How many CAS hours did you finish IB with?

[Guest HayashiEsme]

Like the topic says:P

Someone in my school a few years ago graduated with a two thousand CAS hours and got 43 in the end, props to her, she got into an Ivy League with full scholarship I believe. Hats off to her, really.

I'm still in my first 4 months of IB really, but I've actually finished my CAS hours already. Well not quite, because I can't write my reflections for my ECAs and get them approved until Year 12, so I won't count it as quite complete. But yeah, I hope I'm not the only creepy curious one here:)

[Babydolleyes]

I heard that once upon a time you only had to complete 150 hours of CAS in the IB and that was it, but they have definitely changed it so that you have to do roughly an evening of CAS every single week of both IB1 and IB2.

Now, of course you are allowed to have projects here and there that give you plenty of hours so you aren't forced to do CAS every single week (except for action maybe) but you simply can't finish your CAS work early, it isn't possible . My CAS coordinator said it would be wise to lighten the load, do a fair bit of CAS in IB1 and aim to finish all 8 learning outcomes and thus have an excuse to ''slack off'' in IB2. That's basically what I did, I did more than enough in IB1 and I had two pretty chill semesters in IB2, overall I completed 319 hours for CAS. Roughly half of those hours are action though.

Most of the people I know barely made it to 150 hours. I was determined from day 1 not to let CAS stress me out, so I was quite organized and made sure to fulfill my schools requirements such as having one long term project, doing a project for action creativity and service each semester and doing combined projects (e.g creativity and service). It was a breeze, honestly.

[cjy]

I believe I got about 600-700 hours overall.

[LJBurke]

Haha I left it to the last minute and scraped 152 with some of my learning outcomes at 1 - just hope they don't reject any of my hours...

[Award Winning Boss]

300+ all of CAS was dumb though and they probably won't even read our reflections.

[Absolutely Positively]

I got like 170, but I didn't need them for university.

Some others in my class wanted to get into Ivy Leagues in England, so they got over 1000 hours with really detailed reflections, photos and everything.

Edited May 11, 2013 by Absolutely Positively

[Guest HayashiEsme]

I got like 170, but I didn't need them for university.

Some others in my class wanted to get into Ivy Leagues in England, so they got over 1000 hours with really detailed reflections, photos and everything.

Unis read our CAS reflections? I heard that virtually nobody reads them! Oooh, time to give a little more thought into them then!

[detached]

Around a 100 for creativity and action each, and a bare minimum of 50 for service because I dislike volunteering. But I only wrote reflections for 50 hours of each category.

[Matsu]

I stopped counting after like 200 lol... And that was in my first year of IB. My school basically told us that we've just gotta do the major reflections and we're fine.

[-._._.-]

The sad thing is, I'm still not done with my reflections. Hours done, but it's going to be like an anticlimax when I have to do writeups after my last paper.

[Garmr]

177 hours (65/61/51), but without the 20-hour cap my coordinator put on each activity I could've easily approached 300 (for example, I only recorded 20 hours of MUN when I did 120+ hours )

[difiCa]

In the end, I reflected 407.5 hours of CAS, which was maybe around 30% of the actual time I spent on CAS-related activities during the IB, but as I just took my calendar and wrote everything I had bothered to write down there that's where I ended up. Action I barely scraped through with about 58 hours and service was over 200

[Gemma B]

500 I would have had more if my coordinator didn't enforce the 20 hour max rule....but still I'm happy.

[theboro76]

I'm currently 4 months in and have about 200 hours, it really is easy to get the hours. It's just the constant relections and the fact that it has to be regular that is the major problem. If only it was the old system again...

[the blonde one]

two thousand hours

what

did she like, govern a third world country for a month or something

I will wear seven hats on my head and take them all off for her

[IBKID4lyf]

1. I have around 200 but to be honest as long as you have the required 150 hours it doesn't matter!

[Sandwich]

I did hundreds of hours - at the end of the day, unless you've never done any extra-curricular activities before ever, you'll probably already be doing CAS. Only now you have to get it signed off and write nauseating pages about how it made the world a better place. Also I don't know about other people, but I was also doing things which required a lot more community service requirements (Duke of Edinburgh's award...) so would have had to do it anyway. But just remember guys:

The more hours you do that you get signed off officially, the more reflections you have to write. It makes no sense to do more than the minimum, and if you do then you do it just for your own happiness and amusement because the IB don't give a flying fiddle.

At my school we had to write a new reflection per 10 hours of activity we did. About the only thing I've ever done which was more sickening than writing my personal statement for university was filling in that blasted CAS folder with pitiful reflections about how I'd become a better person. How did my learning the cello benefit society? Erm... I know somebody who got an official warning for their CAS folder when they wrote about playing badminton "It didn't".

At least with D of E you just had to write a brief thing at the end saying what you'd felt about doing it all. So do more CAS hours if you want but depending on your perspective, I'd say if anything it is self-penalising to get them signed off! Let the rosy glow of achievement about what you learnt and contributed be a personal thing and not necessarily for the observation of the IBO. Unless you are in the unique position of enjoying writing CAS reflections..!!

Also to the person who says their hours are done in first year - you should just check with your IB Coordinator because for us we weren't allowed to say we'd done it all in first year and sign it off, you had to also do a certain minimum in the second year as well even if you'd well exceeded that during the first year.

[mm8888]

I have about 200. But in my school they did not count all extracurricular activities like then did not count basketball practices only tournaments or stuff like that if not I would have like 500

Edited August 31, 2013 by mm8888