Does the difficulty of Maths HL grow exponentially over time?

[flinquinnster]

I'm still 'moderately' new to IB, but have decided that I want to do Maths HL as long as possible. We had our first set of semi-exams a few weeks ago, and we basically did half a Paper 1, and half a Paper 2 for the topics we had done so far. Overall, I was fairly happy with my results because I got an average over 80% and I am using that as proof to myself, and my concerned, non-mathematical parents that I am going to be 'totally fine' in Maths HL for the next 2 years.

Basically, my question is how much harder will Maths HL get? Did you experience dramatic improvement in your mark for the Maths HL course as you get through more of it, or did it just start deteriorating because everything got harder?

I've asked this question to my classmates and to my teacher many, many times and have gotten not much of a response in return. I think there are 2 views on the matter:

1. As long as you keep working hard, it will be fine. The topics don't get much harder, you just need to keep practising and stay on top of everything.

2. As soon as you enter 2nd year of IB everything's going to start tumbling down, and all the stuff you have done will come back to haunt you in convoluted questions that combine different topics in unusual ways. It will just get harder as you learn more and more content, and get more and more confused.

Whilst I'm being optimistic and hoping for option 1, where I can keep working through exercises, through some past IB questions and then keep performing adequately in each topic we cover, I'm concerned that my life could soon turn into option 2. I take quite messy but copious notes (I'm through 360 pages of my exercise books so far), which does make it somewhat hard to 'revise' in the traditional sense of highlighting notes. I've heard from some IB2 students at my school doing Maths HL that it's just getting harder and harder to do HL.

So, back to doing my maths homework now

[timtamboy63]

Yes, it will get much harder (or at least, it did for me). I was getting 95% on my IB1 exam, and now I'm hoping for a 7 in my finals. However, if you do put the work in, and practice enough, you'll be fine. Good luck!

[Drake Glau]

#2 sounds about right. I didn't take HL Math but I know HL chem and HL bio as well as other classes all like to combine topics like that. No reason why math wouldn't, it's probably the easiest subject to combine stuff for

[Michel Tabari]

What topics have you done so far?

[jmw]

The problem is maths is a very subjective topic. I didn't think of myself as mathematically gifted, however I can now do 90% of the questions from past HL exams in the topics that we have covered (I am about 6 months from my exam, so most of the content is done). I am currently on a 7.

I was in the same position as you, and I asked everyone how hard HL maths was, and I never got a clear answer (there isn't one).

I would say there is only one way to discover how hard HL maths is, and that is to learn a topic (properly) and then attempt past-exam questions on it. And the only prerequisite for HL maths is to enjoy maths (mostly) so that the HW is not so tedious.