A-levels and IB at the same time?

My agency recommended me to take A-levels as well as doing IB at school, in case I don't achieve the desired score in my IB. Because my school does not offer A-level courses, I will be studying A Level content outside of school in year 11 and taking the tests sometime in year 12/13. However, a lot of my friends recommended me not to and the thought of taking both A-Levels and IB at the same time stresses me out. Has anyone done the same or any recommendations/advice to this?

i'd agree that taking both would be very stressful and isn't really neccessary.

My agency recommended me to take A-levels as well as doing IB at school, in case I don't achieve the desired score in my IB. Because my school does not offer A-level courses, I will be studying A Level content outside of school in year 11 and taking the tests sometime in year 12/13. However, a lot of my friends recommended me not to and the thought of taking both A-Levels and IB at the same time stresses me out. Has anyone done the same or any recommendations/advice to this?

well it doesnt seem like a healthy option, you should search about both courses thoroughly and decide to pick one, do one and do it wholeheartedly , u will achieve your desired score. Make sure u look at your strengths and limitations , your agency doesnt hv to do your courses and exam this is y they cant see this advice is foolish... pick one. give in all.

i totally agree.. however my school doesn't offer a-level courses, only IB, which is also why i was planning on doing a-levels outside of school. I dislike the IB program because I don't feel passionate enough to devote my efforts into 6 subjects, so I personally like the a-level program better. I can't transfer into a different school that offers a-level courses either, so i have to stick with the IB. For this reason my agency advised me to take them both at the same time.

Do you really have to IBDP ? now look at this situation if i were you , i would also look at the countries i am planning to do my university , and then look at the overall requirements , do they really require IB or they r fine with other qualifications.
Also u don't have to take very challenging IB courses , go for light ones and those that u require for your university.
I would like to help you if i could get to know more about you , such what do u wanna be , ur dream university , desired countries u wanna study ?
feel free to pm me ...

thank you for your comments! at the moment IB to me is not just a uni requirement but also a personal requirement due to pressure inflicted by school, parents, etc. i want to be a doctor or go into the science field so the IB courses that I am going to take are bound to be harder...

look I get u, even ppl around me expected many similar things.
does ur uni accept anything except IB and A-Level? I won't recommend A-level until unless u don't change school it is not advisable. If your uni takes something else, think of those options. Try to talk to your parents to change school if u wanna do A-level and don't do both u might end up being emotionally and mentally distressed or just explain ur parents what you want.
mBut still if u don't want to disappoint ppl around u, I would recommend a combination of Biology and chemistry (HLs) take english (HL- but only if u r a literature person ) and for SL take maths, business studies ( it is one yr SL course) and take the world language u know at ab initio level (ur parents are scared that is y they want u take a daring but at the same time very important and valued course so that u have less trouble in future but if u r not scoring well and u feel pressurized, u might scoreless and diploma with lower scores would help u get into university but not really good ones so it does not make any sense why you should do?
But still if u don't want to disappoint ppl around u , i would recommend a combination of Biology and chemistry (HLs) take english (HL- but only if u r a literature person ) and for SL take maths, business studies ( it is one yr SL course) and take the world language u know at ab initio level () if u have flair for art ( art as an HL)u can take that there is no written exam .my friend take four HL ( maths , physics , chinese and art ) and she said art was fine for her but the thing is she is doing architecture so she thought it as a good options...

IB is already an enormous time commitment, I frankly can't even see it be possible to do A-levels at the same time - maybe A-level Further Maths, if you're doing HL Maths and Physics in IB, as a single additional A-level. Having done IB, I can assure you that you will be MORE than busy enough with just IB; we had about double the number of contact hours as A-levels students.

If you fail IB but do well in your A-levels (as opposed to the much more likely situation that you fail both) universities are going to be very closely looking at your application to try and figure out what went wrong, why you made such a bizarre choice to overload yourself with work to no avail, and whether you're going to be able to cope with a degree there.

I'd note IB is actually, from what I've heard from friends who went on to do it, quite a good preparation for medicine. You're doing a broad range of subjects, and there's a lot of material to keep on top of, leading you to develop effective strategies to balance a wide ranging and intensive workload effectively. The IBers I know who have gone into medicine have said this has been useful - additionally, unlike most A-level students, you won't have just done sciences and actually know how to write an essay (something a friend of my sisters said specifically was a technique she had to teach her friends in medical school once they started).

At the end of the day though, you should pick, and do, one school leaving qualification - either A-levels or IB. Odds are trying to do both will lead you to just doing badly in both, which suffice it so say will make getting into medicine something you will have to do as a graduate (which has it's own set of challenges) and getting into any degree harder. None of your reasons for doing both make any sense in any frame of reference, so just forget about the "idea" because it's a bad one, regardless of who or what suggested it. Bear in mind your "agency" is going to get paid regardless of whether you fail every single course you take or not, since you've presumably paid up front. Another reason paying to put your education in other peoples hands is a bad idea, generally.

On a side note, I would disregard the suggestion to do IB Visual Art because there is no exam; it is an enormous time sink in an already intensively programmed course, and getting the highest grades (i.e. 7 or 6) is realistically harder than in most other subjects because you can't just "learn the exam". At the time I did IB as I recall, HL Visual Art had the lowest proportion of candidates getting a 7 out of any subject...

Thank you for your input! I completely agree. Perhaps IB will be my final and only choice after all haha!
I don't plan on doing IB art either as I am currently taking art gcse and it's more time consuming as any of my other subjects. If you don't mind, could you give me some recommendations as to what subjects I should take for my IB?
Thanks!

ahh thank you so much! i know for sure that i want to take bio and chem HL however i am unsure about the rest haha!
i am currently doing art gcse and at the moment it's not in my best interest to do art in IB, as it also means that im going to have to give up a science subject.
business studies sounds cool though, i am currently doing economics gcse. are the two subjects similar?
thank you again!

Probably not, I did it 10 years ago and a lot of the syllabuses have changed (also I picked all the wrong subjects anyway...). Take a lot of the following with a large grain of salt.

Obviously if you want to apply to medicine HL Chemistry and a second science to HL (probably biology to maximise your options) would be sensible to start with. If you want to apply to Cambridge medicine, you will need HL Maths, otherwise I'd say stick with SL, unless you're very strong in maths and enjoy it a lot. You'll need to do English to some level, but unless you really enjoy literary analysis and applying it to a lot of texts, I'd recommend sticking to SL for that as well. Likewise for the foreign language (group 2) I wouldn't suggest taking HL unless a) you're very strong in the target language already and b) like with English, enjoy reading and analysing media and texts.

I did an ab initio language after initially starting in an SL language I did a GCSE in, and enjoyed it a lot (I did not enjoy the subject I started at SL), but my experience may have been just been overly positive (which was probably helped by having a very small class of just 4 in the ab initio language, and 2 of those were my closest friends in IB who were doing all the same subjects as me, so we had all the same timetable and revised together a lot). Still, it could be worth considering, although if you've done well in a language at GCSE and enjoyed it that should be sufficient to do well in SL (I knew my language background was quite poor to start with on the other hand).

This means your group 3 (humanities/social science) will probably be your 3rd HL, unless you are very strong and motivated in one of the above subjects. If you pick something you're interested in and/or have done well in previously, this is probably the best option. I think it's probably easier to do reasonably well in a group 3 HL without being super focused on that particular style of learning/subject area then in those above, but that's just me. Any subject will do as far as medical school admissions go.

Looking forward a bit, I'd probably suggest doing a group 4 (science) EE, because the rubric/format for those (at least when I did the IB) seemed a lot more well defined (basically a more in depth lab IA) which helped people pick up a lot of marks just by making sure they included all the relevant elements. That said, the medical school admissions probably won't care what your EE was in unless you manage to tie it into your personal statement well and/or do some more with it (e.g. continue working in that vein and take the project to a science fair like the big bang fair or something). So if there's something you're super interested in otherwise, as long as it fits the rubric for the appropriate subject don't be afraid to pursue that! Just make sure it does fit the rubric (I wrote an EE on something I was interested in, but didn't realise it didn't meet the requirements for that subjects EE and my teacher didn't realise either, and I did super bad as a result as a result).

currently an IB student so pls feel free to ask anything !!
i think that from someone currently doing the IB my main concern with ur situation is that, like everyone above, the amount of time you have - so i'd suggest checking with your school to see if you can do a partial IBDP - in that you only do the six classes but not TOK, EE or CAS. This would definitely free up a lot of your time and you can focus on your A levels instead. You'll do the exams at the end of the course but you'll get certificates instead of a diploma. Most schools with IB have this option and about half of my grade takes this option bc of various reasons. Hope this helps!

and about your econ vs business - i have not done any GCSEs bc my school is American but I'd say that the two classes at IB level are pretty different from each other. You'd still need to read lots for both classes tho but econ is significantly harder in my school than Business in that there are lots of application problems in the exam. There is also less content for Business and my school has managed to shorten the course into a one year one instead of two years.

my combination is HL chem / bio / history and SL french / maths / eng lit - if you need advice on selecting classes lmk too! and oh I'm hoping to go into med as well so

i swear im not a good ib student hahaha

umm i'd say bio is pretty content heavy and its memorisation-based so if you have time before IB starts (or even (if) you are going to do bio for alevels in the year before IB that would help too) do try to preview some of the stuff before! i did advanced placement bio the summer before IB started so that helped me a lot

for chem i think its really a subject where you need to understand the concept - i'd say in terms of time i spend more time on chem than bio because after reading the textbook (unfortunately i dont really have a good teacher so my class gotta teach ourselves) you will have to practise solving the problems and that will take up some of your time

i'd say chem and bio isnt really that hard - my issue is bio and history because of the huge amount of content there is - i think that if you're good at maths you would be good at chem, generally, because the class/subject works the same way in that you learn a concept then you apply it
and then for time management i'd say do your homework the day its assigned (for us we have block schedules like you have half your classes on an 'odd' day and half you classes on an 'even' day and everyday is either odd or even and it's alternates - so i'd have bio on every other day for example and that goes to all my classes) but i think you really cant procrastinate in the IB because you'll need to learn a new thing everyday, literally, and hence that's prolly why everyone is concerned with the amount of time you have haha