Math HL?

[sselinokcu]

Hey, I'm kind of freaking out right now because I have two weeks to decide on my 6 IB subjects, 3 HL and 3 SL, so bear with me. 

I want to study in Upenn Wharton School. I'm good at maths, I am. I usually got high 90's in the previous years, between 93-98 most of the time. I like learning, too; and my professor always used to tell me to get HL when I start IB. I'm 100% sure that SL is too easy for me, but HL might be too hard. My school offers only these two . 

I don't know if I can do Math HL, I really really want to do it but started doubting myself after reading stuff on the Internet and after everything I heard from my older friends. On the other hand, if I do get a decent score, it will be helpful because I want to study Economics. So, what exactly is the deal with HL? Do students with good time management and maximum effort really suffer so bad? Please help me out

[kw0573]

As you can well understand, those who succeed in a subject do not usually broadcast their progress as frequently as other students who share their misery. Nobody wants to be "that person" who try to rub it in about how well she or he may be doing. 

It may be a good idea to try Math HL for few months first, and if it's not working out you can ask for permission to switch to SL. 

[sselinokcu]

12 minutes ago, kw0573 said:

As you can well understand, those who succeed in a subject do not usually broadcast their progress as frequently as other students who share their misery. Nobody wants to be "that person" who try to rub it in about how well she or he may be doing. 

It may be a good idea to try Math HL for few months first, and if it's not working out you can ask for permission to switch to SL. 

Well, that's another perspective, and yeah, you're probably right about that. Though everyone keeps telling me that it's considered a "sin" by the great universities to quit an IB class, especially Maths. Is there any truth to that?

[kw0573]

1 hour ago, sselinokcu said:

Well, that's another perspective, and yeah, you're probably right about that. Though everyone keeps telling me that it's considered a "sin" by the great universities to quit an IB class, especially Maths. Is there any truth to that?

Depending on how your transcript is set up, unis can only know about courses dropped as offered by your school. For example if your course title is "Math HL Preparation (1)" then next semester you switch to "Math SL Preparation (2)" then unis will know! Otherwise if the courses are called "Functions" or "Calculus" then unis won't know. As awful as it sounds, asking unis, such as UPenn, directly about dropping courses is the best bet. You may also ask for statistics about what percentage of accepted Istudents last year took each of the four IB math classes. 

Your exams won't be registered until this time next year for May 2018 exams and IB exams do not appear on your school transcript but on a later IB-only transcript

I did intend to give you some confidence about Math HL. You do realize that the best Math HL students aren't surfing the web all day and ranting about how well they're doing, right?

[Guest SNJERIN]

I totally agree with kw0573.  If you really wanna do math HL then the first thing you should do is to avoid hearing people opinions and, mostly, complains on its difficulty. I did do math HL, and with hard work it went well ( in fact I managed to achieve a 7 in the end).  Thus, if you're really determined to do well then people's opinions should mean absolutely nothing to you.