Ib vs ap11/9/2023 This doesn’t include all the stuff we normally did in class, nor AP-related material.ġ600-word internal assessment (essay on a book we read in class, prompt of our own choosing - I wrote about A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermentov)ġ5-minute in-class presentation (on a book we read in class, prompt/topic of our own choosing - I chose The House of Spirits, one of my favorite novels, by Isabel Allende)ġ5-minute oral exam (commentary on a piece of poetry, then a dialogue with your examiner on one of the books in your syllabus - I talked about Robert Frost’s Once by the Pacific and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own)Ģ May exams (8-10 page commentary on an unknown prose/poetry piece, 8-10 page compare/contrast on two prescribed literary pieces - except you don’t have the pieces for reference, so you basically memorize a shit ton of quotes and throw them onto the paper)ġ600-word research paper (my class bused over to UW for primary resources - I did mine on the Taiwan Relations Act after scouring Reagan’s diaries and communiques from China, Taiwan, and the U.S.)ģ May exams (analyses of historical documents - my class’ prescribed subject was apartheid - and 5 essays on prompts ranging from the Cold War to Middle Eastern caliphates, depending on what your teacher chooses to teach) Just know that it’s a hella lot of work - for reference, here’s all the required material/tests for my IB classes. If this sounds confusing, it is: I didn’t really know what I was doing during sophomore year. You also need to complete CAS during your two years (Community, Action, & Service), a program to make sure you’re a well-rounded individual (one of the most, if not the most, counter-intuitive and annoying parts of IB). Two or three of your classes will be SL (Standard Level), requiring one year of education (or two - my school offers Physics and Math SL in two years), shorter exams, and somewhat gentler grading for internal/oral assessments.Ī seventh year-long course, Theory of Knowledge (TOK), ties everything together through philosophy. This means two years of education, higher standards for your internal and oral assessments, and longer exams in May. Three or four of your classes need to be HL (Higher Level). You need to take literature, history/social sciences, math, natural sciences, a foreign language, and a sixth area up to you (another foreign language, natural/social science, or art - mine was biology). IB requires you to take six core classes (although at Interlake, you can take as many IB classes as you want) and several final exams in each class for the diploma. WORK REQUIRED IN IB (from my experience): However, AP doesn’t go as deeply into its respective subjects as IB, focusing more on facts, test-taking, and practicality rather than theory and philosophy. You don’t need to take the AP class to take the exam, and you can take as many or as little as you want. AP isn’t available widely in other countries, either. offer AP classes, making it much more commonplace than IB. Although you can take the IB exams individually (if you take the matching course), you can’t earn the diploma unless you fulfill all the requirements of the program (I’ll elaborate more on them later). What’s different about IB is that it’s a diploma program - it’s much more rigorously structured than AP. We also crammed two years of AP curriculum into our IB classes, making things a lot more stressful and rushed than if we’d been a traditional IB school. A disclaimer: my school structures its IB program strangely - it’s one of the only two schools in the world which offers IB in sophomore and junior year, rather than the traditional junior and senior year. In general, I can say that IB overprepared me for college I became an immensely stronger writer and thinker than if I had just taken AP classes. IB is the infamous international program seen much less frequently in the U.S. As someone who took both AP and IB tests and classes, here are my two cents: There’s a lot of confusing regarding AP and IB curriculum, especially for prospective high school/IB students.
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