Cambridge and the International Baccalaureate

Has anyone in the UK who had the option of taking A levels, but instead chose IB, received an offer from Oxford or Cambridge to study Maths, Physics or Engineering?

It is just that my new school has told me that if anyone is interested in these degrees then they should choose A levels. Yet, other people say that IB is perfectly fine even if you want to go for a maths/science based degree...

Thank you.

Hi, Im currently doing physics at Cambridge (2nd year, first year I did physics, chemistry, maths, biology of cells) and I did the IB. I did Physics, chem, maths and english HL. I found that in physics I was better prepared than the people who had done A-levels, and certainly knew more of the 1st year material than they did (I did relativity and astrophysics as options, basically a lot of the 1st term is relativity). Chemistry was about the same, in the IB you learn more phys chem but less organic chem (unless you do the higher organic chemistry option I suppose, we did some biochem and medicines and drugs as our options, which wasnt too useful for chemistry, but slightly useful for biology of cells). In maths I was maybe a bit worse prepared than the people who did further maths, but this was very slight and possibly because I didnt work enough on the maths when I was doing the IB. I still went on to get a first overall with maths as my best subject.

So it's all up to you really, if you want to do the IB it's fine for Cambridge, if you would rather not do all the languages then A-levels is fine too. Although I get the impression that the IB is more directed towards thinking through things, at least in physics, than the A-levels. But this is just an impression I got from my friends, which may be wrong.

Thanks NilsJohan...that made me feel a lot more confident about my choice!

I see you did four HL? I'm thinking of doing that, or at least starting with four HLs and seeing how I go...did you find that it was a lot more work?

I think it depends a lot on which subjects you choose, I think for languages the difference between SL and HL is smaller than for sciences. For example the difference between maths SL and HL is very big, but at my school they taught history SL and HL together all year, their thought being that the more you know the better, because it's an essay subject anyway. I guess you're doing 3 sciences HL? If so then I think that an extra HL humanity should be ok. I did Norwegian and Economics SL and English, maths, physics and chemistry HL. In the end I got 6, 7, 6, 6, 7, 7 respectively. 2 points on EE and TOK. Was predicted for more and I missed my Cambridge offer but they let me in anyway.

Wow...that's really good....
Yeah, I'm thinking of starting with Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Economics at HL and see how I go. English and French will be at SL.
What was the offer? It seems Cambridge are more understanding when someone drops and IB point than when someone drops a grade at A level, but surely the points have grade boundaries just like grades A, B and C do at A level?

My offer was 42 with 777 in Maths, Physics and Chemistry. I dont know how much more lenient they are, but I had some other things that I sent them an email about (800 in all SAT IIs, went to the international physics olympiad and was top 20/50 in the country, Norway, in maths and chem, all of which had admittedly taken up a fair bit of critical time). I didnt work hard enough on my maths though. So I dunno, I wouldnt really see my case as representative, but I have heard more stories about people dropping a point here and there, but usually not in their required subjects (the sort of 'AAA' part of the offer). But in my case I didnt even get pushed to another college.

I dont know how HL econs is compared to SL, at my school they only did SL.

I dont know how HL econs is compared to SL, at my school they only did SL.

It's cool - not harder than SL. It does cover a bit more material, but the analysis isn't making the subject any harder. I did HL until registering for exams before christmas in IB2 and then dropped it to SL. (Did more or less no work throughout the course, so it isn't very hard imo. I missed a 7 by 1% though...)

Oh, and by the way, are you less likely to get an offer from oxbridge if you've done retakes in a couple of IB subjects and if you've rewritten your TOK, what's their attitude towards that?