IB econ HL 2012

sorry for offtopic, but where are u going to apply?

I suggest ignoring development economics as a topic. Like don't study it at all. Our teacher advised us not to study it because he has been a marker and said that students rarely get full marks on questions about development economics. In addition to that know your diagrams for micro/macro/international very well and double check everything when you label them. IB really likes well labeled diagrams. Know the definitions by heart... but that's quite obvious I guess.

I was actually planning on studying development more than the others because I think its easier than macro :/ but perhaps not then

yeah diagrams and definitions are key

I do not mean to mislead you in any way. If you are sure about development as a topic then go ahead and study it. I am just sharing my thoughts. I will go through it once or twice just so I include some of the theory in my responses. Our teacher also said that they like to twist the questions in a way that you can't avoid any parts of the syllabus because they statistically a lot of people ignore development economics and that's why they are changing the syllabus from next year. I am guessing we will have to answer a question where a bit of knowledge from development economics is required.

Know developmental economics only for evaluation within other questions. Development economics on its own is useless because you can't draw graphs that make you look smart (except for, perhaps, a Lorenz Curve shift or a poverty cycle diagram or something).

Rather, what you should do is in your macroeconomics evaluation just talk some crap about the Domar Development Model or the Lewis Dual Sector model, quickly write the equation down, and get back to the question.

Development economics is excellent for making the other parts of your evaluation look good, but by its own you won't score.

Catch up on the Finance & Economics section of the latest Economist issues - real world examples (together with evaluation) is what turns a 5 into 6 and 7. Seriously! So brush up on economics news so you can add an example to your exam answers.

yeah I've read about the whole having to include examples thing, but our teacher didn't tell us :/ I've got examples for developmental economics because its the easiest to have examples in. How can I include examples for theory of the firm though? or micro? thanks

Development and Macro are definitely the best - and I find these are sections where evaluation is easiest as well (a million stakeholders, lots of short and long term impact, lots of different arguments to prioritise...), so I tended to stick to these as much as possible to get the 7's. Dunno about theory of firm, never liked that so didn't answer a single question on it (though, weirdly, wrote my EE on that ). Int'l economics should be fine as well for lots of examples - and micro is either struggling (micro's always a struggle to get 7 though, just not enough material in IB course I think) or making up examples.

Hmm, not sure that was very helpful.

Tl;dr, though: do Macro, Int'l and Dev!

Does anyone else think that HL Economics' syllabus is so much smaller than that of other subjects? Maybe it's because I find it quite easy to assimilate, but I've actually ran out of things to revise tonight, whereas SL Biology seems to have reams and reams of small details to learn, and that's a SL subject. HL Psychology also had a huge volume of studies to remember, although deceivingly not so many actual topics in the syllabus. Our teacher was away for 7 months and yet we had no huge problems finishing the Econs syllabus: have we done something wrong?
Perhaps I'm being complacent, but we've been lucky to have a very good teacher and I think I have a chance of 7, although no-one in my school has taken it before so we don't know what quite to expect.
I'd say only SL Maths requires less teaching hours, but that is made up for the huge amounts of practice needed!

Does anyone else think that HL Economics' syllabus is so much smaller than that of other subjects? Maybe it's because I find it quite easy to assimilate, but I've actually ran out of things to revise tonight, whereas SL Biology seems to have reams and reams of small details to learn, and that's a SL subject. HL Psychology also had a huge volume of studies to remember, although deceivingly not so many actual topics in the syllabus. Our teacher was away for 7 months and yet we had no huge problems finishing the Econs syllabus: have we done something wrong?
Perhaps I'm being complacent, but we've been lucky to have a very good teacher and I think I have a chance of 7, although no-one in my school has taken it before so we don't know what quite to expect.
I'd say only SL Maths requires less teaching hours, but that is made up for the huge amounts of practice needed!