Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 18:58     Subject: Re:IB Programs
Regarding IB exam and college credit, DC took IB physics and math HL and said they got 8 credits for each (scored 7 on both) in college. They said that most of the AP content was covered in IB classes, so they just self studied the small portion of the AP exam that wasn't covered in the IB classes. For every IB class they took, they took a corresponding IB and AP exam. They got 58 credits total. They said if they hadn't taken all those IB exams, they wouldn't have had that many credits going in. They scored all 5s in their AP exams.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 15:03     Subject: IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:selected RMIB class of 2024 college attending

Brown (4)
Columbia (3)
Cornell (9)
duke (3)
Georgetown (6)
harvard (2)
MIT (2)
Johns Hopkins (2)
Chicago (4)
Penn (1)
Yale (2)
Northwestern (1)
Princeton (2)
Stanford (1)


The OP was asking about IB Programs, not about RMIB specifically, where kids do AP Calculus BC in 10th grade and take over 5
AP’s on average in addition to the IBD.

Now do Blair magnet, which is a more apt comparison. Similar cohort, but far more rigorous curriculum, and also better college admissions outcomes. That’s if you want to keeps the discussion centered on magnets.

Really curious on why some of these posters are so invested in deceiving others about how great the IB programs are. Pretending RMIB is representative for generic IB programs is simply dishonest. Great if your kid went there and did well but don’t make it seem like RMIB and Kennedy are the the same.


You seem to have as much of an agenda as the RMIB boosters do.


I am the PP with 8th grader who posted the college list and I find contribution from both sides here to be really helpful. It doesn't matter and it might even be a plus that true believers are putting forward their strongest arguments, even if those are, individually, one-sided.

Thank you everyone for the effort you put here. We are new to MCPS and I found this particular board to be extremely helpful. Honestly, I am not sure what I would do without you.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 14:38     Subject: IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:selected RMIB class of 2024 college attending

Brown (4)
Columbia (3)
Cornell (9)
duke (3)
Georgetown (6)
harvard (2)
MIT (2)
Johns Hopkins (2)
Chicago (4)
Penn (1)
Yale (2)
Northwestern (1)
Princeton (2)
Stanford (1)


The OP was asking about IB Programs, not about RMIB specifically, where kids do AP Calculus BC in 10th grade and take over 5
AP’s on average in addition to the IBD.

Now do Blair magnet, which is a more apt comparison. Similar cohort, but far more rigorous curriculum, and also better college admissions outcomes. That’s if you want to keeps the discussion centered on magnets.

Really curious on why some of these posters are so invested in deceiving others about how great the IB programs are. Pretending RMIB is representative for generic IB programs is simply dishonest. Great if your kid went there and did well but don’t make it seem like RMIB and Kennedy are the the same.


You seem to have as much of an agenda as the RMIB boosters do.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 14:33     Subject: IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:My daughter is now at College and claims she is much better prepared having done the IB than friends who just did the AP, FWIW.

Yes, this is true. My own kid said the same, and I've know a few adults who have said this, also.

I think it's because IB requires so much critical reasoning and analytical writing that it really forces the student to be organized, and churn out long papers quickly. That would obviously help in college.

I also find that a lot of the IBD students are good speakers in part because IBD assessments has an oral component. Many go into debate. My own kid did, and they are a STEM major.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 14:29     Subject: IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:RMIB is not the typical IB program
SMCS is not the typical AP program

AP > IB
SMCS > RMIB

that depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for a strong program in critical reasoning, analytical writing, then IB > AP.

If you are only looking for as many college credits, then yes, AP > IB.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 13:51     Subject: Re:IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Point taken. I will mention that RMIB list looks different. It is titled "IB college list for classes 2024, 2023, 2023, 2021 attending. Attending is repeatedly underlined for each class.

It doesn't talk about applications, admissions.. gives no percentages. Just a list of colleges and the number of students from each class attending each of the colleges. There is no disclaimer that it is student reports. However, the source of the list is unclear. The list was given to parents in the hallways during orientation together with list of clubs, flyers about IB and similar.


You know the numbers are made up because if you look at this document the quoted admission rate from IB at Berkeley is 58%, while from the other link it was 24%.

https://kennedy.auhsd.us/files/page/7517/2017_JFKIBDP_Presentation_Enlgish.pdf

Needless to say it’s neither. For Kennedy I suspect it’s closer to 0%.

If a high school lies so blatantly to parents at info nights, that’s enough for me to not send my kids there.


I believe what they are saying is that IB is +32% percentage points higher than "total population acceptance rate"), so 24+32=58. Population percentages seem a bit high here (does Berkeley really accept 24%?)

Now that I look at it, the source is I-graduate.org (whatever that is but is seems focused on California state schools) and this is for IB programs generally, not the one at Kennedy necessarily. It explains why data is old, as reflected in high acceptance rate.

Again, this list should not be confused with the list parents got at RMIB, which was different and focused on their particular IB program (not IB generally) and attendance vs. acceptance.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 13:51     Subject: IB Programs
My daughter is now at College and claims she is much better prepared having done the IB than friends who just did the AP, FWIW.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 13:43     Subject: Re:IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:Point taken. I will mention that RMIB list looks different. It is titled "IB college list for classes 2024, 2023, 2023, 2021 attending. Attending is repeatedly underlined for each class.

It doesn't talk about applications, admissions.. gives no percentages. Just a list of colleges and the number of students from each class attending each of the colleges. There is no disclaimer that it is student reports. However, the source of the list is unclear. The list was given to parents in the hallways during orientation together with list of clubs, flyers about IB and similar.


You know the numbers are made up because if you look at this document the quoted admission rate from IB at Berkeley is 58%, while from the other link it was 24%.

https://kennedy.auhsd.us/files/page/7517/2017_JFKIBDP_Presentation_Enlgish.pdf

Needless to say it’s neither. For Kennedy I suspect it’s closer to 0%.

If a high school lies so blatantly to parents at info nights, that’s enough for me to not send my kids there.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 13:28     Subject: IB Programs
RMIB is not the typical IB program
SMCS is not the typical AP program

AP > IB
SMCS > RMIB
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 13:02     Subject: IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:In our experience, IB has been great for a strong but shy student who appreciates the social experience of navigating high school in a tight-knit, readymade peer group, the closest experience in public school to a private school. Yes, the 6-course pack is something of a drag. We roll with it because it comes with a group of peers taking most of the same fairly rigorous classes for four years. In a giant public high school, you can't put a price on an IB peer group. These are teens who accrue the benefit of both social and academic inputs. Rather than denigrate IB like the poster above, it pays to think more broadly about what the program offers students who are a particularly good fit for it. Fact is, no shortage of those "middle of the road" IBD grads at Ivies, top tech programs and all manner of elite universities around the world.



So now the strength of the IB program is the peer group? That’s very dependent on the school cohort, go to a magnet if that’s what you care for. There’s self selection in AP classes too.

Please with the “Ivy admission”. It happens at RMIB for a handful of the 100 admitted students, that are part of the magnet (strong peer cohort) and have access to different coursework.

That’s not representative of the typical IB program. In fact for students relying exclusively on IB don’t do “ivy” in admissions, just on par with the students taking 4-5 AP’s and I’m not looking down on these outcomes.

It’s not denigration to point the shortcomings of IB to prospective students and their parents.


Nonsense, you've latched onto the wrong shortcomings.

It's no brainer that self-selection in AP classes doesn't promote peer interaction, or robust esprit de corps, like IBD does. Why not? Because most MCPS high schools are A) very large, and B) teaching up to 30 AP courses. Moreover, the AP peer group in any particular MCPS high school is invariably bigger than the IBD group, as much as six times bigger. The result is that AP students are sprinkled around courses. Thus, IBD students are far more likely to overlap with one another in class moving up the chain.

Have you ever worked on an Ivy admissions committee? The Ivy where I once worked in admissions admitted many IBD grads from all over the country and all around the world. In fact, top government high schools abroad are often IB World Schools, particularly in China/Hong Kong, Canda, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.

Look, it's not a bad idea for ambitious IBD students in this country to double up on AP exams where there's significant content overlap, particularly for sciences, environmental studies, the arts and foreign languages. As noted several pages back, the timing of the IBD HL exams (June of senior year) is unhelpful vis a vis the US college admissions calendar. It may also behoove an ambitious IBD student to take an AP or two, or a Cambridge Intl exam, they've self-prepped for to emphasize academic strengths. But to write-off the IB curriculum as inadequate as compared to AP for admission to the most highly competitive colleges in this country is to throw the baby out with the bath water as an exercise in America First thinking.

Believe it or not, particularly able, industrious and resourceful IBD students from government schools in this country, and many others, crack Ivies, or at least the one where I worked.


IB curriculum is inadequate at least in math and sciences. It’s a combination of high school and college topics, and because of that take twice as kind as the equivalent AP class and usually receive less college credit.

If you need to supplement IB with AP classes to be competitive, it follows that IB isn’t that great, especially if you need to double up on equivalent classes.

Esprit de corps and peer interaction is more along the lines of pretentious and vacuous talk IB is famous for, personally I think the “global citizen” is the best.

And no you didn’t work as admissions officer at no ivy, you’re just making that up to give some cred to your post.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 13:02     Subject: Re:IB Programs
Point taken. I will mention that RMIB list looks different. It is titled "IB college list for classes 2024, 2023, 2023, 2021 attending. Attending is repeatedly underlined for each class.

It doesn't talk about applications, admissions.. gives no percentages. Just a list of colleges and the number of students from each class attending each of the colleges. There is no disclaimer that it is student reports. However, the source of the list is unclear. The list was given to parents in the hallways during orientation together with list of clubs, flyers about IB and similar.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 12:50     Subject: IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:selected RMIB class of 2024 college attending

Brown (4)
Columbia (3)
Cornell (9)
duke (3)
Georgetown (6)
harvard (2)
MIT (2)
Johns Hopkins (2)
Chicago (4)
Penn (1)
Yale (2)
Northwestern (1)
Princeton (2)
Stanford (1)


List is made up.


Obviously! How weird do you have to be to make this stuff up?


The list is loosely based on RM instagram college commitments but she posts it as RMIB. Not everybody posts, and most of these kids are not IBD. For sure that not 1/3 of the RMIB class goes to top 10. Bizarre why people make this up.


I am the PP who posted the list. I copied the numbers from the flyer we were given at RMIB 8th grade open house. So these are official numbers as advertised by the RMIB program. They gave us the numbers for the 3 most recent years. The numbers for the other 2 years are similarly impressive but college distribution is different. "1/3 goes to top 10" is my rough estimation.


The numbers at info nights for IB programs are notoriously deceptive.

Look for example this document posted on Kennedy IB website:

https://kennedy.auhsd.us/files/page/7517/IB_University_Acceptance_Rates.pdf

If you read carefully you see it’s actually “based on student survey”, whatever that means.

Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 12:23     Subject: IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:In our experience, IB has been great for a strong but shy student who appreciates the social experience of navigating high school in a tight-knit, readymade peer group, the closest experience in public school to a private school. Yes, the 6-course pack is something of a drag. We roll with it because it comes with a group of peers taking most of the same fairly rigorous classes for four years. In a giant public high school, you can't put a price on an IB peer group. These are teens who accrue the benefit of both social and academic inputs. Rather than denigrate IB like the poster above, it pays to think more broadly about what the program offers students who are a particularly good fit for it. Fact is, no shortage of those "middle of the road" IBD grads at Ivies, top tech programs and all manner of elite universities around the world.



So now the strength of the IB program is the peer group? That’s very dependent on the school cohort, go to a magnet if that’s what you care for. There’s self selection in AP classes too.

Please with the “Ivy admission”. It happens at RMIB for a handful of the 100 admitted students, that are part of the magnet (strong peer cohort) and have access to different coursework.

That’s not representative of the typical IB program. In fact for students relying exclusively on IB don’t do “ivy” in admissions, just on par with the students taking 4-5 AP’s and I’m not looking down on these outcomes.

It’s not denigration to point the shortcomings of IB to prospective students and their parents.


Nonsense, you've latched onto the wrong shortcomings.

It's no brainer that self-selection in AP classes doesn't promote peer interaction, or robust esprit de corps, like IBD does. Why not? Because most MCPS high schools are A) very large, and B) teaching up to 30 AP courses. Moreover, the AP peer group in any particular MCPS high school is invariably bigger than the IBD group, as much as six times bigger. The result is that AP students are sprinkled around courses. Thus, IBD students are far more likely to overlap with one another in class moving up the chain.

Have you ever worked on an Ivy admissions committee? The Ivy where I once worked in admissions admitted many IBD grads from all over the country and all around the world. In fact, top government high schools abroad are often IB World Schools, particularly in China/Hong Kong, Canda, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.

Look, it's not a bad idea for ambitious IBD students in this country to double up on AP exams where there's significant content overlap, particularly for sciences, environmental studies, the arts and foreign languages. As noted several pages back, the timing of the IBD HL exams (June of senior year) is unhelpful vis a vis the US college admissions calendar. It may also behoove an ambitious IBD student to take an AP or two, or a Cambridge Intl exam, they've self-prepped for to emphasize academic strengths. But to write-off the IB curriculum as inadequate as compared to AP for admission to the most highly competitive colleges in this country is to throw the baby out with the bath water as an exercise in America First thinking.

Believe it or not, particularly able, industrious and resourceful IBD students from government schools in this country, and many others, crack Ivies, or at least the one where I worked.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 12:09     Subject: IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:selected RMIB class of 2024 college attending

Brown (4)
Columbia (3)
Cornell (9)
duke (3)
Georgetown (6)
harvard (2)
MIT (2)
Johns Hopkins (2)
Chicago (4)
Penn (1)
Yale (2)
Northwestern (1)
Princeton (2)
Stanford (1)


The OP was asking about IB Programs, not about RMIB specifically, where kids do AP Calculus BC in 10th grade and take over 5
AP’s on average in addition to the IBD.

Now do Blair magnet, which is a more apt comparison. Similar cohort, but far more rigorous curriculum, and also better college admissions outcomes. That’s if you want to keeps the discussion centered on magnets.

Really curious on why some of these posters are so invested in deceiving others about how great the IB programs are. Pretending RMIB is representative for generic IB programs is simply dishonest. Great if your kid went there and did well but don’t make it seem like RMIB and Kennedy are the the same.


Are you sure? According to this list, approximately 1/3 of RMIB class went to top 10.


According to the list you made up this morning?

Your top 10 list is made up of 14 colleges.



Wow you got me. There are also more than 33 1/3 students on the list.

The magnet decisions are not yet out and my 8th grade DC strongly prefers SMCS. So I don't really have a dog in this fight but I am following because it could possibly become very relevant to my own family.

I was very surprised by these college placements. I am open to all evidence that says the list is not accurate.

I am IB curious but open to different perspectives. The list was my first post on this topic.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2025 12:08     Subject: IB Programs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:In our experience, IB has been great for a strong but shy student who appreciates the social experience of navigating high school in a tight-knit, readymade peer group, the closest experience in public school to a private school. Yes, the 6-course pack is something of a drag. We roll with it because it comes with a group of peers taking most of the same fairly rigorous classes for four years. In a giant public high school, you can't put a price on an IB peer group. These are teens who accrue the benefit of both social and academic inputs. Rather than denigrate IB like the poster above, it pays to think more broadly about what the program offers students who are a particularly good fit for it. Fact is, no shortage of those "middle of the road" IBD grads at Ivies, top tech programs and all manner of elite universities around the world.



So now the strength of the IB program is the peer group? That’s very dependent on the school cohort, go to a magnet if that’s what you care for. There’s self selection in AP classes too.

Please with the “Ivy admission”. It happens at RMIB for a handful of the 100 admitted students, that are part of the magnet (strong peer cohort) and have access to different coursework.

That’s not representative of the typical IB program. In fact for students relying exclusively on IB don’t do “ivy” in admissions, just on par with the students taking 4-5 AP’s and I’m not looking down on these outcomes.

It’s not denigration to point the shortcomings of IB to prospective students and their parents.


There is self-selection with AP but the nature of IB is that it creates more of a program within the school. You can think that’s not worthwhile or that kids looking for that should go elsewhere but just waving your hands and pretending it doesn’t exist does suggest you are more interested in denigrating IB than a fair useful discussion.