chrypton

His EE: "The socio-economic problems a community faces when it's ran by a dictator", or maybe "Dictatorship in the 21st century", "The mental effects of growing up in an environment where you're considered to be a God-like figure".

It's actually quite interesting to think about that. Maybe him having gone through IB and therefore (hopefully) having a broader view of the world will have some kind of an effect on his future decisions(?)

I've always wanted to go to university in a place with 'culture'. No offence to Brits or Americans, I'm not by any means saying you don't have any, it's just not to my liking. I was thinking either Erasmus in Rotterdam, University of Utrecht, University of Mannheim or Waseda.

Congratulations for all did well!
I am pretty happy with my marks

HL
Physics 7
Math 7
Economics 7
English B 6

SL
Chemistry 7
Chinese A 6

EE (economics) A
TOK A

43/45..... I need 42 by the way..

Schrödinger, on Jan 07, 2012 - 09:20, said:

I'm also from Melbourne and have checked their booklet (UniMelb) several times and I'm quite sure that 36+ applies only for international students. Domestic students don't receive that luxury (I may be wrong but take another look for yourself).

chrypton I noted the obvious sarcasm lol. But from where I am from that single mark could be the difference between a scholarship or a guaranteed entry into a graduate program.

Nonetheless the scores posted are fantastic and a commendable achievement.

English A1 HL- 7
Chinese B SL- 6
Business and Management SL- 7
Geography HL- 7
Biology HL- 7
Math SL- 7
EE: A- TOK: B

Score 44. Pretty dissapointed.

Just checked:

HLs

English A1-6
Mandarin B -7
Business and Management-7
History - 7

SLs

Environmental Systems - 7
Mathematics -7

TOK -B
EE-A

Total points : 44/45
Diploma awarded

killerhales, on Jan 06, 2012 - 00:08, said:

Thumbs up for parents engaged in their child's education.

One of the most important things I found was when you were doing a exam, was to remember that every question has to be doable with the content you have learnt. Even the weirdest questions have to be solvable with something you have done in class. So make sure you know the basic concepts of everything really well, usually by doing practice question, but then know what you know. For example, nearly every year they try to through in a horrendous vector question, but there is only so much you can do with vectors so if you are solid with the basics, what looked like an impossible question becomes possible by eliminating all that you know you cant do with it, so that your only option for solving the question is the one left over. Its not going to work every time, but when you come to the end of the exam and there is nothing left that you feel you know how to solve, it can often help get the last few of marks to improve your grade.

In my opinion, HL Maths is not that hard. Once you understand how to do each type of question, you can do it again without difficulties.

The challenge of HL Maths is that the 'understanding' comes from practising questions. I think practice is all there is to Maths. Of course talent can get you a long way, but even the smartest people in my class who are predicted to get all 7s in their subjects have difficulty doing the harder questions, like the ones about vectors.

Gaining the understanding through practise can take a long time PLUS a lot of effort AND persistence, compared to other subjects in which you can just cram facts or definitions into your head. You see, not everyone is prepared or willing to invest so much more time into the subject. Plus, when you have a lot of work to do for your other subjects, you can't put so much time into Maths even if you want to.

I'm getting a 5 right now in HL Maths, and I think it just comes down to my lack of practice. Whenever I've been practising a lot of questions, I'm in a good 'form'/'shape' and I find Maths relatively easy and straightforward. My problem is that I always give HL Maths the lowest priority, so I almost never practice questions. If you do take HL Maths don't follow after my example

No, it doesn't work that way. There are so many statistics to think about ... for example, ratio of students who receive places to students applying. You can reasonably expect this to be around 5% in an Ivy League uni (I think), 8% vs. 5% doesn't make much of a difference. And then there's also the general academic standard for applying; at Oxbridge pretty much everyone will have A*AA or 40+ IB points, but averages vary within courses. You could have higher admissions rates AND a higher standard of applicants. And you have to remember all the other stuff that comes into play like extra-curriculars, etc. Basically you should not expect to get into a uni easy. Work hard for an Ivy League, slack off for a normal uni, really slack off for no uni at all. It's pretty straightforward.

upgrading from SL to HL is usually harder and more troublesome, sometimes not allowed, than dropping from HL to SL.

actually this has happened to many people (wanting to take HL but is afraid if they won't survive) and I believe, the best solution is to take 4 HL first (including math) and 2 SL. then as the first semester goes by, you can decide which one of the 4 to drop to SL. if you are doing good in math, drop something else that you feel you are weakest at. if you are struggling in math then drop it. good luck!

Hmm, I´d suggest that you start in HL and if you don´t go well drop to SL. I don´t find the change from SL to HL wise, as you will have to make up with lots of work and new topics. I took mathematics HL and its really hard, try to avoid it.

I agree, I used PCs from the age of 7 until last year when I bought myself my first Mac (for an extortionate amount of money >__>). It's such a wonderful machine.

The reasons I'd not switch back include:
- speed
- SPEED
- not having to bother with several thousands tonnes of rubbish anti-virus stuff, pop-ups and infections
- speeeeeed
- battery life
- not having to use the Windows software
- multiple screens up at once
- the screen overview button
- speed

The only thing I dislike about it is occasional incompatibility. Although largely it has superior compatibility - with my phone, my iPod and also actually external non-Apple products like my camera. Also because it doesn't have any emotional break-downs like my PCs always did, when something goes wrong with it (rarely) I don't know how to fix it because I don't have to spend all my time fixing it. So a mixed blessing there

I got myself a top of the range MacBook (Mackleton... like Shackleton, but a computer and it's never been exploring) and it's as fast today as the day I originally got it. Until you have a really fast piece of kit you don't realise exactly how much time you used to sit waiting for things to catch up, trying to get them to load or even just starting up your computer. Madness. I can't believe how much crap I used to put up with from my old laptops/PC which worked at about half the speed that my Mac does for anywhere from 2 weeks to a month and then went into a terminal senile slowing down culminating in death. My previous laptop was a relatively top-mark Sony VAIO and after owning it for a year it was taking between 5 and 15 minutes to switch on, plus I had to debug it constantly. In the end, it actually used to run out of battery before it could even manage to shut itself down. Now that was sad.

I think it took me about a week to adjust to all the buttons being the other way around and a few other things, then I got used to it pretty quickly.

If you get this on your exams, you're basically 42/42 and only the 3 extra points.

On the other hand, the difficulty of the IB exams in comparison to your regular schoolwork is something different entirely...

1. You only do 1 of those

2. If you want you can start reading your textbook. What did you study before? Like, did you take any course like GCSE or such? If not, I suggest going through IGCSE Additional Maths past papers available at freeexampapers.com they are the basic of Math HL, although there are topics in IB that are not in A-Math IGCSE.

3. Very subjective. Depends on how good you are. I myself would say it's easy but it's highly subjective so I wouldn't talk much about this.

If you like you can try taking 4 HL including math first so as you go along if you feel that math HL is too difficult you can just drop it to SL and still have 3 HL. if you are doing fine then just drop your 4th HL that you don't feel is very important.