Should I take IB? Well, okay my parents are forcing me to, but if they decide to actually listen to me, should I? Is it worth it? The thing is that I procastinate A LOT, and have to work late nights to finish assignments (I'm in grade 9). I got over 90% on all subjects, 100% in some them, so my parents decide I should. Do IB students get isolated from students taking the normal classes? Also, my school offers AP, so I won't have to leave my friends if I take that, but apparently IB is better?
Kay... so I'm already out of IB for like... a year and half now? so at this point I'm not even sure anymore.... :P but I'm not gonna say weather you should take it or not I'm just going to tell you my experience with it.
Basically IB is somewhat better than AP in some factors, in that it's international and it's more about analyzing (like literally you analyze everything... why is the wall is blue has more than at least 5 different reasons) AP is more factual and memorizing based. I've heard lots of stories where IB is amazing and stuff.. and wayyyyy better than IB academically (and if it's taught right it should be) but for my school personally I think we could've been taught a lot better. IB of course is a lot more work than AP, to me it was basically like taking college level sort of classes (uni for all you non americans I guess :P) and when I got to my University I was just like well this work load is actually really easy compared to what I had faced in IB. And to add to that we didn't have a lot of AP or even honors or higher level courses really at our school so it was either basic or IB for us. So of course the people who wanted a challenge just went for IB. And it was a lot more stress and work than I think we really ever ready for. And being a psych major now I noticed it caused a couple of my school's IB students so much stress that caused us a lot of mental health issues (mental breakdowns and such) but yeah it's scary stuff. If anything you have to want to do it. If you don't feel like you can handle the workload that comes with it don't do it, or just go with some certificates. But if you're up for the challenge. It doesn't completely matter how smart you are it's more if you're willing to do the work and learn more (I procrastinated my life a way, that's not a good enough excuse not to do it by the way)
On the social aspect. Yes it does... but it's basically you do that to yourself. I once saw a picture that said Friends, Sleep, Good grades choose two and that's IB sometimes it's come to where you only get to choose one. For my school we were so small that it didn't matter. But the other IB students became my family, we had like bonding sessions almost all the time because we somehow were always together. I enjoyed it actually. And it's always good to hang out with intellectually stimulating people :) If you're worried about losing your friends, I just want to say that things do change and people drift, if they're your friends they'll find ways to still be your friends if they are true. You'll find this even more true once you graduate and all your friends go to different places, the real ones are either still right by your side or are somehow always talking to you even though they're so far away. Just trust me :)
If you need anything feel free to message again (if you want me to answer privately just take off anon and say to respond there... or you can message me on my real tumblr which is thisisacrystalpost) yeah :) goodluck with your decision
