As a high-school student when I considered doing the IB, the one question I asked former IB students the most (and Google) was, “How does IB help you in university?”. Now, as an IBDP graduate finished with the first semester of university, I have my answers. If you are a high-school student considering taking IB or a current IB student wondering about the same, keep reading.
Before I begin, you must know that this article is based solely on my experiences, and the answer to “How does IB help you in university?” is a very subjective one. Therefore, knowing my background in IB and how my university courses are structured is important to help you understand exactly how doing the IBDP has been beneficial to me.
Firstly, my subjects in DP were the following: HL: Mathematics Applications and Interpretations, Economics, English A: Language and Literature, and SL: Psychology, Environmental Systems and Societies (ESS), and French Ab Initio. The IA’s, my EE (in psychology), and the G4 project have also been of great help to me, and I will expand on this later.
I am currently attending ESSEC Business School’s Asia Pacific campus in Singapore. ESSEC also has campuses in Cergy (France) and Rabat (Morocco). ESSEC is incredibly diverse and students from all over the world attend the school. A lot of my cohort-mates have lived and studied in multiple countries throughout their lives. Concerning subjects, apart from regular business-related subjects (such as mathematics and economics), I must learn two languages and one of them must be French. My university mandates every non-French national to learn French since the university is a French business school and learning French would help in securing internship or job opportunities with French companies. ESSEC also places heavy emphasis on the environment and community service, and how – as students – we can play our part. This project is called “Learning Together”.
So, how has IB helped me in university?
Receiving An Unconditional Offer Letter
Perhaps the first and biggest way IB helped me in university was during the admissions. ESSEC Business School offers IB students an unconditional offer, and it helped me greatly since the university was at the top of my list. Receiving an unconditional offer helped me relax and de-stress greatly since I no longer had to worry about meeting my offer conditions. This helped me attempt my exams pressure-free.
Making Friends and Integrating on Campus
Since ESSEC is such a diverse school, being a part of such a diverse class was not a huge challenge, and the cultural shocks were few. As I reflect on my first semester, I realize that throughout IB, my teachers emphasised so much international mindedness and open-mindedness that when the time came to apply those abstract concepts to reality, it did not feel absurd. In fact, during IB, because we were constantly educated to be a world citizen, I found myself appreciating the opportunity to be surrounded by people from all over the world much more than I could have otherwise.
However, such diversity also made it slightly challenging to find common ground initially when we were introduced. In those moments, I thanked IBDP the most. Meeting my classmates who did the IB was always the moment when a conversation was carried out with the most ease. We bonded over our shared and different experiences with the program, telling each other about our journeys, our moments of joy and terror, and the satisfaction of calling ourselves IB graduates.
French Ab Initio helped as it provided me with a foundation in French that has been very useful in my French language classes. Having a background in French ab initio, which placed a significant emphasis on French culture, meant that I experienced fewer cultural shocks when interacting with French people compared to my peers without this background. This cultural knowledge from my IBDP studies made it a bit easier to make friends and start conversations with the French.
How IB Subjects Helped Me for College-Level Courses?
Since I major in Business, taking Mathematics AI, and Economics at HL helped me greatly. These two subjects have been instrumental in laying the foundation for my college-level courses. Throughout my first semester, my mathematics and microeconomics courses and in semester 2, my Statistics and Macroeconomics courses share similarities to the IB Mathematics AI and Economics in terms of content, making it easier for me to learn and grasp the contents. Besides, being used to the Graphic Display Calculator (GDC) helped me in math classes. I observed that, alongside myself, all my IB friends were a lot more comfortable using the GDCs and did not spend time familiarizing themselves with and learning how to use the calculator. My microeconomics final exam had article-based essay questions similar to IB Economics paper 2, and I felt such ease answering them thanks to all the practice I had the last two years!
In a very surprising revelation, Economics HL, English A, and Psychology helped me in my university Geopolitics final exam. Our final exam had article-based open-ended essay responses and lecture content-based essay responses. Economics and English A helped me with the article-based questions because I already possessed the knowledge and skills to read, interpret, and analyze articles, plan out my responses, and write my essays. Connecting the analyses to both the article and the question while keeping my essay structured and focused and writing quickly was not troublesome, thanks to these subjects. Finally, the lecture-based essay questions too were similar to the Psychology Essay Response Questions (ERQs) in the sense that the question is rather vague and the essay needs to be specific regarding the content learned in class.
The ESS IA and G4 Helped My Group Project Win
Going back to the “Learning Together” project that was previously mentioned, perhaps it was a stroke of luck that out of all the topics, my team was tasked with solving the issue of plastic waste on campus – a topic that I have studied in ESS. The skills and learnings I picked up during the ESS IA helped me the most. In particular, doing primary and secondary research for my IA helped me conduct similar research for my project. In addition, the way we were expected to structure our project was very similar to how the G4 project was structured in IB. Drawing from my experiences of working with my peers in G4, I was able to lead my team to structure the project well. Having prior experience helped make my work smoother, quicker, and more efficient.
What About the Essays?
Now that I have mentioned the IA, you must be wondering if all those essays have prepared me for college. And my answer is, yes, they have! In my project report and other subjects’ essays and reports, there were plenty of instances when I noticed not just how second nature it has become to write academic essays. I have noticed that the IB students could conduct secondary research, format and cite documents with ease. In subjects where the professors do not mandate or recommend a particular citation style, we seem to know exactly what citation style would be the best fit for the subject or the nature of the essay/report. We also knew the rules of academic essays making it time-efficient during the editing process. Perhaps the biggest advantage of all was that because we wrote so many essays and learned to juggle multiple deadlines during the IBDP years, in university, tight deadlines for essays and not having enough time to draft 2 or 3 essays was not a huge issue and we handled it just fine.
These are all the ways that doing the IBDP has been helping me in my university journey. Feel free to shoot any questions or share your experiences in the comments section below! I would love to know your thoughts and experiences about this topic!
Wonderful insights, and very well articulated, for hopeful aspirants ! And as one of your teachers, very gratifying indeed.
Thank you so much ma’am 😊