Reply to Is the IB diploma worth it?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Is the IB diploma worth it?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For all the talk about how AOs are impressed by IBDP and the very challenging work, most admission results from IB schools are underwhelming, in particular for IB only schools. Some kids from IB magnet do fine, but even there, kids with 4.0 UW GPA, Multivariable, and an assortment of IB and AP classes, end up at UMD in the end. Maybe they weren’t stellar to begin with, but it just feels they would have done better in other settings.

Their mom comes back to report they were “well prepared for college” and “college was easy by comparison”. It’s UMD, and most kids of that caliber end up at more competitive colleges to begin with, where they’re challenged.
[/quote]

Many exceptional Maryland kids attend UMD for exactly the same reason many exceptional Virginia kids attend UVA: the state flagship has huge bang for the buck. They got into "more competitive" colleges that cost 2-3x as much as the state flagship and decided that wasn't worth it. Not every kid has a family that is willing or able to pay $90k+ a year for college.

You will note that 80% of the kids at UMD who submitted scores had SATs of 1400-1600 and it's very clear those kids could have gone "somewhere better".

Sneering at IB kids who go to UMD is simply ignorant.[/quote]

They are good kids, but not exceptional, which means that are an exception in their cohort, like one or maybe two kids in their cohort. You don’t go to UMD, a top 50-100 school, and be exceptional at the same time. An SAT score of 1400 in the test optional era, is not that impressive.

I get the cost argument, but also if they are that poor there’s financial aid available, so the cost would be partly adjusted down from $90k/year.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics