h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My secondary school is offering the IB for the first time next year, in collaberation with a local college and 2 other schools. I've spoken to Quille, who reccommended I talk to you, if you don't mind, seeing as you're doing it in the UK like I would be. I'm seriously considering itand wondered if you have any thoughts?

I am SO(!) sorry about not replying for so long! I have been bogged down with work, but it is all good!. If you still want my thoughts on the IB, go right ahead and message me again.

Sorry again!

BenniBi

That's OK! On the IB front, we're pretty sure it's going ahead now. I'm probably going to do English, Spanish and History at Higher level and Philosophy, Environmental Science and one of the maths subjects (though I don't know which one yet) at Standard. I might do Geography instead of Philosopy, do Geography at Higher and move Spanish to Standard, if that makes any sense. I just wondered if you havce any general thoughts on the course, individual subjects, uni prospects etc.

Cheers.

Hello again!

Sounds like a good range of subjects (and with the IB, how could it not be!). One thing I would say is that most of our language students have been warned that it is quite hard to get a 7 at any of them (indeed some of our best students have been bluntly told that they wouldn't get it, which is a bit of a bummer!) but only one person in out year has done Spanish and, because it was only one person, they stuck her in with the A-level groups, so there might be a difference there, I wouldn't know (I do German and that is yucky enough!).

Environmental Science is the one choice of non-scientists and, I must say that most have found it to be fairly non-taxing, maingly going back over a lot of GCSE Science and Geography concepts. Apparently there is a fair bit of work but then you have to get 60 hours of practical work with all of the IB science subjects so I guess it is fair enough!

English, I find, is brilliant stick with it!

History and Philosophy are two subjects of which I know little about so I won't go into them here! As for the Maths choice, if you are ok with Maths then it will be easy (doss course), if you aren't so good then it'll be a challenge but not an exceptional one.

One thing that I will say is that you should DO YOUR COURSEWORK! no kidding, it is a hard hard course with a lot of sacrifices along the way (i.e. social life! lol) but it is well worth it in the end. As for uni choices, well most of the people in my IB year have received offers, some extortionately high because many do not realise that a point score of 36 correlates with three 'A's at A-Levels (ish) (two of our students have been offered scores of 42 and one of 39 without bonus points which is bloody hard to get!). As for me, well I have applied for Medicine and insofar have three rejections and one non-mover but then that is the competitive nature of Medicine and, from your choices, it looks like you aint gonna be applying for anything much like that (or, if you are, you need a drastic rethink! lol).

Hope this has helped and not put you off, honestly it is a top course to do and the entire IB-crew feel is a cool feeling to have. A lot of people will dislike it when they get into it but those are the people that haven't had the guts to ask what it is like

Hope everything goes well and drop me a line if you wanna chat about anything else.

BenniBi

Sorry for that, for some reason I was logged in under a different name.. ah well, that was me!

BenniBi

Sounds grat - thanks for the help!