IB HL Math

[seaben]

I was just having a conversation with a friend about the difficulty of the IB HL Math exam. Here you have to get a 7/7 for credit at the state university and it looks like its easier to either go the AP route or take a community college math class and transfer credits.

 

Does anyone have any experience with this? Is it really that much more difficult and/or is it worth it to go down that path anyway?

 

Edited January 17, 2018 by seaben

[EKS]

My son was in HL math for a semester.  It was horrible--bad textbook which assumed a competent teacher which he didn't have and that didn't give enough practice.  I recommend AP.

[eternalsummer]

I would say on the whole it doesn't really matter; lots of schools don't give much credit for lower scores on HL IB courses or any score on SL courses, but you can just sit the AP exam anyway.  IME, the material covered is very similar.  I took IB SL Math and got a 5 on the AP AB Calc exam with no additional studying or review; just sat the exam.

 

You can't just take a random IB exam, though - it's a two year class, and there are lots of components of the class that go into your final score, including projects and etc.  So if he wants to take the class, go ahead, just be ready to pay for an extra AP exam.

 

If he is considering other IB classes, or the diploma, AP tests are often pretty well correlated, esp. for the sciences and math.  

 

 

A 7 is very difficult to get on many IB exams/classes.  Google says something like 20-25% of people get a 5 on the AP Calc AB exam; 8% get a 7 in IB SL math (about the same percentage at HL).

[eternalsummer]

I would say on the whole it doesn't really matter; lots of schools don't give much credit for lower scores on HL IB courses or any score on SL courses, but you can just sit the AP exam anyway.  IME, the material covered is very similar.  I took IB SL Math and got a 5 on the AP AB Calc exam with no additional studying or review; just sat the exam.

 

You can't just take a random IB exam, though - it's a two year class, and there are lots of components of the class that go into your final score, including projects and etc.  So if he wants to take the class, go ahead, just be ready to pay for an extra AP exam.

 

If he is considering other IB classes, or the diploma, AP tests are often pretty well correlated, esp. for the sciences and math.  ETA: but not for history and language arts/lit; I think those are very different.

 

 

A 7 is very difficult to get on many IB exams/classes.  Google says something like 20-25% of people get a 5 on the AP Calc AB exam; 8% get a 7 in IB SL math (about the same percentage at HL).

Edited January 23, 2018 by eternalsummer

[lizbusby]

From my personal experience taking IB Math HL, I found it to be a mish-mash of topics: an equal mix of Statistics, Linear Algebra & Matrices, and Multivariate Calc, along with other things. I ended up getting a 6 with a moderately competent but not brilliant teacher.

 

I personally think I would have benefited more from taking AP Stats. But really, any higher math/physics class is utterly dependent on a competent teacher. I left AP Physics after two weeks because the teacher barely understood the material, much less was able to teach it. Without one, I would take the class elsewhere or just get out. It's not worth the time. Maybe there are good resources on Khan Academy to do AP Stats from home?

[zejh]

From my personal experience taking IB Math HL, I found it to be a mish-mash of topics: an equal mix of Statistics, Linear Algebra & Matrices, and Multivariate Calc, along with other things. I ended up getting a 6 with a moderately competent but not brilliant teacher.

 

I personally think I would have benefited more from taking AP Stats. But really, any higher math/physics class is utterly dependent on a competent teacher. I left AP Physics after two weeks because the teacher barely understood the material, much less was able to teach it. Without one, I would take the class elsewhere or just get out. It's not worth the time. Maybe there are good resources on Khan Academy to do AP Stats from home?

I don't have anything to actually contribute to this thread (my kids might end up in a charter school that includes an IB high school, but they're still young) but I had a very similar experience with AP physics, teacher didn't give much guidance, textbook didn't line up with homework, and so I dropped it after a short time. (Still got into MIT, though that was back in the dinosaur age, or, well, the 90s...)

[Laura Corin]

From my personal experience taking IB Math HL, I found it to be a mish-mash of topics: an equal mix of Statistics, Linear Algebra & Matrices, and Multivariate Calc, along with other things. 

 

I believe that mixed maths every year is the norm in Europe.  As a Brit, I hadn't heard of studying one area of maths for a year at a time until I started hanging out here.

[lizbusby]

Studying multiple areas of math is typical in the US until Algebra, though actually I believe the new common core stuff combines algebra and geometry. So I guess the real separation starts in high school with calculus and stats. In university, math is much more one topic per class. Those the areas I mentioned would be three separate classes. I guess that I felt lost when I was thrown into stats in college with very little experience. I wished I had done more of it before. Linear Algebra and Multi-variate calculus really followed on from what I learned in AP Calculus BC (which for our school was the first year for those taking IB Math HL).

[lizbusby]

And for most subjects you could just take the AP test after taking the IB class, with a bit of practice on the test format. But IB Math HL is really different from AP Calc. You would need to take the specific class for each one, I think.