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Is my sophomore predicted IB schedule too difficult


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So I am a sophomore at an all IB private school with a very rigorous IB program. My school teaches all IB classes at a higher level in junior year so i have the option of changing my levels for senior year. I was wondering what some IB students think of my course selection

  • Group 1-Lang & Lit SL
  • Group 2-Spanish B SL
  • Group 3-Psychology HL
  • Group 4-Biology HL
  • Group 5-Mathematics HL
  • Group 6-Chemistry SL

I know many people believe HL math to be a killer but i am extremely excited for that course but i do not know whether to take HL Psych along with two sciences. I have also heard that HL Psych is a lot of work as well as any HL science. Any and all advice is welcome.

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Why would your school make you do all HL for the first year? :question: That makes no sense at all.

Whether something is too difficult will depend on what you're naturally good at and how willing you are to put in the work if you don't understand something right away. HL biology is mostly memorization, so if you can do that you're all right. SL Spanish and chemistry are jokes and aren't hard conceptually at all. HL math is the most difficult course in the IB aside from further mathematics, but plenty of people do well in this subject every year. If you're willing to practice constantly and stay on top of the material, there's no reason why you can't do well at all. There are a lot of resources out there to help you with this subject.

I'd rather ask what you were interested in studying in university rather than "is this too hard." Did you have some ideas? That way we can tell you if you need a certain subject at HL or not, or if a subject you listed isn't really going to benefit you.

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I would be wary of taking Math HL and TWO sciences. Personally, I would just go with one because I have seen people (even people who love science) struggle with JUST the Math and Chem courses together. However, my perspective might be skewed because at my school, everyone takes IB History HL (which I don't see on your schedule) and that definitely adds a ton to our workload.

When I was a junior (am now a senior), my schedule looked like this:

1. IB Physics HL (<-- this class was the devil's spawn :hang: )

2. IB Italian SL (easy)

3. IB Visual Arts HL (easy but a lot of work)

4. IB History HL (very hard, lots of work)

5. TOK (Ha ha)

6. AP Calculus (not IB but just as hard as the IB Math HL course I'm in now, if not harder)

7. IB English HL (easy)

And my schedule was challenging, but in the end doable.

Hopefully this helps a bit!

Edited by Vivi Sky
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I think the only genuinely difficult subject you're taking is HL Maths. And even then, if you're very good at Maths, I have seen the odd person claim it's not as hard as people make out!! Although I find it hard to believe them, I think most people say it's the hardest IB course :P The rest of your choices are pretty fine to be honest, Psychology HL is fine provided you get your essay writing technique sorted and Biology HL is just a lot of memorising. SL Chemistry is easy, B languages are easy and Lit & Lang is the easier A Language option so I wouldn't worry about it being too difficult.

The only thing is that it's not very coherent in terms of what you might want to study at University. If you want to study science it would make sense to do TWO sciences rather than one, having one of them SL is a waste. HL Chemistry is significantly harder than SL, so it would make your courseload actually quite tough if you did that! And if you want to study humanities or something else, then SL Chemistry is quite random when you've already ticked off a science with Biology. It would make more sense to do a humanity as an SL, unless Chemistry is literally just to fill in a gap. But maybe your choices make more sense to you than to me :P

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I'm going to be one of those people who claim that Maths HL is not as hard as it seems, however much my comment may be based on the benefit of hindsight! It definitely is manageable if you are willing to follow your classwork and devote lots of time to drilling past paper questions. Maths HL, along with Bio/Chem, are subjects which you should be able to do solidly well in if you are willing to dedicate the time to practice, practice and practice - which is by no means the case for other subjects which involve more writing, and arguably more subjective marking in the end.

In terms of your other subjects, I've heard friends say that Psych HL is a lot of work, but enjoyable and manageable. If you're doing Lang & Lit SL - which will probably be easier than Lit SL - and you're reasonably good at Spanish, I think that your 2 language courses should be fine.

As others have mentioned above, it would be useful to have some idea of where you're heading post-IB, so that any advice we give regarding subjects can take that into account. Not only do all IB students have different capacities, but often different ways that they intend to make all their learning in IB useful!

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