Taking AP Economics one year and IB Economics the next, is it good or bad?
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Anonymous
| My 10th grade child is currently taking AP Economics. He is signing up for IB Economics next year (International Baccalaureate). Will colleges look at this unfavorably? Although there is some overlap, it sounds like IB Economics has a global perspective. |
Anonymous
| No, it shows interest in economics. Take it HL though |
Anonymous
| Talk to the school and find out more about where there is overlap in the specific courses. I personally would only do 1 unless they really covered different content. "A global perspective" could mean that the IB course is macroeconomics and the AP course is microeconomics. |
Anonymous
| The faculty of a moderately selective local university recommended prospective economics majors -- including those with a 5 on the exam -- retake the full year Principles of Economics, because they found students coming straight out of AP to have a poor grasp of the material. This was even before the College Board started making APs much easier to pass. Not sure about their opinions of IB. I do see the claim online that IB economics is significantly more in-depth. |
Anonymous
Which AP is he taking? Macro has a "global perspective". |
Anonymous
I just looked at the IB description. There is nothing here that is not covered by AP Micro/Macro (most of the content is Macro and many Macro teachers cover this level of Micro as background anyway, so potentially even AP Macro would cover all of this content.) The only thing that is different in IB is writing papers. https://www.ibo.org/globalassets/new-structure/programmes/dp/pdfs/sl-economics-en.pdf Have your child take another class. |
Anonymous
Pretty much all departments want kids who are majoring in their subject to re-take basic courses at their university. |
Anonymous
In a lot of cases, that's wise. I was an Econ major. I don't think people should take duplicative econ classes in high school. I understand what is covered in Intro and Intermediate Econ. Try to do something new. New history would be more valuable than a semi-overlapping Econ. A new science would look more rigorous. |
Anonymous
| As an econ major, most intro classes are a detriment to the field. Imagine if intro physics taught Ptolemaic physics (epicycles) and only used algebra, with the justification that the former is more accessible than modern astrophysics and the latter is necessary since physics majors aren't very good at math. |
Anonymous
| It will be totally redundant. My kid graduated with an IB diploma and took the AP exams for a lot of IB classes because they were very similar. And no college will give double credit for this — they will just give him one year of Econ credit either way. Take Stats or something instead. Or IB Enviro if he needs an IB elective. |