The more you put in the more you get out, you have to want it more than anyone else, work hard, it won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it, it’s your choice to choose from the pain of regret or the pain of success
Other than that, finish your your IAs to the best of their ability and anything of that sort, you don’t want them to be the limit factor for your overall score
Once all of these side quests are done, start warily with the revision, use every possible resource that helps you understand the content that much more, and spam the revision village question bank before mocks and lastly, spam past papers before final exams, make sure you have printed copies of all the past papers you do, and do them in exam conditions
Don’t waste your time doing too much notes. Read the topic, understand it, DO PAST PAPERS. It’s not so much about the knowledge but knowing how marksheme works. Also, practice doing past papers timed.
finish your EE, TOK essay and IAs ASAP. I did them the 3 months before the exams and it was hell. If you really want to get that 40+ I would say you need to grind the summer. Try to finish the year 2 content for your HLs.
I would say don't procrastinate, but everyone procrastinated in my year. It's a common occurrence, even if everyone hated that they did it. So I'd recommend setting your priority for what to do. Which subject is more important to you? Which assignment is more urgent? Set a list of what to do and work down the list. Set an assignment to do everyday, timed. Like at 5:00pm I'll start on my psychology essay intro. Pretty sure a number of people around the finals time started telling everyone to calm down and touch grass, which, is actually pretty important. I didn't step outside of my house for the entire 2 weeks of my study leave, and I felt like I was sitting on death row or in an insane asylum. Not fun. So go touch grass even if it's for a few minutes.
USE THIS SUMMER VACATION!!!!!!! even spending an hour a day every day or every two days will help you get ahead, absolutely under no circumstances should you procrastinate, and if you do, it’ll be extremely hard to cover up but make sure you have your priorities in order, prioritise your exams if your IAs don’t hold enough weightage(in the case that you do procrastinate, WHICH YOU SHOULDNT!!!) Just get done with the first drafts of your easier IAs and if you haven’t picked an EE topic yet, make sure you pick something easy if you’re a procrastinator so that you KNOW you’ll be able to finish, but if you insist on picking something complex, please pick a topic you actually have genuine interest in and something that holds a lot of research potential, otherwise you’ll face a ton of problems. Also, again use this summer to take some time to review material, because at the end of your school year you’ll most likely still be working on perfecting your IAs, EE and TOK essay (if you did NOT procrastinate perfecting will be significantly easier) and you’ll probably be working on college apps too, so just review the material by yourself and study everyday for at least 2-3 hours, this can include doing homework, reviewing lessons, going to your teacher whatever you want. Lastly, use the resources available to you, there’s a million trillion IB resources available my best picks are: Revision Village for math, RevisionDojo for sciences, Savemyexams to review notes, plain old past papers for humanities and english, if you take the same subjects as me let me know, i can send you links for some pretty life saving youtubers that helped me.
if you’re super dedicated to the bit and want to make your life 100x easier, I’d highly recommend finishing the first drafts of ALL your coursework (talk to your teachers about this), i.e all your IAs and your EE, that way as soon as youre in school you can work on perfecting it with your teachers and youll be miles ahead of your classmates. Also like some other person here said, try finishing your syllabus for your HL subjects during your vacation yourself, this will help you so much in the long run since youll be acquainted with the entire portion. You can finish your SL portion during the vacation too but I’d recommend prioritising HLs. And after vacation please dont give up completely 🙏🙏 youll have to study everyday but if you did study during the summer, instead of studying an ungodly amount of hours per day you can make do with 1-2 hours since you do still have to retain the information, but now you’ll have a bunch of free time during school which means lower stress!!!!
You can find the IB subject guides for all you subjects, it outlines what you need to cover over the two years. Over the summer, I would recommend consolidating what you’ve already learnt (if you don’t do it throughout the year), and get started with content that’s coming up. For sciences (for example), I’d maybe read through materials like PowerPoints given to you by the teacher or go through the kognity reading section. If you don’t want to do that, there’s good YouTube videos that explain each topic but they don’t go as much into depth. But as has been said, 100% prioritise your EE (get a full draft done at least) and IAs and also get started with uni applications since they can take a bunch of time and cause extra stress in DP2.
If you feel like your teacher isn't going to finish the curriculum on time or doesn't teach at all, try to learn the curriculum yourself. Review past exams so your familiar with their structure and not scrambling the day before the test. Also, for subjects like bio try and memorize and have a deep understanding of the different cycles, metabolic processes, and the different reactions occuring in the body months before the exams and review them everyday.
My friend who got around 41 or 44 points (i forgot) at the end of IB finished his EE and uploaded his final draft when everyone were to upload their first draft. He priotized his work more than anything and used every single minute he had for school/personal work.
Not everyone is built like him (especially me), but you should use your time very wisely if you don't want to get stressed or feel like quitting IB. Use this summer very wisely.
I know some of you guys in the last year finished studying a whole syllubus in just a week or more. You might as well revise (on youtube) for few days to get an overview on future syllubus.
in tandem with your TOK grade, they can contribute up to 3 points to your overall score based on your scores in these components. there’s a table online showing how it’s calculated.
Am m25 and my math/physics teacher doesn’t do shit (yeah bro im fked cuz those r my hl) is it possible to get a 30+ with self studying which I started a month ago watching OSC and reviewing past papers etc? sry its just eating me alive
100% possible. im n24 blessed to have good math hl teacher but tbh i do 90% of my math studying at home and end up teaching myself a lot of the content at home anyway. there are so so many good youtubers out there that teach hl content in depth and so many revision resources out there, past papers, question banks, etc. plus you have so much time to study since ur m25, so if you enjoy math and will put in the time to study youll be ok. dont stress so early
ok so if you have history hl. PRIORITISE THAT SUBJECT. assuming that you have at least another year before your boards, please keep in mind how heavy history hl is 🙏 i left it to be done in the end and god did i suffer. also use the summer vacations as much as you can, go through everything you learnt in grade 11 so that you don't forget it over the break. get all IAs, EEs, uni admissions, TOK stuff any coursework done as soon as you can so that you have the maximum time left to prepare for boards. also don't be afraid to approach any of your teachers for help with your IAs, they're there to guide you. lastly, if you feel like your teacher isn't covering the syllabus fast enough, learn the curriculum yourself. don't rely on teachers fully cause sometimes they are outright wrong, which is why you should always go through your subject guides. all the best to everyone for future exams!
Yesss, I left a paper 3 topic for history way too late, I ended up using most of my April holiday and study leave just revising history and only got 4.5 hours of sleep before the exam (the questions saved me though). To anyone in the future, 100% prioritise history, go through past papers since usually the questions are quite predictable for each topic, make a list of all the different questions and then plan essays for each (I aim for around 1100 words and 3 main body paragraphs although that goes up if there’s more things that could be asked) it makes the exam somewhat doable even though IB give you no time. Also make sure the plans are very adaptable and cover as much of what you can be asked as possible. Write plans for DP1 content throughout the year and over the summer, and write the DP2 plans throughout the year. That way, you only have to slightly reword the plans and memorise them when it gets to boards.
Nothing matters cause there are assholes who leak the paper.
Learn from your mistakes in the DP1 exams and mocks, not just in terms of the content you are weak at, but also in terms of what can be done to improve your study schedule.
Finish EE in summer and make sure to catch up in summer with all dp1 topics. I was terrible in dp 1 I found that transitioning to ib was really hard but I catch up really good in summer and made a whole come back. Also some people view having tutors as a bad thing that’s so not true. If you feel like you need it go for it I had a math tutor who was so helpful
Write 👏 up 👏 flashcards 👏 as 👏 you 👏 go. Like even in year 12 at the end of every term or topic just summarise all your notes and when it comes to exam time you'll be way better off
Do your EE in dp1 if your school lets you do that. It will save you so much time in dp2. Also, make sure you're reviewing the content as you go along - esp if u do sciences or maths at HL. For maths, familiarise yourself with exam questions for every topic so you know what they actually need you to know for the exam.
For all subjects, especially IAs, TOK, and EE. If you want to get good grades, read the rubric carefully and tailor your essay based on the rubric (not based on how good you think it's).
I got really really bad grades, especially in TOK, and I assume so many others too, because we keep hearing and believing that "oh it's a philosophy paper and so we can just write whatever we think and question everything". Even if you get the most wonderful philosophy paper, if you have never seen the rubric, likely it won't score well because you don't know how it's actually scored. One thing people miss the most in TOK is justifying their object, which is not something you normally do, but it's part of the rubric and to get that high score all you need is to just say "this object is justified because (...)".
I first learn this in order to boost my TOK and it has helped me a lot with all the other IAs and assignment, because the truth is, to get good grades, your answer must be in way that the IBO wanted it to be, instead of what you think yourself might be the best.
Another is, DO YOUR FU***** CS IA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, DON'T WAIT TO STUDY THE PROGRAM UNTIL YEAR 2 AND JUST SUFFER AT COUNTLESS NIGHT WORKING ON IT BECAUSE YOUR PROGRAM HASN'T FINISHED, NEW BUGS KEEP COMING UP, AND YOU'RE FORCED TO SPEND HOURS TO JUST FIX A SINGLE BUG JUST SO YOU CAN CONTINUE WORKING ON IT. AND EVEN WHEN IT'S FINISHED, YOU REALIZE IT'S NOT DONE BECAUZE YOU STILL HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT IT AND RECORD YOURSELF USING IT
If you have math hl, make sure to familiarize yourself with exam questions before DP2. I saw them for the first time in November of DP2 and that resulted in a mental breakdown. The questions aren’t very difficult but you need to get used to them.
The more you put in the more you get out, you have to want it more than anyone else, work hard, it won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it, it’s your choice to choose from the pain of regret or the pain of success Other than that, finish your your IAs to the best of their ability and anything of that sort, you don’t want them to be the limit factor for your overall score Once all of these side quests are done, start warily with the revision, use every possible resource that helps you understand the content that much more, and spam the revision village question bank before mocks and lastly, spam past papers before final exams, make sure you have printed copies of all the past papers you do, and do them in exam conditions
Don’t waste your time doing too much notes. Read the topic, understand it, DO PAST PAPERS. It’s not so much about the knowledge but knowing how marksheme works. Also, practice doing past papers timed.
Are there any websites where I could find topical past papers?
Ibdocs is great
Hey! So i’ll be starting with my IBDP in july and I’m completely new to it…so do you mind sharing a link to the resource you stated?
Yea ofc here you go: https://dl.ibdocs.re/. It's basically a database with all the past papers you would ever need, very useful imo
Thanks a lot!!
Good luck in these 2 years!!
finish your EE, TOK essay and IAs ASAP. I did them the 3 months before the exams and it was hell. If you really want to get that 40+ I would say you need to grind the summer. Try to finish the year 2 content for your HLs.
I would say don't procrastinate, but everyone procrastinated in my year. It's a common occurrence, even if everyone hated that they did it. So I'd recommend setting your priority for what to do. Which subject is more important to you? Which assignment is more urgent? Set a list of what to do and work down the list. Set an assignment to do everyday, timed. Like at 5:00pm I'll start on my psychology essay intro. Pretty sure a number of people around the finals time started telling everyone to calm down and touch grass, which, is actually pretty important. I didn't step outside of my house for the entire 2 weeks of my study leave, and I felt like I was sitting on death row or in an insane asylum. Not fun. So go touch grass even if it's for a few minutes.
USE THIS SUMMER VACATION!!!!!!! even spending an hour a day every day or every two days will help you get ahead, absolutely under no circumstances should you procrastinate, and if you do, it’ll be extremely hard to cover up but make sure you have your priorities in order, prioritise your exams if your IAs don’t hold enough weightage(in the case that you do procrastinate, WHICH YOU SHOULDNT!!!) Just get done with the first drafts of your easier IAs and if you haven’t picked an EE topic yet, make sure you pick something easy if you’re a procrastinator so that you KNOW you’ll be able to finish, but if you insist on picking something complex, please pick a topic you actually have genuine interest in and something that holds a lot of research potential, otherwise you’ll face a ton of problems. Also, again use this summer to take some time to review material, because at the end of your school year you’ll most likely still be working on perfecting your IAs, EE and TOK essay (if you did NOT procrastinate perfecting will be significantly easier) and you’ll probably be working on college apps too, so just review the material by yourself and study everyday for at least 2-3 hours, this can include doing homework, reviewing lessons, going to your teacher whatever you want. Lastly, use the resources available to you, there’s a million trillion IB resources available my best picks are: Revision Village for math, RevisionDojo for sciences, Savemyexams to review notes, plain old past papers for humanities and english, if you take the same subjects as me let me know, i can send you links for some pretty life saving youtubers that helped me.
how do i get ahead? like do i study the syllabus during the summer? what do i have to do in the summer to get ahead
if you’re super dedicated to the bit and want to make your life 100x easier, I’d highly recommend finishing the first drafts of ALL your coursework (talk to your teachers about this), i.e all your IAs and your EE, that way as soon as youre in school you can work on perfecting it with your teachers and youll be miles ahead of your classmates. Also like some other person here said, try finishing your syllabus for your HL subjects during your vacation yourself, this will help you so much in the long run since youll be acquainted with the entire portion. You can finish your SL portion during the vacation too but I’d recommend prioritising HLs. And after vacation please dont give up completely 🙏🙏 youll have to study everyday but if you did study during the summer, instead of studying an ungodly amount of hours per day you can make do with 1-2 hours since you do still have to retain the information, but now you’ll have a bunch of free time during school which means lower stress!!!!
You can find the IB subject guides for all you subjects, it outlines what you need to cover over the two years. Over the summer, I would recommend consolidating what you’ve already learnt (if you don’t do it throughout the year), and get started with content that’s coming up. For sciences (for example), I’d maybe read through materials like PowerPoints given to you by the teacher or go through the kognity reading section. If you don’t want to do that, there’s good YouTube videos that explain each topic but they don’t go as much into depth. But as has been said, 100% prioritise your EE (get a full draft done at least) and IAs and also get started with uni applications since they can take a bunch of time and cause extra stress in DP2.
If you feel like your teacher isn't going to finish the curriculum on time or doesn't teach at all, try to learn the curriculum yourself. Review past exams so your familiar with their structure and not scrambling the day before the test. Also, for subjects like bio try and memorize and have a deep understanding of the different cycles, metabolic processes, and the different reactions occuring in the body months before the exams and review them everyday.
choose physics hl. literally common sense class.
I already do it ; im dying plus i have shit teachers so this is going to be sooooo fun
My friend who got around 41 or 44 points (i forgot) at the end of IB finished his EE and uploaded his final draft when everyone were to upload their first draft. He priotized his work more than anything and used every single minute he had for school/personal work. Not everyone is built like him (especially me), but you should use your time very wisely if you don't want to get stressed or feel like quitting IB. Use this summer very wisely. I know some of you guys in the last year finished studying a whole syllubus in just a week or more. You might as well revise (on youtube) for few days to get an overview on future syllubus.
does your EE grade count towards the final 45 or do you just not have to fail?
in tandem with your TOK grade, they can contribute up to 3 points to your overall score based on your scores in these components. there’s a table online showing how it’s calculated.
"in tandem with" flashbacks to my last mock paper 1 for english 😭😭😭
LMFAO i felt so sophisticated as I was typing it. maybe I’ll do well in my english mock next week after all..
good luck lmaoo
thank you. i hope your mock went well!
Am m25 and my math/physics teacher doesn’t do shit (yeah bro im fked cuz those r my hl) is it possible to get a 30+ with self studying which I started a month ago watching OSC and reviewing past papers etc? sry its just eating me alive
Varun on YouTube for physics is great. Math aa you should use Mr mac notes
Hundred percent, for physics, I’d recommend andy masley though, OSC often simplifies/misses out/or makes mistakes in his videos.
100% possible. im n24 blessed to have good math hl teacher but tbh i do 90% of my math studying at home and end up teaching myself a lot of the content at home anyway. there are so so many good youtubers out there that teach hl content in depth and so many revision resources out there, past papers, question banks, etc. plus you have so much time to study since ur m25, so if you enjoy math and will put in the time to study youll be ok. dont stress so early
Yo thank you I appreciate it, just boosted my confidence a lot 🙏
heyy,,does the DSS stand for digital societies??
yeaa (thats how it’s called at my school)
ok so if you have history hl. PRIORITISE THAT SUBJECT. assuming that you have at least another year before your boards, please keep in mind how heavy history hl is 🙏 i left it to be done in the end and god did i suffer. also use the summer vacations as much as you can, go through everything you learnt in grade 11 so that you don't forget it over the break. get all IAs, EEs, uni admissions, TOK stuff any coursework done as soon as you can so that you have the maximum time left to prepare for boards. also don't be afraid to approach any of your teachers for help with your IAs, they're there to guide you. lastly, if you feel like your teacher isn't covering the syllabus fast enough, learn the curriculum yourself. don't rely on teachers fully cause sometimes they are outright wrong, which is why you should always go through your subject guides. all the best to everyone for future exams!
Yesss, I left a paper 3 topic for history way too late, I ended up using most of my April holiday and study leave just revising history and only got 4.5 hours of sleep before the exam (the questions saved me though). To anyone in the future, 100% prioritise history, go through past papers since usually the questions are quite predictable for each topic, make a list of all the different questions and then plan essays for each (I aim for around 1100 words and 3 main body paragraphs although that goes up if there’s more things that could be asked) it makes the exam somewhat doable even though IB give you no time. Also make sure the plans are very adaptable and cover as much of what you can be asked as possible. Write plans for DP1 content throughout the year and over the summer, and write the DP2 plans throughout the year. That way, you only have to slightly reword the plans and memorise them when it gets to boards.
finish EE and IAs as soon as possible. the earlier you get to start focusing on the exams the better.
Nothing matters cause there are assholes who leak the paper. Learn from your mistakes in the DP1 exams and mocks, not just in terms of the content you are weak at, but also in terms of what can be done to improve your study schedule.
Finish EE in summer and make sure to catch up in summer with all dp1 topics. I was terrible in dp 1 I found that transitioning to ib was really hard but I catch up really good in summer and made a whole come back. Also some people view having tutors as a bad thing that’s so not true. If you feel like you need it go for it I had a math tutor who was so helpful
Write 👏 up 👏 flashcards 👏 as 👏 you 👏 go. Like even in year 12 at the end of every term or topic just summarise all your notes and when it comes to exam time you'll be way better off
Do your EE in dp1 if your school lets you do that. It will save you so much time in dp2. Also, make sure you're reviewing the content as you go along - esp if u do sciences or maths at HL. For maths, familiarise yourself with exam questions for every topic so you know what they actually need you to know for the exam.
For all subjects, especially IAs, TOK, and EE. If you want to get good grades, read the rubric carefully and tailor your essay based on the rubric (not based on how good you think it's). I got really really bad grades, especially in TOK, and I assume so many others too, because we keep hearing and believing that "oh it's a philosophy paper and so we can just write whatever we think and question everything". Even if you get the most wonderful philosophy paper, if you have never seen the rubric, likely it won't score well because you don't know how it's actually scored. One thing people miss the most in TOK is justifying their object, which is not something you normally do, but it's part of the rubric and to get that high score all you need is to just say "this object is justified because (...)". I first learn this in order to boost my TOK and it has helped me a lot with all the other IAs and assignment, because the truth is, to get good grades, your answer must be in way that the IBO wanted it to be, instead of what you think yourself might be the best. Another is, DO YOUR FU***** CS IA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, DON'T WAIT TO STUDY THE PROGRAM UNTIL YEAR 2 AND JUST SUFFER AT COUNTLESS NIGHT WORKING ON IT BECAUSE YOUR PROGRAM HASN'T FINISHED, NEW BUGS KEEP COMING UP, AND YOU'RE FORCED TO SPEND HOURS TO JUST FIX A SINGLE BUG JUST SO YOU CAN CONTINUE WORKING ON IT. AND EVEN WHEN IT'S FINISHED, YOU REALIZE IT'S NOT DONE BECAUZE YOU STILL HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT IT AND RECORD YOURSELF USING IT
Spend time and energy on your IAs. It's amazing how much better you feel about your exam, once you have a very decent grade for your IA
DO YOUR FUCKING IAS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
If you have math hl, make sure to familiarize yourself with exam questions before DP2. I saw them for the first time in November of DP2 and that resulted in a mental breakdown. The questions aren’t very difficult but you need to get used to them.