EE, TOK and CAS query & tips?

[Kil- STRO]

I am starting IB DP within a week, and I was wondering whether or not its better to finish up with most of EE, TOK and CAS earlier in my 2 year IB course, and then in the final year, having done my EE, TOK & CAS would allow me to focus on my revisions and the EXAMs. 

Is this a good approach, if not please share some tips on how anyone of you aced a full on all of EE, TOK & CAS??

[Sheepsie]

CAS is best done over the course of both years (best to have some kind of CAS activity going on at all times during the two years). For TOK essay, you have to wait for the essay prompts that they release for your year. The TOK prompts should be released in your second year, so I don't think you have a choice to finish that early. The other part of the TOK requirement (the presentation) you have to do within the TOK course at school. 

For the EE, though, you can definitely start doing research and looking for topics. Can't offer much more input on that since I'm still in the middle of it.

Basically: You don't really have a choice for the timing of CAS and TOK, but you can definitely start preparing for your EE. 

[Kil- STRO]

10 hours ago, Sheepsie said:

CAS is best done over the course of both years (best to have some kind of CAS activity going on at all times during the two years). For TOK essay, you have to wait for the essay prompts that they release for your year. The TOK prompts should be released in your second year, so I don't think you have a choice to finish that early. The other part of the TOK requirement (the presentation) you have to do within the TOK course at school. 

For the EE, though, you can definitely start doing research and looking for topics. Can't offer much more input on that since I'm still in the middle of it.

Basically: You don't really have a choice for the timing of CAS and TOK, but you can definitely start preparing for your EE. 

When did your school get you started for your EE, prior to your 2 years of DP?

[Comus]

My school started EE prep about five months before summer holidays. Doing the whole thing over summer is probably your best choice. I completed all my CAS hours in the first year, which I recommend, because the supervisor forms and the reflections are a massive pain. Definitely keep doing extra curricular activities in your second year though! Don't drop those because you think you won't have enough time otherwise, you'll manage a few hours a week of activities. It's important to take your mind off things. The only thing to do to prep for TOK is buy the book early and do some extra studying. Could help with understanding the concepts.

Hope this helped!

[Sheepsie]

13 hours ago, Kil- STRO said:

When did your school get you started for your EE, prior to your 2 years of DP?

Our school told us to start thinking about the EE over the summer before our DP began. We weren't really expected to come up with a topic or anything yet, they just wanted us to stay on the lookout for interesting topics. Although, back then we hadn't even really been briefed on what the EE was or how to find a topic or anything, we were just told to "think about it." 

We actually started doing work for our EE's in year 1 of DP. Our school did quite a few EE workshops over DP1 and basically aimed to have us plan and do preliminary research over the year, then actually write the entire EE over the summer of DP1. We were told that in DP2 we would just do a lot of editing for our EE's. 

Pretty sure the reason why they wanted us to have it done earlier is because there are a LOT of IA's in DP2 (some might go on at the same time, too) and you will probably die of stress and no sleep if you have to do the EE alongside all that. In short, doing the EE early is quite a good idea.

18 minutes ago, Comus said:

The only thing to do to prep for TOK is buy the book early and do some extra studying.

I do think that if you look around, there are copies of most of the IB textbooks online. There was a thing on Reddit with an IB textbook database, and the TOK textbooks are in there too. Just search up "ib textbooks database" on google and it should be the first thing to pop up. TOK was quite a weird course in my experience, so Logic (under the way of knowing of Reason) is really the biggest thing you should study for.