Personally, how useful was the IB to you in university?

[wrikder1999]

In all honesty, I'm just curious regarding how helpful doing the IB is/was for 

1. getting into a top notch university

and 

2. did it actually help you prepare for uni?

 

THANKS GUYS!

[Emmi]

1. Didn't matter really. People at my school got into amazing schools having done the IB program, and people who didn't do the IB program also got into amazing schools. As long as you have some sort of qualification the university recognizes and accepts, you can be admitted there. I just got into the same tier of university as people who didn't do IB, but I ended up doing more work to get to the same place. I'll note that I attend a decent school with a good engineering program, but it's probably not on anyone's "best universities" list. However, it's more important to consider the quality of the SUBJECT you want to study, not the university as a whole (for example, Harvard has an excellent business school and liberal arts program, but has a sub-par engineering school).

 

2. IB only barely scratches the surface of what you'll be studying in even your first year, so academics-wise, no. However, I was used to having to juggle several different subjects with varying course loads for each of them, so I was able to adjust relatively easy to that. Also, I knew how to write a decent essay from having to do lots of them in the IB in many different formats, unlike the majority of my classmates in several of my courses where I was frequently writing essays or other documents.

[Award Winning Boss]

1. I'd say yes because I was about to take bad A level subject. I also luckily took philosophy which is much better than the A level counterpart and I'm now doing a degree in it. 

 

2. Not really. Not more than anyone else to be honest. Maybe i'm underestimating the skill I was at when I started but I don't think the IB offered anything of special note. 

[metsfanAJM]

In all honesty, I'm just curious regarding how helpful doing the IB is/was for 

1. getting into a top notch university

and 

2. did it actually help you prepare for uni?

 

THANKS GUYS!

 

I ended up in a similar situation as Emmi, so I can second a lot of what she said.

 

1. Not really, I probably would have gotten in to all the schools I applied to (PSU, Rutgers, Maryland, Delaware, Millersville) without IB because of my SAT scores, but I never applied to any reach schools. However, a full IB courseload is regarded as the most rigorous courseload, so it will definitely help out if you're applying to reach schools, though they'll still be crapshoots.

 

2. I would say so, as would the majority of my school's IB alumni. I haven't had written any large papers yet, but I do have problem sets and quizzes every week, and I would say that IB helped make the workload more manageable for me than for my peers. I have way more free time than I did in high school, even though I'm a STEM major. The material in college is definitely more advanced and faster paced than IB, but it's not too difficult to adjust, especially since I managed the workload for more classes at a time in high school.

Edited September 21, 2015 by metsfanAJM