hello and welcome back to Ivy Lilia. If you're new, make sure to subscribe. Today
we're talking about differences and similarities of IB and AP. I took the
full IB diploma curriculum and earned the diploma, so I might be a little bit
biased towards the IB curriculum but I also took AP macroeconomics, AP chemistry,
and a few pre IB classes that were taught in the same way as AP Language
and Composition AP, Human Geography, AP World History. Here we go. So the first
thing I'd like to talk about is the format of the curriculum generally. So in AP
there's no overarching curriculum. You get to pick any classes you want and
that's really great because you pick the AP classes that play to your strong
suits. If you're bad at math, you don't pick AP math, but if you're great at
English then you take AP Lang and Comp or AP lang lit. IB on the other hand
is a comprehensive curriculum so you have to take every class in the IB even
if it's not your strongest class and you don't like the subject, but the thing
about IB is that because it's a really comprehensive curriculum everything
interweaves and builds upon each other so you have a really comprehensive
complete education once you're done. It's not like everything's segmented into
individual courses it is one overall curriculum. I really like that it was a
comprehensive curriculum, but I would have liked more to be able to pick and
choose classes that really played to my strengths. Number two is the way that the
classes are taught. Breadth versus depth so how much content is covered versus
how deeply analyzed the content is. AP goes really hard for breath,
so yes you learn a lot but you're not learning that much about any one thing.
The curriculum really stresses fact-based knowledge rather than how
things connect between and like analysis in between different facts.
IB really stresses depth. I may have only learned about World War one and
World War two for like half of my IB history career, but I feel like I could talk
about anything during those periods really in-depth and analytically. In AP, I
noticed that the teachers don't have a lot of liberty in their curriculum
because there's so much fact-based specific content that it's really textbook
based that's mandated by the College Board. There's not a lot of liberty in
terms of what the teacher thinks they're best at teaching or different formats,
it was pretty textbook based. IB definitely gives the teachers that
freedom, and because there was that element of liberty, I feel like the
teachers in IB are able to teach what they are strongest at doing so they
really give you their a-game in teaching and there's no real sense of busywork
everything in their individual curriculums teaching to the IB is really
well put together. The downside to the open-ended teaching style for IB is that
it can be a little bit more confusing because often everything isn't grounded
in a textbook and it's a little bit more laissez-faire. In terms of workload, I
would say AP and IB are pretty much the same and in terms of effort that you
need to put in to do well in those classes, but the feeling when doing that
coursework is very different. AP classes' homework feels like busywork. It doesn't
feel like it takes a lot of brainpower, but it does take a lot of effort. Even
though I was completing the assignments and doing well, I didn't feel like I was
really taking anything away from the assignments. AP is so segmented into
topic, chapter, textbook reading. It's really easy to follow.
Compared to IB where everything kind of comes together at the end,
it's very gradual and intertwining it's a lot more confusing but I think because
you have to use more brainpower to understand it it's a lot more rewarding
when you do well and when you complete assignments for those classes. So IB is
probably the same amount of time commitment but it's engaging
work and it's a bit more draining because your whole brain is really
activated to work on those assignments. In terms of testing, AP testing is very
multiple-choice based, and I'm not trying to say that in a shady way, there is
definitely skill involved in multiple choice. Multiple choice is not for me. In
the IB it's so open-ended the testing is really here's an idea how are you going
to go off of it because it's so open-ended it can be really overwhelming.
For me, I felt that that was a sense of security in that if I didn't quite know
what I was doing, I could make it so that I knew what I was doing by the end of
the essay versus a multiple-choice question you either know it or you don't.
And finally, in terms of skills and knowledge gained AP is much bigger and
much more cookie cutter .I do think that's a good thing because you go into
college with a very similar education to other people around you. In IB, every
aspect of the curriculum asks you to think critically and use analysis so you
become really good at those skills but the bad thing is I could talk to someone
that took the same class as me in IB, for instance,
HL history, and we could have studied completely different topics. We wouldn't
be able to talk about the same content at all. I feel kind of cheated because I
don't have the same education as everyone. Even if I might be stronger in
other skills, I don't have that same basis to connect with other people that
may relate to an AP student more than an IB student. In terms of college credit
the sad truth is that most AP students are heavily rewarded for their suffering
while IB students may or may not be. I'm not, most of my friends are at their
schools. It's really a shot in the dark. I can say that I do feel better prepared
by my IB classes than my AP classes for college. I'm not saying one is better
than the other, I am saying that there are certain people that flourish better
in IB or AP and you just need to figure out what's going to be the best
curriculum and education for you. If you liked this video,
then you might like some of my other ones, so go ahead and check them out. Make
sure to subscribe, and as always I'll see you later!