Imagine this: you're a thirteen or fourteen year-old teen, young, naïve, wary, and just a year shy of high school, the big transition. It's the perfect time for someone to lunge forward with an advertisement. We want you! Not the way Uncle Sam wants you, though. The objective is not to mold you into a patriotic individual, rather, an international, intellectual being, with courses designed to challenge you in a rewarding way. This is the International Baccalaureate Programme as is proposed to young students.
The IB Programme is just like your typical advertisement. You must look for the asterisks and, believe me, they're well-hidden to the young mind. Must be because its administrators have had time to skew the guidelines since 1968.
IB consists of seven courses. Upon completing a course, you will be tested on its material the following spring, or May. If you pass the exams, you can obtain college credit. Each class runs like a college course. It's all right, though. So long as you pace yourself, initiate time management, you can make it.
In addition to the rigorous coursework, you will need to complete an extended essay and community service hours. It'll be easy though; there will be timelines to help you meet goals.
Let's look at the asterisks in this one. Upon completing the course, there will be an exam the following spring. So, if a student were to complete two IB courses in junior year, then the student would take two exams, so to speak. The IBO website says this as well. Surprise! You can only take one exam in junior year. That other class you completed? You have to take it again and take the exam as a senior. One asterisk revealed.
Upon taking an exam for a course, your exam performance is not the sole factor computed into your score for the course. Internal assessments, an elongated analysis for each class, are factored in as well. For example, if you were to ace the exam portion of biology, but fail the internal assessment portion, you would not get a top score for the course. Thus, the result is less college credit. Speaking of college credit, most universities will only give you credit for your HL (higher level) courses, and only if you receive the IB Diploma.
And you only take six exams, by the way. Your Theory of Knowledge course has no proper exam, just recorded debates and extraneous essays. Two, three, four asterisks revealed.
Your extended essay is 4,000 words. Its subject must pertain to one of your IB classes. Teachers act as advisors throughout the duration of the paper, though they cannot edit the paper. So they're just there for mental support.
Community service hours are a different story. It's formally known as CAS, shorthand for Creativity, Action, and Service. There must be 150 hours completed, 50 per CAS section. Throughout junior and senior year, there are CAS cutoff dates. If you do not have at least fifty hours completed by each cutoff date, then you are removed from the programme, simple as that. Once removed from the programme, you must return to your "home" zoned high school. Five, six, seven, eight asterisks revealed.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful to be a part of this programme, the students and teachers are extremely knowledgeable and communicative, which makes some of the asterisks easier to tolerate. When you walk out of an IB class, you feel like you’ve learned something, I mean actually learned! It’s different from most dual enrollment courses, where you get the instant credit, leave, and then wonder, “What just happened?”
So, just remember, We want you.
