May 2014 How similar are November Exams to the May Exams normally?

[Monie3036354]

Are November exams normally similar to the following May exams? Should I study last year's november exam? What do you think will be the most tested on this year's exam?

[Thrashmaster]

To my knowledge, the May and November exams are suppose to be identical in nature (obviously not the same tests, but not like a different course or anything). Studying November tests should be fine.

As for what will be on this year's test... the syllabus I know there is usually an ugly vector problem, so you might consider reviewing for that. I don't think there's anyway to predict accurately the "most tested on this year's exam".

[Sandwich]

November exams are as similar to May's exams as the previous year's May exams and the previous November's exams and every other exam that's occurred since whenever the syllabus was last changed. If you want to predict what will come up this May, you could try buying a crystal ball, hiring Paul the octopus or taking up a religion, but really you're best off revising the whole syllabus.

[familyjewels]

They're similar, the deal is that in my country, the school calendar system is different. We usually start school on the very first week of March and finish between November-December. So yeah, no big difference really. But I'm not sure, maybe it is?

[Rigel]

This is purely speculative, but I've practiced with many mocks for my final IB exams and I usually found that the November exams were a bit more difficult compared to the May ones. At least for the sciences, I found that for the May exams you required less computations and more thinking to write down the answer (thus being in some way a bit trickier); but for the November ones there much more calculations involved (and they were usually longer and harder, at least for Physics/Math SL, and especially for Geo HL). I don't know if the trend was broken after May 2013, so I can't say much on the issue.

[Cherrlp09]

Are November exams normally similar to the following May exams? Should I study last year's november exam? What do you think will be the most tested on this year's exam?

Our history teachers says that november exams (for history) are easier, so try to practice may ones, especially for paper 1.

[yii yann]

This is purely speculative, but I've practiced with many mocks for my final IB exams and I usually found that the November exams were a bit more difficult compared to the May ones. At least for the sciences, I found that for the May exams you required less computations and more thinking to write down the answer (thus being in some way a bit trickier); but for the November ones there much more calculations involved (and they were usually longer and harder, at least for Physics/Math SL, and especially for Geo HL). I don't know if the trend was broken after May 2013, so I can't say much on the issue.

I would agree with this, for maths.

The questions for Nov Math HL exams were often slightly trickier than the May ones. They weren't MUCH more difficult, but I found that there was less straightforward problems. If you know your stuff though, it's not necessarily harder, just takes a little bit more time.

[khimberleigh]

It depends on the subject. For maths and sciences the exams tend to cover most concepts so looking at the previous exam won't really give you any clues as to what will be on yours, you just need to be confident with everything. However, for history they never ask the same specific question in the two sessions so you can usually determine what you won't be asked. For example if they ask about the causes of WWI in the May session, you're probably not going to get a causes of WWI question in November. Also, for example, if the May session had a question on the Rise of Stalin then the November kids would be well advised to study more on the Rule of Stalin.

Nevertheless, it's better to be prepared for everything, you don't want any nasty surprises. You might put more work into studying the causes of WWII, Vietnam, Korea etc. and less into WWI BUT still do some study on WWI.

Group 1 and 2 subjects tend to be pretty random so knowing what was in the previous exam won't give you any clues as to what will be on your exam.

I've always heard the November exams are harder, or at least the grade boundaries are higher because some people in the May session (such as the USA) use their predicted grades or SAT scores to get into university, so it doesn't always matter how well they do in the actual exam, and therefore may not try as hard. So it's (very slightly) easier for the people who do well to be in the higher percentiles (ie get a 6 or 7). Whereas a lot of the November people (eg Australia) get into university based on their final grades so everyone tends to try very hard in their final exams.

[flinquinnster]

I agree that November exams are generally harder for Maths HL, though that was definitely not the case in 2013. Both timezones for May 2013 were quite challenging in that they required both more conceptual creativity and calculation than in the November 2013 papers, where the questions were quite standard and used common calculations.

For Group 3 subjects, generally if a question has appeared prominently in the prior exam session, it is likely to appear. Having said that, I it is unreliable simply not to study what has appeared a lot on previous exams.

However, for history they never ask the same specific question in the two sessions so you can usually determine what you won't be asked. For example if they ask about the causes of WWI in the May session, you're probably not going to get a causes of WWI question in November. Also, for example, if the May session had a question on the Rise of Stalin then the November kids would be well advised to study more on the Rule of Stalin.

As unfortunate as it is, IB History sometimes does repeat questions. For instance, I assumed that the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare in the Chinese Civil War would not appear in November 2013 given that almost identical questions appeared in November 2012 and May 2013 TZ1 and TZ2. But as it turns out I ended up doing the question on guerrilla warfare in the CCW out of desperation, even though I had unwisely chosen not to study - indeed, right before I got into the exam room I remember saying 'yeah, guerrilla warfare in the CCW is the only topic which is 100% not going to come up in our paper given it has appeared in the last 3 sets of exam papers'. Tangent over - basically, don't spend too much time second-guessing what will appear in the May paper based on November!

[familyjewels]

This is purely speculative, but I've practiced with many mocks for my final IB exams and I usually found that the November exams were a bit more difficult compared to the May ones. At least for the sciences, I found that for the May exams you required less computations and more thinking to write down the answer (thus being in some way a bit trickier); but for the November ones there much more calculations involved (and they were usually longer and harder, at least for Physics/Math SL, and especially for Geo HL). I don't know if the trend was broken after May 2013, so I can't say much on the issue.

I've always thought I was crap at math, but I never knew that Nov exams would be trickier, I thought it was the same for everyone... how about the other subjects? English? History?

[Rigel]

This is purely speculative, but I've practiced with many mocks for my final IB exams and I usually found that the November exams were a bit more difficult compared to the May ones. At least for the sciences, I found that for the May exams you required less computations and more thinking to write down the answer (thus being in some way a bit trickier); but for the November ones there much more calculations involved (and they were usually longer and harder, at least for Physics/Math SL, and especially for Geo HL). I don't know if the trend was broken after May 2013, so I can't say much on the issue.

I've always thought I was crap at math, but I never knew that Nov exams would be trickier, I thought it was the same for everyone... how about the other subjects? English? History?

I can't say anything regarding those courses, but you shouldn't worry about Language B and Language A examinations are always a wildcard, so I doubt there's any change in difficulty. November exams are longer and harder but not as tricky as May ones (May ones do not require much to write, but it's harder to figure out how to do it). But note that I did my exams a long time ago, so there might not even be a trend at this point.

[ctrls]

Across the two papers, I think you can pretty much expect most of the topics to come up since they do balance the questions accordingly. With the exception of perhaps the odd topic that rarely comes up, it's probably safe to be prepared for anything. Maths isn't like other subjects in the way that they can test you on every major topic, so I doubt there's anything major in the November exams that aren't included.