International Baccalaureate at City and Islington

Before I write my reply, I can tell you that I am an IB student at CandI.

1) I know that I was taking a risk by joining an IB college in its first year of the IB. But to be honest, it ultimately comes down to you. If you truely study and work hard at it, I think you could pass. But Melissa, the IB head, is REALLY great. She is always on top of things and I truely have faith in all the IB teachers etc. But, I am admitedly slightly worried that it is the school's first year doing IB.

2) My education history is a little messed up. I only did GCSEs for like a few months and was only offered 4 at a really dodge/techincally illegal "school". So, I can't really compare them to GCSEs, but I can to A-Levels. I started out in AS, but quickly switched to IB and it was an uhMazing decision! I highly recommend it.

3) Yes, you could. But becuase you're only doing it at SL it won't make too much of a difference. Most unis only care about you HL subjects.

4) I can't really help you here. I know that for my year right now they only offered HL Bio + HL Chem OR SL ESS which didn't give us much choice which really pissed me off to be honest :/ But I am in SL ESS and I can tell you that it is a really bad class with a really bad teacher > It's boring and the teacher isn't good at teaching and he's mean. But my friends say bio is the best if that helps in any way.

5) I am in economics right now, and am a little mad about the whole uni HL math thing also. I can tell you that anthropology is VERY well-known amongst IB and AS/A2 students for one thing: WORK WORK WORK. They have too much work sometimes, but it is apparently a VERY itneresting subject. I am in economcis and am loving it. I also had absolutely no idea abotu history, economics, or anthropology but now I am in economics I want to do it at uni (with politics which is my main interest). I highly recommend economics.

Hope I helped.... I might be a tiny bit biased lol

Hello there, i'm another student and candi doing the IB.

1. I also felt taking the IB at Candi would be a risk but as the person above said, Melissa is an amazing coordinater, very well organised has been really supportive. The teachers have all had IB training and they're also heads of departments, so they really know what they're doing. with that said, with the IB a lot of independant learning is expected, so it may seem like they're not teaching you enough but they are. i pressume you'll hopefully be joining this september and by then the teachers would of had prior experiance.

2. personally i cannot compare the IB to a levels or gcse's in the uk but from what i have heard from close friends who do A levels, the IB is a lot more fun!! there are only about 30 students so we're quite a close knit family and everyone is so so friendly, you'll easily make new friends. & with tok and cas it's definitely fun and interesting.

3. i do french b sl and i found it really hard especially when it comes to grammer. but we have about 5 students in our class and Susanne is a very patient teacher. a 5 is definitely achievable!!!

4. Honestly, if you do not enjoy a subject and don't need it for what you want to do in the future then i wouldn't advise you to take a HL bio or chem. I do HL in both and they're really challenging subject, biology being the most interesting though. If you do decide to take both science then i would suggest you take bio Hl and chem sl or just bio Hl. i've checked out uni's and so far most science based topics ask for both subjects and at least 1 at HL.

5. I'm going to be totally biased here and tell you to take anthropology!!! it's the most interesting subject you'll ever take and Sian is an AMAZING teacher! i'll admitt there is quite a lot of work involved but you'll definitely enjoy it!!!!

Hope this helps, and hopefully you'll join us this year

Before I write my reply, I can tell you that I am an IB student at CandI.

1) I know that I was taking a risk by joining an IB college in its first year of the IB. But to be honest, it ultimately comes down to you. If you truely study and work hard at it, I think you could pass. But Melissa, the IB head, is REALLY great. She is always on top of things and I truely have faith in all the IB teachers etc. But, I am admitedly slightly worried that it is the school's first year doing IB.

2) My education history is a little messed up. I only did GCSEs for like a few months and was only offered 4 at a really dodge/techincally illegal "school". So, I can't really compare them to GCSEs, but I can to A-Levels. I started out in AS, but quickly switched to IB and it was an uhMazing decision! I highly recommend it.

3) Yes, you could. But becuase you're only doing it at SL it won't make too much of a difference. Most unis only care about you HL subjects.

4) I can't really help you here. I know that for my year right now they only offered HL Bio + HL Chem OR SL ESS which didn't give us much choice which really pissed me off to be honest :/ But I am in SL ESS and I can tell you that it is a really bad class with a really bad teacher > It's boring and the teacher isn't good at teaching and he's mean. But my friends say bio is the best if that helps in any way.

5) I am in economics right now, and am a little mad about the whole uni HL math thing also. I can tell you that anthropology is VERY well-known amongst IB and AS/A2 students for one thing: WORK WORK WORK. They have too much work sometimes, but it is apparently a VERY itneresting subject. I am in economcis and am loving it. I also had absolutely no idea abotu history, economics, or anthropology but now I am in economics I want to do it at uni (with politics which is my main interest). I highly recommend economics.

Hope I helped.... I might be a tiny bit biased lol

Hello there, i'm another student and candi doing the IB.

1. I also felt taking the IB at Candi would be a risk but as the person above said, Melissa is an amazing coordinater, very well organised has been really supportive. The teachers have all had IB training and they're also heads of departments, so they really know what they're doing. with that said, with the IB a lot of independant learning is expected, so it may seem like they're not teaching you enough but they are. i pressume you'll hopefully be joining this september and by then the teachers would of had prior experiance.

2. personally i cannot compare the IB to a levels or gcse's in the uk but from what i have heard from close friends who do A levels, the IB is a lot more fun!! there are only about 30 students so we're quite a close knit family and everyone is so so friendly, you'll easily make new friends. & with tok and cas it's definitely fun and interesting.

3. i do french b sl and i found it really hard especially when it comes to grammer. but we have about 5 students in our class and Susanne is a very patient teacher. a 5 is definitely achievable!!!

4. Honestly, if you do not enjoy a subject and don't need it for what you want to do in the future then i wouldn't advise you to take a HL bio or chem. I do HL in both and they're really challenging subject, biology being the most interesting though. If you do decide to take both science then i would suggest you take bio Hl and chem sl or just bio Hl. i've checked out uni's and so far most science based topics ask for both subjects and at least 1 at HL.

5. I'm going to be totally biased here and tell you to take anthropology!!! it's the most interesting subject you'll ever take and Sian is an AMAZING teacher! i'll admitt there is quite a lot of work involved but you'll definitely enjoy it!!!!

Hope this helps, and hopefully you'll join us this year

I'm also doing IB at candi (there are a lot of us around here, it seems).

I can see why you might be worried about doing IB at a college that has just started offering it, but I have to say in some ways I think it's a plus. The college has a lot invested in the IB kids succeeding, and I think the uncertainty means they put a lot of effort in. Melissa makes sure she's involved every step of the way, and she tries not to let anyone fall too far behind.

I've got a bit of a different perspective from the other guys, because I did AS at candi last year. Although the IB did take a bit of getting used to (especially losing all the free time I had during the week), I'd still really recommend it. Along with Melissa and the other teachers offering loads more support, we've also built up a real sense of community in the IB group.

One of the things about candi is that it's pretty big, and as you're only there for two years you don't get time to get to know the people in your classes if you do A-levels. I got to the end of my AS year and realised I still didn't know most of the people in my classes - and whilst that was partly because I'm terrible at remembering names, it was also because there was only one person who was in more than one class with me. You're with the same people every day, but one of the advantages of being in a big college is that you can still get to know A-level students, so we're not totally separated.

On the subject of our ESS teacher, a lot of people have really taken against him, and I have to admit sometimes he can be annoying, but he's not always that bad. However, if you're really interested in doing proper science, I wouldn't go for it. It's sort of social-based/applied science as opposed to a 'serious' science, and although we do do some experiments I think we do less than the biology/chemistry lot.

Oh, and I just thought of another reason IB beats A-levels. This isn't true for the Anthropology set as their subject is really popular, but in Economics and History we have tiny classes - there are 5 people in my history class. This means you can't slack off, but all your questions get answered and we can have proper discussions. That might not be for everyone, but personally I think I learn better when we're talking, because I'm properly engaged.

And Clive - the history teacher - is a good person to know, because he's the EE co-ordinator, he's marked loads of EE's in the past and he also seems to know a lot about the university process.