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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a sophomore at WL high school who is struggling with whether she should do the full IB program at WL high school, or simply do a mix of AP and IB classes without getting the full diploma.  A key factor in her decision-making is future college options.  She is worried that if she does not do the full IB program, colleges will question why she did not take the most rigorous curriculum offered at her school.  [b]She is aiming for some of the most highly competitive colleges[/b].  Any thoughts from those who have been there/done that?  It is worth putting yourself through the rigor of the IB program?  She is interested in a STEM career and IB is not necessarily a perfect fit for that, but it is what it is.  Have any of your children regretted their decision to do the IB program?[/quote]

Uh?  She wants to go to some of “most highly selective colleges” and yet the rigor of IB is at all a concern?   I mean, I get that she wants to do STEM, but come on.  Have you looked at the W&L matriculations to the “most highly selective colleges”?   Not to mean, but you sound like you have no clue.  Almost no one from that smart group of kids is getting into those schools.  Except athletic recruits.  And THE VERY BEST students, like top ten.  None of those kids are scared off by IB and would only consider the most rigorous courses.  To be clear, I am not including UVA.  [/quote]

This is the OP.  She is not concerned about the rigor, but rather, the fact that the IB requirements preclude her from taking other classes that are more relevant to STEM and her areas of interest/focus.  There is no question she would do the IB program if she was interested in going into a humanities field.  [/quote]

IB is excellent for STEM. It's so obvious someone has no STEM experience when they come in and claim that AP is the ideal program, as if AP Calculus BC is the key to the STEM universe. Couldn't be further from the truth. 
Someone who goes through IB and learns to write extensively in math and science is going to be better off in the long run even if they didn't learn that one integration rule absent from IB Math that AP Calc does cover. Oh please. There are four years of college-level math and science to go at that point. High school math material is inconsequential. Nobody wants the engineer or developer who sucks at writing technical reports.[/quote]

One has to laugh at the suggestion that you're going to suck at writing unless you enroll in some over-hyped IB program.  [/quote]

The #1 complaint of recent APS college students is that they are ill prepared in writing.   The fact is that APS teachers have 25 kids in a class X 4? or 5? periods a day.  What if they assign a three page paper, that’s what 300 pages?    How can s/he engage in real editing?   Any back and forth?  Any revisions?   Unrealistic.

Critical thinking skills expressed in written form, edited, revised, etc are not  being taught.  IB has forced it on students due to the program itself, but it’s why many pull for private as well or try desperately to get into HB for the teacher/student ratio.   [/quote]

That’s exactly how it worked at my mediocre public high school 25 years ago. Somehow the teachers made it work. [/quote]

College expectations and acceptance was radically easier 25 years ago. [/quote]

Actually, I don't think the expectations have changed that much. The competitiveness and acceptance has. That's why parents push for their kids' ability to retake and retake or red-do, why parents hover over their kids' school lives so much, why kids are experiencing so much more anxiety. And as a result, schools implement policies like "no zeros" and retakes and no homework or no graded homework, etc.

Meanwhile, colleges are not getting students who are as well- or better-prepared for college as they did in the past, despite higher student GPA stats and test scores.[/quote]

25 years ago, the top 10% of local high schools had GPAs in the 3.8 range on average. Those students got into UVA, W&M, Johns Hopkins, etc. Now 4.0 is the lower end for admission to university. Yet those students are not necessarily as well prepared, especially when it comes to writing. [/quote]

You are 100% wrong on this.  I graduated from a local APS HS in the 90s; we had gazillions of APs; all of us had above 4.0; and loads of us went to snotty snot ivy and ivy adjacents.  I think there were over 30 “valedictorians.”

And I was totally not prepared to write.  Just sayin. Lots of change has happened but your timeline and statements aren’t factually accurate.  [/quote]

DP here. Many of my APS classmates in the mid to late 90s graduated with 3 or 4 AP classes total on average and a roughly 3.8 GPA. They got into UVA, Va Tech, and W&M, not to mention good out of state schools like UNC Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins, W&L. [/quote]

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