paulakalnina Posted May 7, 2016 Report Share Posted May 7, 2016 (edited) Dear fellow IB Physics students, I am in SL Physics and this exam absolutely destroyed me. All of the intensive studying I did for it all for nothing. Not to mention I cried in the exam room in both papers and the invigilator bought me a tissue. This was by far the worst exam I have seen and the specimen papers have been so deceiving. This was not an exam that tested my mastery of the syllabus, it was out of this world. My whole life depends on it now because I doubt that I can get a 3 on both papers. Also, I might not be perfect in Physics but my grades have been very good and I had been preparing and studying the most for this subject as I was expecting the exam to be tricky. However, I was never worried if I would pass the course! This was ridiculous! The worst part is that I felt confident with my knowledge but I could demonstrate none of it on the exam. Is it not strange? I just wanted to create this discussion to let you know that there are so many students feeling the same way and if you are one of them, please sign this petition: https://www.change.org/p/ib-physics-examination-may-2016 I am praying that the IBO will take into account the circumstance they put us in. PS. I am TZ0 if anyone is wondering. Edited May 7, 2016 by paulakalnina 3 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kawaii Potato Posted May 7, 2016 Report Share Posted May 7, 2016 My classmates have complained about it too! The IBO is just ******** for adding content that's not on the syllabus! How could they? What kind of questions did they ask? Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibstudent081099 Posted May 7, 2016 Report Share Posted May 7, 2016 1 hour ago, bb8-m8 said: Can you point me to what you thought wasn't on the syllabus? For SL or HL? For SL I didn't see anything i think... I must say I agree. Paper 1 was tough but I think the questions I couldn't answer were difficult due to lack of studying of that particular unit. Paper 2 had one question per chapter, nothing outside the syllabus. I may be wrong but I think only paper 1 had some things which were not explicitly said in my textbook. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulakalnina Posted May 7, 2016 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2016 1 hour ago, bb8-m8 said: Can you point me to what you thought wasn't on the syllabus? For SL or HL? For SL I didn't see anything i think... Not that the exam did not follow the syllabus topics. It did of course. Questions about mechanics, energies, waves, fields, thermodynamics etc. However, the way the questions were asked and the types of calculations that were asked were out of this world. And yes, it goes hand in hand with the syllabus, just the things we were asked to do were no way testing our knowledge. It was testing our nerves. It was very unfair. I was prepared for every topic in the syllabus yet somehow none of the questions made sense. This was not an exam Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibstudent081099 Posted May 7, 2016 Report Share Posted May 7, 2016 Which exercises in particular did you guys find challenging? Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tashakappler Posted May 8, 2016 Report Share Posted May 8, 2016 2 hours ago, ibstudent081099 said: Which exercises in particular did you guys find challenging? Uh all of it. 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tashakappler Posted May 8, 2016 Report Share Posted May 8, 2016 15 hours ago, paulakalnina said: Dear fellow IB Physics students, I am in SL Physics and this exam absolutely destroyed me. All of the intensive studying I did for it all for nothing. Not to mention I cried in the exam room in both papers and the invigilator bought me a tissue. This was by far the worst exam I have seen and the specimen papers have been so deceiving. This was not an exam that tested my mastery of the syllabus, it was out of this world. My whole life depends on it now because I doubt that I can get a 3 on both papers. Also, I might not be perfect in Physics but my grades have been very good and I had been preparing and studying the most for this subject as I was expecting the exam to be tricky. However, I was never worried if I would pass the course! This was ridiculous! The worst part is that I felt confident with my knowledge but I could demonstrate none of it on the exam. Is it not strange? I just wanted to create this discussion to let you know that there are so many students feeling the same way and if you are one of them, please sign this petition: https://www.change.org/p/ib-physics-examination-may-2016 I am praying that the IBO will take into account the circumstance they put us in. PS. I am TZ0 if anyone is wondering. Yeah everyone in my class felt the same. I already felt pessimistic so I just sort of saw it coming, though the moment we got Paper 1 I knew I was totally ****ed. The majority of my class on the other hand (who are in HL Physics and Math) they found it soul-crushing. A lot of them couldn't finish Paper 2 and we all predict we'll get 3s or 4s out of this. It's reassuring to know that other international students felt the same because now we know that we weren't at fault. I'm hopeful for Paper 3 (we have Astro) but there's now a good chance that it will be as difficult and random as the previous papers. Personally I've decided to retake Physics in November no matter what my results are. I feel really cheated that all my efforts throughout the two years aren't worth for **** because of these exams. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Lee Posted May 8, 2016 Report Share Posted May 8, 2016 If everyone found it hard, then the grade boundary will be readjusted so that it will be lower Dont worry too much about you doing bad in paper 2 I sat physics HL (im in nz so im the first to sit exam) and paper 2 was long and hard If we all felt hard and did bad then we will all do ok since our grades are normally distributed Stop worrying and Go Study! Best of luck for you paper 3 and rest of exams 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
muskaan2204 Posted May 8, 2016 Report Share Posted May 8, 2016 I am a Physics SL student and I am not amazing in Physics but I had prepared for this paper very hard because I knew that it could be tough considering the syllabus change. Everything was from the syllabus,but the level of those questions was not what we have been prepared for. I attempted the Speciman, the day before the exam in proper exam conditions, I did quite well but then the actual paper was no where near close. The difficulty level was to much + Speciman had only 4/5 questions whereas actual had 7, how is that fair? Our main concepts were not even tested like momentum, suvat in mechanics. The level of the papers did not match the past papers at all. They gave for 4 marks 'Why did Physicist discover quarks?' What even is that? Now I am extremely scared for Paper 3, I have done Astrophysics and I felt I was prepared for it but I am pretty sure now that Paper 3 is going to screw me over as well. The worst thing is I have History HL too so I cannot even give too much time to Physics. Good Luck for the rest of the exams x 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bynary Posted May 8, 2016 Report Share Posted May 8, 2016 What questions were on the SL paper 2? Apparently there were some that were on both the HL and SL Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IBTori Posted May 8, 2016 Report Share Posted May 8, 2016 I am from the United Stated and on Friday I sat for Paper 1 and 2 Higher Level. I currently have a scholarship to attend Johns Hopkins University to study Physics. That being said I have a fairly good understanding of the topic. I also prepared for a decent amount of time for this exam. While I expected it to be challenging, these exams, specifically paper 2, were an unfair representation of the amount of physics I do know. I felt as though I was not able to show the large extent of what I have learned over the two years because of the nature of the questions. The change in curriculum focused so heavily on topics not standard to the classroom setting and more on the independent study of IB. I am quite disappointed with how little the specimen paper correlated to the exam. It did not nearly come close to the level of difficulty and in my opinion caused more harm to those students that felt it was a good study tool. My entire class of IB Diploma candidates as well as our Science Department chairs have signed the petition. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kawaii Potato Posted May 11, 2016 Report Share Posted May 11, 2016 On 7 de mayo de 2016 at 9:45 PM, bb8-m8 said: Can you point me to what you thought wasn't on the syllabus? For SL or HL? For SL I didn't see anything i think... I don't do physics, so I just know what my classmates said Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
FMam Posted May 12, 2016 Report Share Posted May 12, 2016 Does anyone know how many questions were there in physics HL paper 2 ? As far as I remember there were 11, but now I checked, in specimen paper there are 9 questions. So was it 11 or 9? Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kw0573 Posted July 10, 2016 Report Share Posted July 10, 2016 Physics IAs have much higher boundaries this session, which compensates for the lowering of boundaries in the papers by ~5-15% each. Was anyone here reassured by their results or did they just make matters worse? Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magician Posted July 21, 2016 Report Share Posted July 21, 2016 On 2016/7/10 at 4:11 PM, kw0573 said: Physics IAs have much higher boundaries this session, which compensates for the lowering of boundaries in the papers by ~5-15% each. Was anyone here reassured by their results or did they just make matters worse? Expected a 4, got a 7 LOL. 2 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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