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[quote=Anonymous]
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The IB program limits students to 3, maybe 4 HL classes, which cannot be taken until senior year.  AP students have no limit on the number of courses they can take that are at that level, and they can take them in whatever grade they are ready to.  Therefore, AP is more rigorous.[/quote]

I disagree. The HL courses are two year courses so they take them to junior and senior years. In addition, they are taking 3 or 4 SL courses, which are also two year courses, their sophomore, junior, and/or senior years. IB diploma candidates end up with two years of a schedule full of college-level courses. From my observation, the English/history IB courses had significantly more writing/studying than the AP courses my other child took at TJ.

To me, the main downside of the IB diploma is the lack of college credit students can receive for IB courses. We got around that by having our student take several AP exams even though they weren’t in the AP course – they were in the IB course.

And we looked hard at having our students take various HL IB courses, and not pursue the diploma. But the uniform advice we got from the experts was that the diploma is considered more prestigious by colleges than if they would take a more rigorous courseload, because of all the additional requirements involved in the diploma. So kids went the diploma route and both Justice kids got into UVA. No complaints about IB here.[/quote]

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