How many of you managed to get over a 5 in the Maths exams?

[tashakappler]

I'm not sure if this is an appropriate question to ask, so let me know if it isn't!

I'm retaking my Maths Studies exams this November as I got a low grade and I really need to aim for a 6 in order to get my foot in the door in terms of applying to a teaching course. I'm rubbish at maths, but it's just something I need to ace to pursue the career I want. I'm currently revising by doing past papers and initially I was using an old grading scale to figure out what I'll get, but of course (as many classmates have told me) the grades you get in the exams really depend on how everyone else scores. So I wanna know how many of you who have taken the exams have managed to score over a 5 in Maths? And did the majority of your grade get high grades, or what was the norm?? 

In terms of percentages, what is the equivalent to a 6 in Maths Studies? 

I'd be grateful for any input!

[IB`NOT`ez]

You can look for the grade boundaries for each exam session online (for some reason can't find the May 2016 one though; I remember it's in some google drive).

For Timezone 1, the boundaries for Maths Studies SL in May 2016 is as follows (overall-wise):

5 = 56 - 67

6 = 68 - 79

7 = 80 - 100

For Maths Studies, the boundaries are usually around that. For a healthy chance of getting a 6, I'd recommend averaging 73%< for all your practice papers.  This means averaging about 67/90 for both Paper 1 and Paper 2.

Since you're really close to your November exams now, I strongly suggest you spend over an hour each day practicing to make sure you're well versed in each and every topic. If you have certain topics as your weaknesses, go tackle textbook questions that correspond to those topics until you've gotten a much better feel for them -- and when you do, do the past-paper questions on them. 

Khan Academy is also an excellent source for explaining concepts or tackling somewhat similar questions.

Edited October 22, 2016 by IB`ez

[kw0573]

So for a mark out of 100%, you take your IA grade out of 20, then you add 4/9 of the total of your paper 1 and paper 2, and round to the nearest integer. Each of your papers is out of 90 "raw" marks and contributes to 40% of your grade. So say you get 15 out of 20 on the IA, then say you perform excellent on Paper 1 and get 75 out of 90, and say you do bad on Paper 2 and get 52 out of 90. Your final grade out of 100 is 15 + 4/9 * (75 + 52) = 71.4, which IB rounds to 71%.

Then IB takes everybody's grades and assigns boundaries within 100% to levels one through seven. 71%, for instance, is usually a 6. Level 6s in Math Studies SL are usually about 70%-80%, as calculated in the above method, then 80%+ is a 7. The boundaries to vary timezone to timezone but IB does their best to ensure exams are of approximately equal difficulty so the boundaries never vary by more than 2-3%. Maybe this year it's 69%-80% for a 6, next year it could be 71%-79%.

Suppose the level 6 cutoff this November is 70% (which we don't know until after IB gets everyone's scores), and you know you got 15 out of 20 on the IA, you can do 9/4 (70 - 15) = 124 (about). So if that were the case, you would aim for at least a total of 124 marks (not percentage points!) across both papers to get a 6. That may mean 62 out of 90 on both; or 70 on one, 52 on the other, etc. Maybe just to be safe, aim for 130 ish. If you want to aim for 72% and got say 13 on the IA, you would just do 9/4 * (72 - 13) = 134 . Because for resitting an exam, your IA scores won't change so you can safely calculate how much you need on the final. 

In recent years, about 25% of Studies students get 5, 18% get 6, 8% get 7. 

 

Edited October 22, 2016 by kw0573