Are there things such as "easy 7s in IB"?

[GoldenGrande]

Okay, so I heard in a few posts that ITGS and ESS are not really the most promising subjects in IB. Some call ESS a mickey mouse subject and ITGS a joke. 

 

I find it as a way to get easy sevens, something I'm quite unsure of. Currently in Pre-IB and I'm planning to take ESS and ITGS as I am doing quite good in Biology and Programming and Robotics (Biology is a prerequisite to take ESS if I have never taken ESS before and school [sadly] does not offer Computer Science). I don't really work well under time pressure and my time management is perhaps the worst thing a being have seen.

 

TL;DR I want to take ESS SL and ITGS HL, however, are they easy?

[kw0573]

Sounds like good choices. It's easy to get certain subjects 7s but hard to get 45/45.

[eternallyapril]

I would be careful about underestimating the difficulty of ESS. And this is coming from someone who found biology in the MYP easy. 

 

The content is simple, there is just a lot to learn. The really tricky part is deciphering exam questions and learning how to approach them. The mark schemes are very specific. Your wording has to be precise, if not, you will lose a point.

 

ESS has a reputation for being a very easy class, and a lot of people who do not want to take a 'hard' science will take ESS. For that reason, there will be a lot of people that slack off and find that they get worse grades than they expected. 

 

However, that is not to say that you shouldn't take the class. Some of what we learn is quite interesting, but (at least in my opinion) the content is more similar to that of geography than biology. Also, consider how many years your school has been teaching it. My year was the first one to take the course, and our first teacher was very inexperienced and didn't really care about the ESS class. Because of that, our IAs were a disaster at the start of the year.

 

In order to do well, you need to focus on exam technique. Learn to read and analyse the questions carefully. And don't expect to get 7s straight away. It will take time to adjust to the course.

 

Good luck! Getting a good grade in ESS is not impossible, it just takes a lot more work than you would initially think. Although, this is just my experience. It is possible that my year has found ESS so hard because we were taught very badly, but I do think the subject can be very challenging.

Edited March 3, 2016 by eternallyapril

[Sandy]

Its true, people do think of these subjects as 'easy' or 'time pass'. Most of them are the ones who haven't taken these subjects. Its not so easy to say whether you'll find it easy or not, but generally people do find these subjects easier than the rest. If you look at other science subjects, you'll see its more difficult to score in them.

 

IB does have some subjects in which its easy to score a 7 (ESS being one of them). But even in these subjects, you can't just go to exam totally unprepared and expect to score a 7. That's not possible in any subject. You'll still have to work to get good grades, the only difference is that you won't have to work as much.

 

So you see, its more about the subjects being easy in comparison to others rather than just being easy. Look at physics and ess statistics, you'll know what I mean. And like eternallyapril said, it IS challenging. The difficulty aspect also depends on the person studying the subject. Someone may find it easy while someone else would find it really difficult, so it really depends on you. So you shouldn't choose to not take ess and/or itgs because of this. If you're sure that you don't need a science subject in future, then you should opt for these. Who cares what they say, eh?

[usernamed]

Well 

itgs is a good subject. It's interesting. Especially if you have an analytical approach. It doesn't require much technical knowledge though. It's actually more philosophical, and approaches technology from the angle of how it impacts people and society. 

Dont get me wrong though. You need to have a fairly good understanding of how it systems work, but you need to also be able to apply that to scenorios that are given to you in th exam. 

It's all about applying your knowledge actually. But if you understand how let's say.. How a VPN works, then you would easily be able to answer a question on how using a VPN would benefit company X for example 

there's a lot of scenorios and applying ur knowledge in Itgs. But you won't find it too hard if you are analytical and know how to apply your knowledge to different situations.