About IB

[JeongwooP]

Hello. 

I recently moved to an IB school, about 3 months ago, so everything is really confusing.

For diploma, are we required to take 3 standard and 3 high levels? Are we allowed to take more high levels? 

Can you also tell me why test grades are out of 8 but semester grades are out of 7? 

Thanks

[IB`NOT`ez]

You're required to take a minimum of 3 standard and 3 higher levels, you can take a maximum of 4 higher levels and thus only 2 standard levels. Taking more higher levels in most cases does not give you more credit by universities, if that was your intent on doing so.

Test grades would vary from school to school as well as per subject, but semester and mocks grades would usually come from a scale of 1 to 7, depending on the grade boundaries by your school for school based mock exams, and the IBO for your final exams. 

[Gaby]

You need to take a minimum of 6 subjects, 3HL 3SL to get a diploma. You can take 4HLs but that's not advised as there's no real advantage to doing that. 

IB grades are out of 7. How your school chooses to grade you internally is up to them, my school grades were out of 6. 

[JeongwooP]

So there is no extra benefit if we take more IBs or more HL IBs? 

 

Also, whats considered a good grade in IB? 

[IB`NOT`ez]

4 hours ago, JeongwooP said:

So there is no extra benefit if we take more IBs or more HL IBs? 

 

Also, whats considered a good grade in IB? 

In most cases, the only real benefit of taking more IB HLs would just be to know more content that you think you might need for university e.g. taking Physics HL, Maths HL, Computer Science HL, ITGS HL all tie in to being a super computer whiz. 

A good grade in IB is somewhat relative, but if you look through the stats bulletin of past years, a total IB score of 36/45 or above is already considered really good and enough to get you to relatively high tiered universities as the IB really is quite challenging. 

Again though, it also depends on what you actually want to study ie. you'd probably want a 38/45 or above to study medicine. 

[kw0573]

9 hours ago, JeongwooP said:

So there is no extra benefit if we take more IBs or more HL IBs? 

Also, whats considered a good grade in IB? 

There may some some benefit taking 4 HLs and/or 7 subjects in year one, namely when the syllabus is not quite challenging, this gives a fair assessment of the workload for year two and you may opt to continue the best 3HL/3SL combination for year two. 
IB makes very rare exceptions to mandating a course from each of groups 1 to 5 (literature, language acquisition, individuals/societies, experimental sciences, and math), so a seventh course is often used to fulfill post-secondary admission requirements. You do have free choice on the sixth subject from any subject not already taken, or Further Maths HL. 

From the May 2014 Statistics
The median, median and mode scores are all around 30/45. 25% of students get 34 or above. 10% of students get 38 or above. 5% of students get 40 or above. For most group 1 and 2 subjects, the mean score is between 5 and 6; for most group 3-6 subjects, the mean is between 4 and 5.