IB School

[Darren]

Hello everyone!

My name is Darren and I am from New Zealand I was thinking about starting the IB Diploma in New Zealand but unfortunately there is only one school which does IB exclusively instead of NCEA (New Zealand National Curriculum) I was wondering if someone could just have a look for me and see if this school is something that is worth going too.

Auckland International College.

AIC

Cheers,

D.

Edited April 12, 2010 by Darren

[Sandwich]

On the whole, I'd say you can partly tell a good school from good results, and that's not bad at all! ;0 Average point score is 35, which is 5 above the world average (but in terms of the 'good' IB schools I know, about average). It's more or less what our year average was, at any rate, and our school was nothing special but not bad. Very importantly, they've got some people into some good Universities so they obviously have some good extra curricular plans and careers coaching, which is pretty invaluable All in all, I'd say it sounds like a good choice -- and if you've decided to avoid your national curriculum, rather like the only choice too (: I'm sure there must be some people on this site who go there who can tell you more about it.

Why exactly do you want to do the IB instead of the New Zealand curriculum?

[Darren]

On the whole, I'd say you can partly tell a good school from good results, and that's not bad at all! ;0 Average point score is 35, which is 5 above the world average (but in terms of the 'good' IB schools I know, about average). It's more or less what our year average was, at any rate, and our school was nothing special but not bad. Very importantly, they've got some people into some good Universities so they obviously have some good extra curricular plans and careers coaching, which is pretty invaluable All in all, I'd say it sounds like a good choice -- and if you've decided to avoid your national curriculum, rather like the only choice too (: I'm sure there must be some people on this site who go there who can tell you more about it.

Why exactly do you want to do the IB instead of the New Zealand curriculum?

I want to do IB instead of the NZ Curriculum because it is extremely unstructured and doesn't cater at all for what I am looking for in a school.

I am currently 14 and the Year 13 (Senior Year) level is still only relatively challenging for me when I am in Year 10. I believe I would benefit from a school with IB because of how structured it is and what perks it offers. Unfortunately there is only one school in NZ which uses IB exclusively so I was looking at this one in particular.

Any help?

Edited April 13, 2010 by Darren

[maerad]

From what I've heard, AIC is a pretty good school, but I wouldn't rule out the NZ schools that offer both NCEA and IB. I'm at a split-pathway school, and it is nice to be around people who aren't all stressed out by IB, and there's also the opportunity to enter for the NZ Scholarship exams. I also appreciate IB more because of my experiences with NZQA in Level 1. The downside, of course, is that with most of these schools you would have to take Level One before going into IB. L1 Itself isn't a terrible course as far as preparation for IB goes, but if you are really against the idea of spending any more time than you have to in the NZ curriculum, then yeah, go for AIC.