IB (UK) - was it the right choice for DC to get to Uni or did it make it more difficult

[2morasmum]

My DC'a school has only IB as an option and we always thought it was a good idea to keep the option of international universities open. However, we understand that more children are leaving the school to do A-levels than ever before.
I would like to ask parents of IB students to share their thoughts about the effect of applying to Uni coming from an Uk school school with IB.

Hi, I don't have a long-term view of this. My DD is in Y12, and doing the IB.

Her college offers both IB and A Levels - their take is that both are good qualifications and it depends on your skills, interests and way of working as to which is best for you.

The IB cohort tends to have what are considered more 'prestigious' outcomes (Oxbridge, RG, medicine etc) than the A Level cohort there (but it's a small, self-selected group of high achievers whereas there is a greater range of abilities in the much larger A Level cohort so I'm not sure there's necessarily much in that).

My personal view is that which one you do doesn't seem to have much effect on university admissions (with the odd quirk in how equivalent the offers are to each other), but that they are very different courses and ways of working and I would encourage my child to make as informed a choice as they can about which would suit them and be prepared to move school if A Levels would be a better fit.

IB suits all rounder who can do 6 subjects and in my view, is more difficult than A levels because you also have the ToK and CAS to do, which are very time consuming. A child that is not great at math ( mine wasn't) wouldn't do well as math at some level is compulsory. So is English and a language, I understand. ( unless changed). Please look carefully at the subjects expected and available at your school. A levels suit people with narrower interests.

Also, unless things have changed recently, IB offers no advantage for UK unis. American unis like IB though.

I did it back in 2004, so I'm sure things that changed considerably since then, but I immensely regretted taking it. I mostly took it as I couldn't really decide which A-levels to take ( I was a good all- rounder and enjoyed school)

Due to having 6 subjects (+tok and cas) compared 3/4 a level subjects meant no free time during day for reading and coursework.

I also found when applying for uni (UK top 10-20) that the points required from IB were almost impossible to achieve compared to A levels. Subjects like business and economics weren't available at IB and I had to take a foundation year to get into the uni and course of my choice.

Many of my peers had to do similar: foundation year or take extra a-levels.

That being said it was one of the few state colleges that offered IB at the time - they massively struggled with teacher retention as they left for better pay/conditions in the private schools.

I think the intensity of the workload is probably largely unchanged since @Confusedddddddd's day - my DD has a packed timetable of classes compared to her friends doing 3 A Levels, as well as the volunteering etc for CAS.
I think the grade requirements may have evened out though. DD is looking at courses which typically require 3 As at A Level or 36 points (out of a possible 45) at IB. At her college, 25% of IB students achieve 40+ points.

Hi, OP -

I am a former RG admissions tutor. I love the IB curriculum and my excellent STEM School is always delighted to make offers to good IB applicants. Those who come to us do very well, also. I did a study a little while ago and on average our IB entrants outperformed those with ‘equivalent’ A levels.

But that might be the catch. IB is a greater workload. Succeeding means learning time management and writing skills, both important across all disciplines at uni. However IMO the offer is also more demanding, with six ways to go wrong. The percentiles of top marks are much lower than comparable percentiles for A levels. IB grades have not been inflated in recent years as A level grades have.

For those who can do it, I continue to think IB is a superior qualification and prepares you better for university. For a generically good British student, A level is the safer option.

I am most impressed by the results cited by @thewalrus at her DD’s college.

Best wishes to the young people

For some uni courses it is actively unhelpful.

I used to teach at an IB school and if you want to study maths at uni you really need to do more maths than is in the IB pure higher.

We offered further maths a level as a top up but it was always small numbers and sometimes didn't run.

PS By A level grade inflation I’m not just referring to the TAGs of the Covid years, but the inexorable trend of the last 20+ years. As teaching improves we would expect some increases in A level grades, but nothing like what we’ve seen at the top.

I personally thought that my niece got a tougher offer for IB from her first choice uni than she would have done for A-levels. She got into her second choice university with no issues and it was a great course, so all fine in the end anyway. But I don't think all admissions departments are that good at offers for IB myself.

I am in STEM, very Maths orientated though not in Mathematics. Over half of our A level students elect FM though we do not require it. Further to my original comment, this does not appear to be a problem. However we, like many STEM Schools, offer a Y1 Maths course covering core concepts for the discipline.

@poetryandwine, they talk A LOT about how they're some of the best IB results in the country 😂.
I found your views on relative grade inflation interesting, thanks for sharing.
FWIW, I won't be encouraging my younger children to take the IB (though I'll support whatever they decide). It suits DD very well, but I can definitely see its risks and drawbacks.

In my experience it's easier to get the university grades for ib than the a level equivalent. Makes for more rounded pupils because of the volunteering and extended essay. I think it's superior to a levels unless your DC can't do numbers or alternatively can't do essays. Then they would be better doing just humanity a levels or science a levels. Pupils go on to do law or medicine but makes them more rounded as a person. Also a lot of group work.

@poetryandwine I'm an IB parent (yr 13) and I'd be interested to know if you have any perspective on why some of the very top unis seem to actively penalise IB students in terms of offers? It is a mystery to me given the immense workload and additional hoops that IB students have to jump through. For example my DD has an offer from Cambridge of 42 with 776 at HL. The equivalent A level offer is A*AA. Similarly LSE might offer AAB at A level (not economics!) but ask for 37 and 666 HL for IB. I really just don't understand given how much the universities say they like the IB.

@Roquefort55 (love your username)

My best guess is that there was an equivalence, possibly set to percentiles of students earning each score, between A level and IB scores made in the past. Since then A level grades have shot up and the equivalence has not been revised. Also, although academics by and large revile Brexit the country is steeped in a strong ‘British is best’ mentality in many ways, and to be fair in the very distant past the A level was much more difficult than it is now.

So sadly I think this issue just isn’t on the radar.

Agree with all this.

I would actively tell any parent, whose DC has a choice of doing A-levels or IB, to choose A-levels every time - especially if they want to go to uni in the UK.

The entry requirements for IB students are absolutely unfair and also, frankly, completely bonkers compared to A-level requirements.

What's more, many unis are now focussing on the three HL subjects and treating them as equivalent to 3 A-levels, hence entry requirements like the PP mentioned. It's like unis are ignoring or forgetting the other three compulsory subjects plus TOK plus the EE and PLUS CAS!!!

Sorry to rant but I feel really strongly about this.

DS was better prepared for uni having done the IB than DD was with A Levels.
I'm not sure how much employers understand the scoring on the IB when comparing to A levels.

My DD is doing IB and loves it. She will be applying this year but based on the uni published offers they seems equivalent to A Levels (although we are in Scotland so not directly relevant to us).
Do the Uni points offers include the points for the extended essay and theory of knowledge?

Following with interest as I have a dc doing the IB and she’s really enjoying it.

Eldest did a-levels which I think was the right choice. They are now studying biology at uni but I think would have struggled a bit with the IB maths.

Younger dc in yr11 has applied to do the IB in September. She’s a good all rounder and loves maths. All are in state schools.

Yes, the maximum of 3 points for TOK and the EE are counted in the total score out of 45.

@Showmethecheeses exactly. Not only are they forgetting the SL/ee/Tok but they then asked for higher HL grades than A levels . It is insane. I emailed the U.K.IB association about it last year but never got a response.

It’s very sad as I think the IB is a brilliant
course but my younger DC will probably do A levels. Another issue is that, post Brexit, recruitment and retention of IB experienced teachers in the state sector is a real issue. This has had a direct impact on my DD’s studies.

I would agree with the observation that A level requirements are largely mapped to IB Highers as A =7 A = 6 B = 5 and the rest are largely ignored.. eg MEng in Mechanical Engineering at Manchester is A A* A or 776 and 38 for IB. Assuming 2 out 3 for TOK and Extended Essay this would leave 556 for the SL subjects.. which a 776 candidate would easily get. A 776 candidate is much more likely to get above 40 if not 42. A 38 candidate is more likely to get 666.

8% of IB candidates get 40 and above.
23% of Al level candidates get 3As and above and 12% get 3 A* and above. So fewer IB candidates reach the required level.

As for how they perform when they arrive at university, many IB graduates say they never work as hard again and compared to their A level course mates, they seem to find the academic side of university relatively easy. (Not data.. heresay only).

They seem to graduate school with a broader knowledge base and appear to be more skilled in essay writing and critical thinking.

Whether there is a difference in the depth of study in an A level compared with an IB subject, I cannot answer objectively but A levels seem to average 4.5 hours of teaching per subject based on my rudimentary google.. the IB school my kids attend (not UK) gives 4.5 hours teaching per week for each higher level subject and 3 hours for each SL subject plus 90 minutes of TOK.

I question whether UK university courses are designed to follow on from A levels where the majority of their student body comes from therefore any other route must surely be not quite so well matched.... but I don't have any evidence of that.

What I wouldn't recommend is the IBCP - it seems to make a lot of sense, but the people I know who did it (the IB and IBCP was much promoted by my kids ex headmaster) found universities struggled with it.
The IB seems fairly accepted and most courses give the marks required alongside the A level grades.

OP - I think that for many students with UK uni applications, going with IB isn’t the easiest route to the “best”university they can possibly get into. The sheer volume of work (plus extra bits like EE, ToK & CAS) and the fact they cannot drop subjects they may not be particularly interested in - these can make it very hard work.

However, if they can hack it, it’s a brilliant education; one that we feel have taught them well besides/beyond getting into university. We have come to this “thought” through 2 DCs’ experiences. I had a fair amount of wobble as a parent about it, too, and tried to talk DC2 out of it before 6th Form. They coped well so far and we shall see how the actual exams turn out in May and results in early July.

Good luck in your decision making - PM me if you’d like.

A level is designed to be more hard than IB. That depends the teacher applying or not. My DC took music A level and it has 8-9 periods each week and covered by three very able teachers for different periods music with lots of research and writing. I would assume DC got the depth of university level music training.

@Uni2024 that's absolutely not true.

My DCs doing IB have to study six subjects, including obligatory maths and at least one science. At higher level (three of the subjects) they have 7 lessons per week per subject.

A-levels should be hard and challenging, agreed. But the breadth of learning, and the study time necessary for IB is unarguably far more.

(Plus CAS and TOK on top of those six subjects.)

That's the simple maths. Same time for A level'sthree three three subjects or IB's 6 subjects. Which one should be deeper?