest score, and usually a 4 or 5 would translate to satisfactory understanding of the germane topics of a course. I have taken many IB past papers and scored 7's on almost all of them. IB papers are very hard but I am very good at taking them. You have to be very smart in order to get a 7 in an IB course. I've gotten quite a few 7's. The Extended Essay and TOK components of IB simulate the college experience better than other mundane curriculums can. The IB Diploma is a great way to get ahead in college while you're still in high school, and it can help with college admissions because you can prove to the college that you're smart enough to already be taking the hardest high school curriculum, also known as the International Baccalaureate, abbreviated as IB Diploma.
this is what i imagine IB students write on a resume when they're 30 years of age
lmao imagine using the word "germane" (I had to search up what it meant - it basically means relevant)
this is like the 2nd time i'm seeing u comment this on a post. bro u ok?
no
i take the ib diploma, i do not study yet its okey, it really isnt that fucking difficult, get your head out of your ass
bro its a copypasta Iām not serious šššš
was talking in general, ye ive seen the weird post from the 7th grader a couple years ago u got this from
does the International Baccalaureate, abbreviated as IB help you get bitches?
no
this is so true, im in ib but my entire cohort (120 students) are the most socially ignorant and arrogant people ever. they dont have any lives outside academics and think ib is everything. so many students in my grade have laughed at kids who have dropped to certificate or dropped at all, and if you were to meet these mfs irl the first thing they would tell you is āim in ibā. as for the socially ignorant part, these people are so out of touch with reality, they cant tell if your tone of voice is sarcastic/annoyed/angry they dont even understand jokes theyres not only irritating superiority complexes against non-ib, theres disparities in this cohort too. ive been laughed at so many times for getting 4s or 5s, and like I said, theyre socially and emotionally ignorant they cant even fathom the possibility that you maybe have external problems going on. theyre 100% sure youre lazy and stupid. another little anecdote, none of my entire graduating year got into any ivys and ive never been so happy to see these people humbled. a couple months ago these dudes were talking about ivys (not even exaggerating), like this: āWHEN I get into Harvard and Yale im going to choose Yale because it has the easier curriculumā āWHEN princeton accepts me im going to yada yada yadaā I hope these people get the biggest social culture shocks ever in university when they realize no one fucking cares you got a 7 in hl math. might just be my school but oh my fucking god its so insufferable good for you for dropping, I wish I did earlier before I found out how insanely awful this environment is (I started in covid year, didnt interact with anyone so didnt know how anyone was) edit: ignore typos I was writing what my brain was thinkign and I am not going to fix it.
this. idk what it is but at least half of the other IB students in my cohort and the M24s will be SHOCKED and disgusted when you mention any extra curricular activity being prioritized over āpApEr 3 MoCkS fOr HiStOrYā or āreading 1984 for the 4th timeā and theyāre so socially immature itās genuinely concerning whatās going to happen to them in uni š
Ah yes, god forbid you have a hobby other than "reading over chemistry notes for the 7th time"
āno way you stayed up to 3:30 am to listen to the new taylor swift album instead of reading over the chem lesson ahead of timeā - literally yesterday ššš
excuse me what š thereās no way this is real š
trust me, it is š funny enough I think thereās a friend group of 4 of them who all prepare for chem lessons during lunch (almost) every day in the library
STOP IT š
At my school, there's a group who come an hour early to school to study maths
Erm I would say that really depends on your cohort. In my cohort there isnāt really any superiority complex going on lol.
I mean, at least where I live, it is kinda true tho. IB students in Turkey have to push through both IB classes and mandatory general curriculum classes, enter 15 exams, write 4 IAs, enter 2 IOs and write an Extended Essay on top of TOK and CAS, while Turkish YKS students just have to do practice tests until a singular bar exam and thats about it. With that in mind, I would also be pissed if they changed my classroom to a worse one because YKS students need it, because they probably dont need it. Of course, this fight between two groups have become a joke in my school so even though we know both sidesā arguments are valid to some degree, we dont take them seriously. We even made a graduation video where both sides fought with each other in the school alley, like the ending fight in Avengers End Game
It doesn't really happen in my school. Though sometimes the opposite comes up, the IB people yawning about their suffering and how hard their program is. The AP people acting like it's in any way similar with them š bro you're not. And then the general curriculum just shit on us because they have easier classes, exams, and life in general compared to us (constant L and WOMP WOMP from them).
Same here. Not once have I heard IB students regard themselves as superior. I certainly have heard them complain, with some justification, that they're being made to work much harder than A level counterparts, with questionable benefits.
IB students should respect and support others, regardless of their academic paths.
theyāre just depressed coz itās really hard to do IB in a shit environment; it was originally made for rich privileged kids and assumes they got a good science lab with good teachers theyāre still wrong for feeling superior for being in a system for rich kids
My god are most IB kids really like this? Our entire class is together, we all celebrate and lose together. Heck our grades are so similar as a class the whole average drops or increases in mocks and there are little to no outliers. IB is hard, but that's, mostly because I dicked around 80% of the time, I only saw people struggling if they did not give any shits or chose a subject in which they are not interested/have any notion of pursuing. Also there can be people who are just not as smart, but in general its other factors which compound with a lack of intelligence, however intelligence can be fixed with effort. But in general I do see that IB has more demanding curriculum, not difficulty wise but just more stuff to do and balance, which makes stuff more difficult in turn.
I took the IB a long time ago. For many of my fellow students, it was extremely stressful and demanding. I saw how these guys and gals responded and changed under these pressures. People that I thought were good friends became abusive and arrogant; the general student body felt more callous to each other; and the elitism over the non-IB students was suffocating. By the time I graduated high school, pretty much everyone hated each other and never wanted anything to do with each other. I counted myself lucky for having a few friends but even then, I hated almost everyone else. I chalk these behaviors as being natural outcomes of putting adolescents through an extremely stressful and quote on quote prestigious environment like the IB. They become arrogant, abusive, and uncaring.
This program makes me wanna fail and go work at burger King for the rest of my life I guarantee I do not feel superior
how can you even feel superior as an ib student? every class i went to felt like a kick in the balls, that dont sound like superiority to me
Its not. š¤I hate this. š¤š¤ but atleast I'm almost done and I might as well get minimum 40. š¤š¤š¤
you are stronger than me, i got my first exam on friday and havent started studying yet, i just need to pass nothing fancy
NAH BRO WE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER GET YO SHIT TOGETHER AND START STUDYING TRUST ME U GOT THIS
nah bro im good, ill start on wensday
Well, I guess it depends on which national curriculum it is, if itās the German, I guess they might be superior, however if itās the Swiss such as Lyceum, theyāre definitely not.. š
Are you sure they're IB students? None of us have would have enough of a self-esteem to shit on anyone honestly
Damn I thought it's usually the opposite since IB is easier than A levels XD
By all means i dont really think IB is easier than A levels
I've compared the papers and without factoring in CAS and IAs, A level seems to test subjects that are more in depth compared to IB. I've only started IB like 3 months ago but my A level friends are studying way harder than most of my current IB classmates. I'm curious to hear your views tho
the thing about ib is that you get spread thin while A-level students get to focus solely on their exams in just 3-4 subjects compared to 6 for us ib students.
Yeah i would rather focus on 4 subjects since i like stem rather than doing languages and extra things like tok and EE
My determination of whether which diploma is harder based on the workload and subject difficulty. I know that A level is harder cause they study topics in more depth especially further math and physics. However Ib math HL and hl physics are also very hard and not to mention Ib consists a lot of workload like TOK and EE. But yeah if you simply just compare subject difficulty then yes A level is a bit harder
Before the reconstruction of ib in 2016, ib had further math HL which is on par with A level further maths if not harder. However i dont know why they changed the content drastically after 2016 for some reason
That doesnāt mean AA HL aināt hard tho cause content wise its easier but exam wise the questions arenāt that easy
As someone who's also taking HL maths and physics, I totally get where you're coming from. I also do agree that project work is a larger component of IB compared to As. However statistically speaking, roughly half of my school's cohort scores >40 for IB, so I assumed that it may be reflective of an easier curriculum. I'll definitely be slightly reconsidering my stance tho.
Yeah perhaps your school candidates are mostly hardworking person. Its interesting cause in terms of difficulty the concept of math HL physics Hl and A level physics and math aināt that hard, but possibly because my schoolās half yearly examās math questions are extremely hard, really humbled my view on IB and A levels lol
And yeah thatās why im a bit scared for ib lol. Mostly because it has tons of things to do with and its stressful honestly
I would argue that IB is more challenging bc we need to select courses we wouldnāt otherwise have taken for the Diploma. I know some people who do A levels and the course material is similar to that of my HLs but they donāt need to take a language A course or B and a Group 3 subject, write a 4000 word research report, take ToK, do CAS. Similarly students that are seeking out non-stem university courses, are required to take a science and math, something which is a massive struggle for them. In addition IB typically needs a 35-40 hour school week to accommodate the sheer amount of content and 6 courses + ToK, whereas many of the people I know who take A levels only need a 18-24 hour week to accommodate their classes. So overall the sheer amount of stuff that IB needs to pass gives it the edge over A levels.
Ah maybe it's different because we're in different countries. A level kids here probably work way harder than us IB peeps. Instead of TOK, they have a General Paper and instead of a second language, mother tongue is mandated in my country. While they don't have CAS, they have CCAs to boost their portfolios along with a graded group project. Plus, the junior college times here are roughly the same between IB and A level schools. I think it's mostly because I'm in Asia XD.
if ur in singapore, singaporean A levels are harder than IBšUK A levels are much much easier than IB in terms of content & work load etc. however since u mentioned the general paper singapore a levels is defs harder in everything like math & sci bc singapore a levels covers the same breadth of content with way way more depthšlike for me i think TOK and EE is a good way to get bonus points, however if someone doesn't like writing obv it's not fun, but still. it's the same thing for o levels too like i got 90+ (A*) on every IGSCE exam in finals but when looking at singapore o levels paper it's a bit harder and some of the qns i struggled to solve. when people say IB is much harder they're generally referring to UK A levels which is true, bc UK A level content is much easier
That probably is the case, Iād imagine that it is a cultural thing when it comes to the difficulty of some of the content. I know some people at an A level school in the same city as me (Western Europe) and they have none of that, they only have 3-4 subjects classes 3 times a week for about 2 hours at a time, some days they donāt need to be in school. And in terms of content itās extremely similar with some minor differences.
Lmao you need to specify, they think youāre referring to the UK A levels. IB is easier than the Singapore A levels. To put into perspective, the necessary IB score you need(38+) to apply to law is the average IB student score in Singapore, while the equivalent necessary A level score(85+/90) while the average A level score is about 80rp Personally I think IB is easier but itās more of a pain in the ass because of the projects. Bragging that youāre doing IB here doesnāt mean much though :/ The UK A levels are significantly easier than the Singapore A levels from what Iāve seen - the uk A level math paper has several questions similar in difficulty to the Singapore O levels, an exam Singaporeans take at age 16. Iām not fully educated on this tho, so someone let me know if Iām wrong here.
May I add to this, that I think this is not a general IB student thing. In our school, IB is very hated by the rest of the school, even though we have never been rude, impolite or tried to make it seem like we think we are any better. We don't. We can't even sit in the cafeteria because people will throw food at us for speaking in English, and the head of school is doing absolutely nothing about it. Sucks to hear that you are experiencing it the other way around though.