A Guide to the IB

The Psychology Internal Assessment (IA) is one of the most challenging components of the IB for many students, however doing well in this IA requires you following very straightforward steps. By going very thoroughly and methodologically through the requirements of the IB criteria and this list of sentence by sentence guidance, you are definitely on your way to acing the Psych IA and getting that idolised 7. While these steps can be adjusted and more can be added to your own IA as this assignment is different for every student and study, I have tried to make each step as basic as possible so anyone can do well on their Psych IA (even if you have a bad teacher or are just very confused!) I have spent many hours compiling together guidance for every section of the Psych IA, the appropriate amount of sentences and paragraphs for each section, and what they should individually cover and how. As such, I have split this guide into 2 parts, where one is Planning Your Psychology IA  and...

Picking your subjects is probably one of the hardest choices you can make during the IB, considering that you're going to be stuck with the choice for the next 2 years. I also had to make this decision, and realised that choosing the subjects might've been easier if someone had actually told me what to expect from each subject before entering them. Here, I have compiled a list of the subjects I took during my time in the IB and analysed each one in terms of their workload, assignment difficulty, and what to expect from teachers/lectures. The subjects covered are:  Math Standard Level (SL) /Higher Level (HL) Environmental Systems and Societies (ESS) Psychology History English Lang&Lit Math SL/HL Math is a compulsory subject for all IB students around the world, and begs the question as to what level is the right one for you: SL or HL? This question has evolved for more recent IB students to taking Analysis & Approaches or Applications & Int...

IB1 is the big year of change. Your teacher starts loading on the Internal Assessments (IAs), expects you to have an idea for you Extended Essay (EE), you should start and finish your TOK Oral Presentation, you have Written Assignments due, and finally you start having your Individual Oral Commentaries for your language subjects! It's definitely a stressful workload to start off with, and most students are left unprepared. Even then, I still found IB1 to be my most enjoyable year in high school, since I still had the opportunity to travel all over Europe ( check out this link to find out how EYP helped me do this! ) and start working part-time, while balancing my studies. Because of all of this, I'd say my experience in IB1 was also the most mixed year ever, with lots of highs and lots of lows. To make the process of you going to IB1 easier, today I'll be answering the essential question: what should you expect when you go to IB1?  Initial EE Planning i...

There are lots of positives for joining the IB that people continually talk about, but there are also some negatives that people sometimes might not consider. I compiled a list of the main things that occurred throughout my 3 years in the IB to give you some insight into what it means to be an IB student, and if you're the right fit for the curriculum. This is the first part of a 3 part series, where I cover Pre-IB, IB1 and IB2.  Pre-IB You're just about to start the IB and your first taste-tester will be joining in Pre-IB. This is a preliminary year before you join the "official" IB program and it's pretty different from normal high-school. Here's a list of the different major things I found were a bit unique to the IB or were difficult and should be considered by any person thinking of joining the IB. Disclaimer: Pre-IB might not be available in some countries and, by joining an IB school, you might jump straight into IB1. However, many of...

TOK is full of super specific words and concepts that take a long time to actually even know what they mean, let alone remember them by heart. Moreover, many websites are useful in giving you all of the terms covered in TOK, but personally I only found a small fraction of them actually useful and used in the assessment components. So, I compiled a list of all the absolutely necessary  TOK terminology that you should know to ace your TOK Presentation and TOK Essay  so you don't need to sift through hundreds of terms and get overwhelmed by complicated definitions. PS. To find specific terms and sift through stuff you already know, press Control+F (Windows) or Command+F (Mac). Way of Knowing (WOK) A Way of Knowing : the method  a person uses to understand how or why something happens. They can all be used as independent methods to perceive the world. There are 8 WOKs: Language, Sense perception, Emotion, Reason, Imagination, Faith, Intuition and Memor...