How hard is it to get a 7 in History HL?

[beth-]

How hard is History at higher level? I'm quite a good history student and have always gotten A's in it, but the fact that a ridiculously small amount of students ever score a 7 in history HL (for May 2014 it was only 2%) freaks me out a bit. 

How difficult it is, and how heavy is the workload?

If you were to give it a ranking out of 10 for difficulty (with 1 being easy as hell and 10 being the worst thing you've ever done), what would you give it?

 

[ShootingStar16]

How hard is History at higher level? I'm quite a good history student and have always gotten A's in it, but the fact that a ridiculously small amount of students ever score a 7 in history HL (for May 2014 it was only 2%) freaks me out a bit. 

How difficult it is, and how heavy is the workload?

If you were to give it a ranking out of 10 for difficulty (with 1 being easy as hell and 10 being the worst thing you've ever done), what would you give it?

The only thing that makes history HL hard is that you have to know so much within the time constraints during your exams. It's definitely not a subject you study the night before. You have to know what they want to get a 6 or a 7. Otherwise, you can't get better than a 5 even when you have a fantastic essay. Always see if you can study little by little everyday and do the readings to solidify your understanding. To get a 6 or a 7, you need to talk about historiography in your essay (you discuss different viewpoints of historians and schools of thought if you really want to impress the examiner). The keyword is DISCUSS. Don't just state what a historian thinks and call it a day. You have to briefly explain why their argument is valid and then refute it with your own arguments.

 

In addition to that, be really clear in your communication and make sure you DIRECTLY answer essay questions. Another thing is to try and do the best you can on the IA, so if anything goes wrong on the exams, you have your IA to cushion the blow and the IA isn't bad at all. You pretty much get to investigate anything you want and compile a written account on it as long as it's something that has some historical debate to it. 

 

For me, on a scale of 1-10, I think history would be a 6 or a 7 (haha see what I did there?). History HL is one of my fave subjects, but it takes a lot out of me (though I find chem SL harder LOL). Honestly, what I can say is that if you love history, it is totally worth the workload (in fact, you should only take the subject if you love history. It's a bad idea to hate history and take this class). The stuff you learn in history is soo interesting. Because it is  a difficult subject, the curve for history is quite generous You only need around 66% or 67% as your final IB history mark to get a 7 so yeah Don't let the stats daunt you because you never know. If you're getting A's on History, then you should be fine, but know that it is a jump from pre-IB to IB. Read the rubrics before you enter any in class essay and make sure you understand the rubric. You should also read the rubric for the history IA before you get started on it. Just read the rubric before you do anything. 

 

Hope I helped and good luck! 

[alefal]

ShootingStar16 is on point. There isn't much to add, really, though I thought I'd give you my experience as an IB graduate.

 

In my own experience, I would give IB History HL a 5 or 6 on the scale. It wasn't particularly difficult for me at all, history was definitely my favourite subject in IB. The only thing that could potentially be daunting was the workload and getting the analysis skills sharpened enough. 

 

It is true that only a few score a 7 in history, but a lot of people don't study properly for it. IB History isn't a fact-based class, as is the case with a lot of other history classes in other programmes, it's an analysis class. Now, facts are, of course, vital components in your analysis, but if you focus on the facts alone, you'll fail. In IB History, you need to draw longer lines, and discuss the context of those facts and the concepts surrounding them. Why or why not that fact is to be understood this or that way. You can't simply just look at the facts, you need to go further and actually analyse those facts. I think a lot of people take history and think they just have to remember years and random facts, but that is wrong. With facts alone, you have just the foundation. You're supposed to build a house. A lot of people forget parts of the house and end up with a roofless house without windows. 

 

It is definitely correct that you need to do a lot of reading throughout the years if you do History, but if you do this regularly throughout the years, and process the information you read, then you should be fine. I can't stress the last part enough, though, you can't just read, but you also need to somehow deal with the topic and let it mature. If you don't process what you read, you won't remember anything, but the more you process it, the more you'll remember and understand. You can do this by taking notes, creating mind maps, make timelines (as I did - see my signature ), summarise, discuss with/teach a friend, write an essay on it, rewrite your notes, etc.

If you're curious about the topic, then it'll be a lot easier, so make yourself curious! 

And, regarding note-taking, make sure you don't essentially just copy what you read, but also deal with the arguments and overarching ideas. What is the logic behind the author's arguments? Is there any bias? Why or why not is the author convincing? 

 

So, why didn't I get a 7 if I know all of this? The 'nice' story is that the exams covered things we had not studied very well in class. The truth? Well, it's probably a bit more to do with the fact that I became stupid and complacent. In class and with the coursework, everything went easily for me, so I thought I didn't have to read that much. There were other subjects I were struggling in, so I focused on them prior to the exams, and I didn't read too much history. And, then, bang! The exams ask about stuff I had barely touched upon, and I was an ice cube in the middle of Sahara. 

It's probably also something to do with the fact that our teacher didn't emphasise historiography much at all. I barely knew about it till I read about it here on IBS a couple of months before the exam. He was by no means a bad teacher, but that's one of the things we sort of missed out on. I did end up with a 6, though, which is by no means bad at all.

 

So, the lessons from me: Avoid being complacent, deal with the topic in detail over longer periods of time. Process the information properly, and don't rush it! 

[Sosomia]

It's really not that hard to get a 7 in HL history as people say. I got the 7 in this year May Session, though our teacher'd  told us not to expect 7s, because "they were impossible to get". From my personal experience, you really do need to be critical about the essay's topic, show your own opinions and contrast them with historiography (but no need for many of the Historians' names- a just mentioned a few). Also, I believe that the lenghth of the essays actually counts- I've always been kind of person whose essays would go beyond 3000 words and in my exams my wordcount would be somehow 1900words an essay. But maybe it's just me- if ypu're able to write a good analysis, supported by fact in less than 1500 than it's deffinately good for you! 

And the most important thing is that you cannot be too descriptive! Don't tell a story. Focus on pure analysis, just supported by facts. I've noticed that I did rather poorly in the essays in which I wanted to show off my knowledge and focused more on a description of the events than its analysis- thats a 5+ level. 

Edited September 14, 2015 by Sosomia