IB Planning

[Guest]

Hi there,

Next year, I'm planning to take IB at my school, and I just wanted to sort some things out before I begin it so come exam time and/or beginning of next year, I'm not an utter mess when it comes to this. I want to study Medicine in a UK University, so they're kind of tilted according to the preference of the universities there (which are similar to my preferences anyway).

Subjects

The subjects I'm planning on taking are:

Higher Level:

History

Chemistry

Biology

Standard Level:

English Literature

French B

Math

Do you think they'll be too difficult to manage? I'm more of a 'understand and learn' person rather than plain memorising, and I understand that's kind of a problem with Biology, but I think that I should be fine. I've seen a lot of resources for it, like BioNinja and Stephanie Castle's Youtube page, but I'm still not quite sure.

That would be a problem for History, but historical facts just click with me - and I really love history, so that helps. I also love Chemistry, so I find it pretty easy to remember things in it and I'm in Further Science for NCEA and we're doing two chemistry topics that are also in IB (though not to the same extent).

My only real concern is French because I'm not particularly good at it. I've been doing it for two years (this is my third year) and I'm not that great at speaking it. Is that going to be a problem?

Extended Essay

I'm also planning my topic for Extended Essay earlier because of the same reason - when I do get to the moment of what I do, I will freeze up and not be able to think of a thing.

The topic I was planning on doing was 'What was the influence of World War I and II on the advancement of medical treatment?" Is that too broad? Would it better if I just concentrated on one World War or a few aspects of medical treatments?

Also, does the source of the information impact your grade (i.e. Would you get marked less for using more websites than books?)

Standard Level/Higher Level

A quick question: is it normal for schools to do standard level in the first year and then higher level in the second depending on your grades? Just wondering.

Sorry for the number of questions! Thanks in advance!

[yii yann]

Hi there,

Next year, I'm planning to take IB at my school, and I just wanted to sort some things out before I begin it so come exam time and/or beginning of next year, I'm not an utter mess when it comes to this. I want to study Medicine in a UK University, so they're kind of tilted according to the preference of the universities there (which are similar to my preferences anyway).

Subjects

The subjects I'm planning on taking are:

Higher Level:

History

Chemistry

Biology

Standard Level:

English Literature

French B

Math

Do you think they'll be too difficult to manage? I'm more of a 'understand and learn' person rather than plain memorising, and I understand that's kind of a problem with Biology, but I think that I should be fine. I've seen a lot of resources for it, like BioNinja and Stephanie Castle's Youtube page, but I'm still not quite sure.

That would be a problem for History, but historical facts just click with me - and I really love history, so that helps. I also love Chemistry, so I find it pretty easy to remember things in it and I'm in Further Science for NCEA and we're doing two chemistry topics that are also in IB (though not to the same extent).

My only real concern is French because I'm not particularly good at it. I've been doing it for two years (this is my third year) and I'm not that great at speaking it. Is that going to be a problem?

Extended Essay

I'm also planning my topic for Extended Essay earlier because of the same reason - when I do get to the moment of what I do, I will freeze up and not be able to think of a thing.

The topic I was planning on doing was 'What was the influence of World War I and II on the advancement of medical treatment?" Is that too broad? Would it better if I just concentrated on one World War or a few aspects of medical treatments?

Also, does the source of the information impact your grade (i.e. Would you get marked less for using more websites than books?)

Standard Level/Higher Level

A quick question: is it normal for schools to do standard level in the first year and then higher level in the second depending on your grades? Just wondering.

Sorry for the number of questions! Thanks in advance!

I'd firstly like to state that if you haven't even started the IB and have already done so much research, being generally well prepared, the IB is probably very suited to you!

The first step obviously would check out the subject requirement for medicine in the universities you want. History Bio and Chem at HL seems appropriate though, so that's fine. I'm only concerned that the workload could possibly be a bit too much - the catch with these subjects at HL is that they have loads of IAs (esp. sciences). Count that along with ToK, CAS, your own non-school activities and you might just be in a little deeper than you want. However, if you've got good time management skills and are disciplined, you should be able to pull it off.

I'm not entirely sure about French, but I do know that everyone at my school who couldn't really speak French, just did French Ab Initio. It was a source of an easy 7 points for them.

You EE question is definitely too broad. I'm not quite sure how you'd do it, but going by my EE as an example, you'd want something along the lines of:

"What was the influence (of a particular battle) on the treatment of (insert particular injury, like partially severed limbs)"

Of course that is just my example.

Finally, you should check out the first post of mine in this link: http://www.ibsurvival.com/topic/27669-struggling-with-ib/

It should give you an idea of the amount of work you'd roughly need to do per HL subject.

This was a hugely rushed reply, but I hope it helps.

[flinquinnster]

yli yann has given a great response above, so I'm not going to repeat everything said there.

As to EE and whether internet sources are seen as less good than books, that's definitely not the case. The important thing to remember is to have a diversity of different book and internet sources, and to use reputable sources (pretty easy - avoid wikipedia and the like).

About SL/HL and how it's run, it does indeed depend on the school and the subject. Some schools run with things like IB History SL in IB1 and IB History HL in IB2 (like for me), but others have separate classes to begin with, or integrate SL/HL material, or only do it for certain subjects. Again, as to whether progression to HL depends on grades, it can vary based on structure and how strict your school is on being selective.

Also, whilst you didn't reference this directly, UK medicine courses are hard to get into, and just practically difficult as an international non-EU applicant (which I assume you are). Bear in mind that undergraduate medicine is quite a long course, and it will cost a large amount of money with not that much scholarship/funding opportunities available. Also, medicine is not that transferrable a subject across national boundaries - although as a prospective international law student in the UK I've been assured that worrying about the transferability of professional requirements across countries isn't as big an issue as it may appear to be. Having said that, doing a medicine course overseas is clearly a big commitment, so it's great that you're doing research this early if you're interested!

[Sandwich]

Just to add, Medicine actually transfers pretty well internationally. With a UK Medical degree you can go more or less wherever. At most you have to sit that country's exams again when you get there (e.g. the US which wants everyone to sit their exams). However in terms of UK to Australia, it's super transferrable. Loads of UK medics go to work in Oz and (surprisingly, given the weather!) a few even come the other way

Good luck with your applications & whatnot. Just to add, another 'aspect' of your planning should be getting some work experience in a hospital or with a GP over the summer of IB1. Also coming up with a few good CAS activities to show teamwork, leadership, commitment, blah blah because those are all things you'll need to produce a competitive Personal Statement and maximise your chances of getting a place at University. However you seem very well prepared considering you've not even started, as others have said!

[Bude]

If you like understanding and learning, you will find HL Chemistry relatively straightforward. Watch this guy's videos if you want an early lead. https://www.youtube.com/user/richthornley

The way we learn Chemistry at my school is to do all the topics at SL, then do the HL components of them.

[Guest]

I can't really give a proper reply at the moment because I have an exam to get to but thank you for the quick and helpful replies! I'll give a longer response (plus another question - sorry!) later.

Cheers!