The Student Room Group

Ex- IB Student (If you ever need help, just ask)

I am an ex IB student, if you want to know my choice were:
-SL Math
- SL Biology
- SL History
- HL English B
- HL ITGS
- HL Spanish
- CAS, TOK and EE.

I can be pretty helpful with these subjects and other more, hints, materials, etc...Seriously just ask me :smile:

Scroll to see replies

Hey! I'm so glad there is a thread like this. Most of the ex IB students hardly ever wana talk about the experience they've had.
I just finished my first year and I need to hand in my EE draft in a weeks time.
How should I approach the EE,
Also what about the Maths IA?
I really need help on those two aspects at the moment
Hi, also an ex-IB student here! :smile:

HLs:

English A: Literature - 6
History - 6
Economics - 7

SLs:

French B - 6
Biology - 6
Math Studies - 7

So if anyone wants to ask anything about any of those subjects then I'd be happy to answer!
Reply 3
Original post by AcuraIntergurl
Hey! I'm so glad there is a thread like this. Most of the ex IB students hardly ever wana talk about the experience they've had.
I just finished my first year and I need to hand in my EE draft in a weeks time.
How should I approach the EE,
Also what about the Maths IA?
I really need help on those two aspects at the moment


I did my EE in History about the Falklands War focusing just in the sinking of ARA Gerenal Belgrano to decide if the sinking was worthy or not for the British like Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. I think you should mention the subject of your EE in order to help you, but what I've done before is to google for example "history extended essays" and some of them were already marked, it happens with almost all subjects, you also can find past exams or projects, that really helps a lot to give you an idea about how to do and also you can download the boundaries or what are they exactly looking for in specific things. Also, I recommend you to look at: ( http://freeexampapers.com/index.php/?location=IB%2F ) you will find some past exams and the official IB webpage have some legit information, very useful and if you want so marked exams they can give it to you, by download it.

Focusing on your EE, I don't know if you school or teachers gave your the IB guides, some doesn't as it is not allowed but here you are the EE Guide 2013 is always the same. ( http://www.dominics-int.org/files/Extended_Essay_Guide_from_2013.pdf ) or this one that is really really helpful IB survival webpage in general and maybe this link too (http://www.ibsurvival.com/topic/3177-extended-essay-for-dummies-read-this-before-posting/ ) and last, this page is about some very good EEs ( http://jfk.dpsk12.org/IB/DP/StudentInfo/documents/Examples/Visual%20Arts_2.pdf)

About math, I don't know if this webpage can help you ( http://ibmathsresources.com/2014/04/01/maths-studies-ia-exploration-topics/ )

I really hope these all can help you, if you want to be more specific about something you ask me again :smile: and GOOD LUCK
I'm an ex IB student too and very happy to give advice

My subjects were

English HL - 7
History HL - 7
Geography HL - 6
Biology SL - 6
French SL - 6
Maths Studies SL - 6
Reply 5
Do any of your schools offer higher level psychology? What is it like?? I've been getting very mixed answers and I can't ask any current students at my school since it's being offered for the first time next year. Some say it's very hard and some have told me that if your good at memorisation (which I am) that it'll be a breeze??
Reply 6
Original post by pbunny
Do any of your schools offer higher level psychology? What is it like?? I've been getting very mixed answers and I can't ask any current students at my school since it's being offered for the first time next year. Some say it's very hard and some have told me that if your good at memorisation (which I am) that it'll be a breeze??


Mine did also offered it but no one signed up for it as if we chose it we had to take philosophy as well, so no one did it. I recommend you to google "IB Psychology" maybe go to: ibsurvival.com or if you want to see some past IB papers go to http://freeexampapers.com/index.php/?location=IB%2F in case you want to know about the course in general why not look at the psychology ib guide? http://www.ncbis.net/Editor/EditorImages/Psychology.pdf this is from 2011 but it can be helpful if you want to know what is involved.

Hope it helps.
Reply 7
Original post by iJoyce
Mine did also offered it but no one signed up for it as if we chose it we had to take philosophy as well, so no one did it. I recommend you to google "IB Psychology" maybe go to: ibsurvival.com or if you want to see some past IB papers go to http://freeexampapers.com/index.php/?location=IB%2F in case you want to know about the course in general why not look at the psychology ib guide? http://www.ncbis.net/Editor/EditorImages/Psychology.pdf this is from 2011 but it can be helpful if you want to know what is involved.

Hope it helps.


Thanks for the advice. I've actually already looked through the guide. I was just looking for more opinions on the level of difficulty of the course.
Reply 8
I'm an ex-IB student too and am happy to help!

HLs:
Maths - 7
Chemistry - 7
Economics - 6

SLs:
Eng Lit - 6
French B - 7
Music - 7


Original post by pbunny
Thanks for the advice. I've actually already looked through the guide. I was just looking for more opinions on the level of difficulty of the course.


I didn't do psychology but a lot of my friends did and found it quite hard, but was probably because their teacher left halfway through the course...
Reply 9
I'm an ex-IB student too and am happy to help!

HLs:
Maths - 7
Chemistry - 7
Economics - 6

SLs:
Eng Lit - 6
French B - 7
Music - 7


hi, im just finished my first year in ib diploma and going into my second. I seriously need help in chemistry HL, I saw what you got for chemistry and my question is, how did you manage to get a 7? is there a particular method you used? i would really like the help because i got a 4 and i really need to get a 6 or else i cant get into medicine :frown:


anyway, thank you and i hope you reply as soon as possible!!!

ps. should i get the Pearson chemistry book or should i just stick with the course companion?
Reply 10
Original post by yarashe


hi, im just finished my first year in ib diploma and going into my second. I seriously need help in chemistry HL, I saw what you got for chemistry and my question is, how did you manage to get a 7? is there a particular method you used? i would really like the help because i got a 4 and i really need to get a 6 or else i cant get into medicine :frown:


anyway, thank you and i hope you reply as soon as possible!!!

ps. should i get the Pearson chemistry book or should i just stick with the course companion?


Hi!

Congratulations on surviving the first year of IB :smile:

For Chemistry, I made sure that I understood all the theories and content of the topics well before the exams (around Feb). I also looked at the syllabus and wrote notes for each topic with all the relevant information required (I found this extremely useful because so I would know exactly what they could examine me on). I then started revising for Chemistry in March/April.

I then did basically all past papers I could get my hands on! The past papers are really helpful because you'll probably notice similar or a familiar pattern of questions that usually come up!

I personally didn't use the course companion much since my school gave us booklets for each topic anyway. I found the study guide (Oxford) useful though. I also used this interactive syllabus http://ibchem.com/IB/ibsyllabus.htm when I didn't fully understand a concept. However if you have trouble understanding some concepts then it's probably best to read the course companion. As long as you understand the concepts, you should probably be able to answer most questions!

I'm sure if you tried hard and started preparing notes this summer for the topics you've already learnt and practiced lots of past papers, then you'd definitely be able to achieve a 6/7! I also got a 5 in Chemistry and a 4 Maths during the first year so don't lose hope!
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by j132
I'm an ex-IB student too and am happy to help!

HLs:
Maths - 7
Chemistry - 7
Economics - 6

SLs:
Eng Lit - 6
French B - 7
Music - 7


Hi, I'm going to start the IB this year, and was just wondering- WHat is the best way to/how should I start preparing for HL Chemistry? My future teacher said that i should, but i'm not sure what i can necessarily prepare for.
Ex-IB student, finished 2014. Happy to help anyone!
HLs
Physics - 7
Chemistry - 7
Maths - 7
English - 6

SLs
French - 6
Philosophy - 7
EE: Physics, A

Original post by knightmaire
Hi, I'm going to start the IB this year, and was just wondering- WHat is the best way to/how should I start preparing for HL Chemistry? My future teacher said that i should, but i'm not sure what i can necessarily prepare for.


If you did GCSEs, I'd recommend going over moles, electrolysis and periodicity. The latter two you probably won't cover for a while but it can be useful to have notes on them because, though you'll cover them in much greater depth, you have the foundations set already. Moles is something that a lot of people struggle with as a concept or because of the maths so try to get your head around it as much as possible now!

If there's something you really struggled with in chemistry up until now, say it and me or someone else can tell you if it's something you should go over this summer or not.

Honestly a lot of my advice is make sure you do revision throughout the year. Whenever you finish a topic, go through what you've covered and make a page or two of notes summarising everything you've learnt and make sure you write your definitions down so they are easy to find! IB is a big fan of definitions. It's difficult to do a lot of preparation imo because a lot of what you're going to learn will be brand new information so you don't know it yet! Enjoy your final summer free! Next summer could be quite busy because you will probably have a lot of coursework and an EE to write!

When you're hitting next summer, I suggest looking at this thread in more detail (look at it now too! Just some of the stuff will be useless until you've learnt more). A lot of what's said in it is presuming that you have already covered some of the material. I'm going to shamelessly plug my own post on that page because I went into a lot of detail about what I thought is important to do but most of my advice assumes you've covered some of the content already.
(edited 9 years ago)
Hey, wow I'm so glad I found this
So I want to finish up on my CAS hours over the summer and I'm kind of behind in Creativity...
(Totally random but bear with me) I was thinking, would learning HTML using an online course and producing a website at the end of it count as Creativity? I'm going to do this anyway, but I was wondering if I'd be able to sort of kill two birds with one stone :smile:
Original post by thatdweeb
Hey, wow I'm so glad I found this
So I want to finish up on my CAS hours over the summer and I'm kind of behind in Creativity...
(Totally random but bear with me) I was thinking, would learning HTML using an online course and producing a website at the end of it count as Creativity? I'm going to do this anyway, but I was wondering if I'd be able to sort of kill two birds with one stone :smile:


While it sounds great to me, I think you need to find someone to be your supervisor for it. Just so that they can confirm that, yes, the hours you put down do sound legit, you aren't completely making it up. You might want to email the teacher in charge of CAS to see what they deem a suitable supervisor, given it's online. They may be comfortable with one of your parents being the supervisor or they might say you'll need to ask someone else. If they need someone outside of family, idk, maybe if you live near a library and the librarians are friendly, you could go there with your laptop if you have one to do the work and ask one of them to vouch for you being there and working on it? Check with the teacher.

If you can't contact the CAS teacher, just make sure someone knows you're doing it and vaguely what the number of hours are.
Original post by JukeOfYork
Ex-IB student, finished 2014. Happy to help anyone!

If you did GCSEs, I'd recommend going over moles, electrolysis and periodicity. The latter two you probably won't cover for a while but it can be useful to have notes on them because, though you'll cover them in much greater depth, you have the foundations set already. Moles is something that a lot of people struggle with as a concept or because of the maths so try to get your head around it as much as possible now!

If there's something you really struggled with in chemistry up until now, say it and me or someone else can tell you if it's something you should go over this summer or not.

Honestly a lot of my advice is make sure you do revision throughout the year. Whenever you finish a topic, go through what you've covered and make a page or two of notes summarising everything you've learnt and make sure you write your definitions down so they are easy to find! IB is a big fan of definitions. It's difficult to do a lot of preparation imo because a lot of what you're going to learn will be brand new information so you don't know it yet! Enjoy your final summer free! Next summer could be quite busy because you will probably have a lot of coursework and an EE to write!

When you're hitting next summer, I suggest looking at this thread in more detail (look at it now too! Just some of the stuff will be useless until you've learnt more). A lot of what's said in it is presuming that you have already covered some of the material. I'm going to shamelessly plug my own post on that page because I went into a lot of detail about what I thought is important to do but most of my advice assumes you've covered some of the content already.


Okay, Thank you. ^_^
Reply 16
Hey guys! I don't know if I'm in the right place, but i need topic for EE. Well I actually do have it already, I just need research question... I keep thinking about it, I want a good one, so I was thinking maybe you have some thoughts... So my topic is female body picture in advertising. Feminism is closely interrelated with my topic
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by iJoyce
I am an ex IB student, if you want to know my choice were:
-SL Math
- SL Biology
- SL History
- HL English B
- HL ITGS
- HL Spanish
- CAS, TOK and EE.

I can be pretty helpful with these subjects and other more, hints, materials, etc...Seriously just ask me :smile:


Do HL's go into as much depth& breath as A level?
Reply 18
In IB you only can do 3 subjects in HL and the other 3 in SL without counting EE and TOK which are pretty important to obtain your IB certificate. The HL depending on the subject can be so easy as ITGS (for me) or kinda hard depending the teacher techniques.
I really don't know about A-Levels.

Hope it helps.
[QUOTE="yarashe;48563976"]
Original post by j132
I'm an ex-IB student too and am happy to help!

HLs:
Maths - 7
Chemistry - 7
Economics - 6

SLs:
Eng Lit - 6
French B - 7
Music - 7


hi, im just finished my first year in ib diploma and going into my second. I seriously need help in chemistry HL, I saw what you got for chemistry and my question is, how did you manage to get a 7? is there a particular method you used? i would really like the help because i got a 4 and i really need to get a 6 or else i cant get into medicine :frown:


anyway, thank you and i hope you reply as soon as possible!!!

ps. should i get the Pearson chemistry book or should i just stick with the course companion?


Hi Yarashe,
I'm new to this forum and having problems understanding what IB Music is all about. I've read about on the IB site and whatever I could on the internet. I understand there is a solo, creating and group divisions? How is this structured and are any musical instruments allowed or just a select few?

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my post.

Quick Reply

Latest