How do IB credits work?

[Great Polar Bear]

Right, so universities have listed credits for various IB courses on their websites. How do these credits help us?

Thanks!

Edited November 15, 2013 by helpfulbucket

[Drew Doehring]

So this will be a huge let down if you want to go to a college or university in the US. Each school is different in the amount of credits (hours of class in which you will be exempt) that they will give you, however it is a general trend that though most schools prefer IB over AP, Honors, or Standard to show the amount of rigorous classes you took in high school, they will only usually take HL for credit and only the HL classes you got a 5, 6, or 7 on your IB exam. It is correct that each schools website will show you how many hours you can receive as an IB student and it should be under admissions or a similar page.

[Great Polar Bear]

I understood the college, website listings and preference of IB over AP part. However, I still don't understand the "concept" of credits.

(a) Why do we get exempt from classes?

(b) Why is it a "huge let down" if I apply to the US?

Thanks.

Edited November 15, 2013 by helpfulbucket

[YellowSpider]

Right, so universities have listed credits for various IB courses on their websites. How do these credits help us?

Thanks!

I talked to one of the unis yesterday for the same thing, so i'll tell you what i understood from it.

I'm not sure if it's the same for all undergrads, but from what i know, you need to finish 120 credits to earn a bachelor's degree and that's 120 over 4 years and that's why we do 30 credits per year. Since these universities give us IB credit(the maximum i've heard is 30), that saves us a lot of time. They say it could save us even a year, which i'm not too sure about, but it simply helps you to finish your requirements quickly. For example, if i have a certain amount of courses to take in my first year and i get credit for let's say 'Introduction to economics 201', then i don't have to take this class and i can take a class that i would normally do in my next year... so i think on an overall it saves you time and possibly money.

You can also mail them to explain it to you in detail if I confused you.

hope this helps

Edited November 15, 2013 by MISHI

[Great Polar Bear]

Woah! Thanks a bunch. That really helped. By the way, within a university, do the credits for a specific subject remain the same regardless of the course or does this depend from university to university?

[YellowSpider]

Woah! Thanks a bunch. That really helped. By the way, within a university, do the credits for a specific subject remain the same regardless of the course or does this depend from university to university?

they vary from university to university. it depends on each university's policy.. and that stuff you can easily find out on their sites anyway.

[Emmi]

Woah! Thanks a bunch. That really helped. By the way, within a university, do the credits for a specific subject remain the same regardless of the course or does this depend from university to university?

They vary all over the place. At my university for example, you need at least a 4 on a HL exam to get credit, but you will get 8 credits regardless of whether it's a 4 or a 7. They don't take all subjects, but they offer credit for most of the more popular courses (like English, history, biology/chemistry/physics, math, economics, etc). At others you may need a 5 to get credit and they might offer less credit. It's really nice, I've finished the majority of my general education requirements this way, letting me take fewer credit hours per semester, which is nice when you have to take death classes like physical chemistry and linear algebra and stuff like that. I'm not graduating early, in fact graduating a tiny bit late because of the number of classes I need, the difficulty of them, and that I switched majors halfway into my first year, but it's still not bad. Your best bet is to explore the website or call the university itself, either of which would tell you how they do IB credit.