What to buy for IB 1st year?

Hello!
I am starting the IB course in 4 days, coming from my GCSES and was wondering what I needed to buy for my first year. My subjects are as follows:

SL Japanese
SL Maths
SL Chemistry
HL Philosophy
HL English Literature
HL Geography

Any advice on the equipment needed for the first year would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

hey!

you definitely need a graphing calculator for maths and for chemistry sometimes - that might depend on your maths teacher which one exactly as some teachers don't know how to use some of the types and won't be able to help if you don't know how to do something, so probably best to wait until your teacher tells you which one you should have (or ask them).
I don't think there is anything 'required' for any other subject, so you can buy things/equipment which you find useful - some stationary stuff if you want to make handwritten notes, textbooks/study guides if you prefer learning from those (if not and you want to make your notes, there's plenty of textbooks available online for free on ibdocuments), probably some binders etc. to keep handouts you get from teachers in one place etc. but what exactly is needed probably depends on you and how you're planning to store things, study etc.

if you have any more questions either about specific subjects (especially maths, chemistry, geography and english lit as these are the ones we have in common) or general ones, let me know and I'll be more than happy to answer!

Thank you very much! I don't know about laptop use in my school specifically so I've stuck to pens and paper to start, however I am able to buy a laptop soon if neccessary! Are there any that you would recommend? Thanks for your detailed reply earlier, it has helped lots! 😃

no problem!
I don't know any particular model to recommend since I genuinely can't recommend mine hahah, I mean it's a great laptop, but not necessarily for school. I'd say definitely get a light and small one so that it's convenient to take it if you want to take it to school or if you go somewhere and need to work a bit - I made a mistake here and got a great laptop which is unfortunately quite heavy and I think size of 15.6" so it's quite big and uncomfortable to take it anywhere, I bought this one since it had good parameters and I thought I would only use it at home, but a month or so of IBY1, I started to take it to school everyday. definitely get a small and light one! besides that, for school it doesn't matter too much - depends what else you want to use it for (if it's some 'heavy' programmes or games, it should have a better processor and graphics for games etc.

Ahhh ok thanks! I'll have a look online - we just bought some lever arch folders (one for each subject plus ToK) so I've got something for handouts and notes etc. Thanks for helping with my questions tho 😁 I'm now a lot less concerned over what I need haha.

no problem! hahah
good luck with the IB!