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What is IB?

I was looking through some threads about Medical School requirements and one of them are IB. I understand it stands for International Baccalaureate, but what is it? And does everyone have them? Im really confused.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers

Reply 1

IFoundWonderland

The IB is an international qualification - it's studied all over the world. It is often thought of more highly than A-Levels because it develops a well rounded person. You choose 6 subjects: at least 3 higher level (which is kind of between A-Level and undergraduate) and 3 standard level (which is kind of like AS). You need one humanity, one science, one language, English, Maths and either an "other". As well as this, you complete the "core": Theory of Knowledge course, Creativity, Action and Service and an Extended Essay, which is an investigation into something that particularly interests you. This is marked out of 3. Subjects are graded on a point system of 1-7 for each subject (7 being the highest) and leads to an overall grade out of 45. Hope this helped :smile:

It's basically an alternative to A levels. You either do A levels (usually 3 or 4 in whichever subjects you want) or international baccalaureate (6 subjects which have to include English, maths, a science, a language, a humanities subject, and one other). It's an international award, whereas A levels are just done in the UK. IB is generally considered harder than A levels due to you having to be consistently good across a range of subjects, but there's no discrimination for/against either award.

Reply 4

Shadjabbar

Thank you for the replays guys, they were great :biggrin:

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Reply 5

seaholme

Original post by skotch

IB is generally considered harder than A levels due to you having to be consistently good across a range of subjects, but there's no discrimination for/against either award.

And seeing as no preference is given to IB students despite the greater workload, anybody with an ounce of sense ought to do A Levels. I say this as somebody who did not have an ounce of sense.