The IB’s subject requirements
Choosing the right IB subjects is a crucial step in shaping your academic journey, especially if you’re aiming for competitive universities. To make an informed decision, it’s important to understand how the IB program is structured. Subjects are divided into Higher Level (HL) and Standard Level (SL), with students required to take three of each. HL subjects delve deeper into the material, often covering more complex concepts and requiring additional assignments or extended exam content—factors that can influence both workload and final grades. While HLs can strengthen your university application by demonstrating rigor, they also demand careful consideration of your strengths and workload balance. If you’re targeting top-tier institutions, selecting HLs in subjects aligned with your intended degree can be advantageous, but be mindful of difficulty levels to avoid unnecessary stress. Balancing ambition with practicality is key to success in the IB.
The six subjects
The IBO organizes the six subjects into various groups, which are studies in language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, sciences, and mathematics. The sixth group is arts or any choice of subjects minus mathematics and language and literature again.
Group 1: Studies in Language and Literature
This group consists of analyzing media and literature texts within the language chosen. Most schools do not allow you to choose which language to do – for example, schools with an English medium of education typically only offer Group 1 courses covering English media and literature.
Language and literature involves media text analysis with some analysis of literature, while literature focuses only on ‘literary’ texts, ranging from poetry, plays, and fiction. Students who find pure literature difficult often default to doing language and literature to avoid having to analyze too many literary texts through their syllabus.
Group 2: Language acquisition
This group is about learning a secondary language. The language offered is purely determined by the schools and which teachers they have on staff who can teach it. There are three choses: classical languages, language B, and language ab initio. Most students primarily choose language B, which is the standard language course for most. For those who have never learnt a language before, it is advised that they choose language ab initio, as it is designed specifically for students to learn a language from absolute scratch.
Group 3: Individuals and societies
This group involves the humanities, ranging from the following subjects: business management, economics, psychology, philosophy, history, global politics, and economics. This is where the first important choice occurs – many of these subjects are prerequisites for certain courses in university. The most common-sense approach is to choose subjects that align with desired future courses, like choosing economics to prepare for a finance course, or business management for any business-related course.
Group 4: Sciences
This involves the central natural sciences: chemistry, biology, and physics. Computer science and environmental systems and societies (ESS) are also choices in this group. Generally, people who are aiming for STEM fields – especially medicine – will take two HL subjects from this group. For people who are less scientifically inclined, students often choose ESS, which is less directly related to hard science and is more of a humanities subject than a science one.
Group 5: Mathematics
There are two courses in this group: applications and interpretation (AI), and analysis and approaches (AA). Generally, AA is seen as a more difficult subject as it emphasizes pure mathematics, rather than AI, which is about putting math into application. Be aware that some universities do not allow AI as a pre-requisite for their STEM subjects. For those choosing to go into STEM, AA is recommended, while AI is recommended for those that don’t have plan on pursuing math in higher education.
Focus on your future aspirations
Your central focus when choosing your subjects is what course/courses you want to be able to take in university. Certain courses in university will require students to have done certain subjects – for example, medicine in university often requires students to have done either HL Biology, HL Chemistry, or both. Engineering courses may require HL Mathematics and HL Physics. These requirements, however, are on a university-by-university basis, so if you know which universities you want to go to, you should manually check what subject requirements they have for your desired course.
Don’t choose subjects on a whim
A common mistake students make when choosing their subjects is not having any goal in mind, causing them to randomly pick whatever piques their interest. Generally, this is not advisable, as this causes people to miss out on a whole range of potential subjects in university. You need to self-reflect and think about what kind of person you are – do you enjoy critical thinking and interpretation? Or do you enjoy being detail-orientated? If you’re the former, then you should potentially focus more on the humanities, and if you’re the latter, you could consider choosing subjects that can lead to STEM related courses in the future.
Choose subjects that suit your strengths
Regardless if you’ve done the GCSE, MYP, or any other course prior to the IB, you’ve likely come across subjects that you’ve found easier than others, or better yet, subjects that you’re personally interested in! It’s these subjects that you should prioritize for two main reasons: you’ll be more motivated to learn about them in classes, and it’ll be easier to score higher in them in the long run. While the IB allows you a great deal of leeway to branch out and try new subjects, the danger is getting into too many subjects that you eventually find dull or difficult.
A common way people categorize subjects is through them being ‘essay’ and ‘non-essay’ subjects. Some people find writing long essays easy and fun, while others are more data, answer-driven. Subjects like English, Economics, and Psychology are heavily essay based, while other subjects like Mathematics and Computer Science are less so. Be tactical and play to your strengths.
Proactively look at the syllabus content
Did you know that you can find all of the syllabus’s content ahead of time? The IBO releases subject briefs and specifications for all their subjects on their website. If you’re interested in a subject but hesitating because you don’t know what it actually involves, do a bit of research ahead of time!
Learning the All Round Way:
If you’re still uncertain about your choices or want to explore how different subjects align with your future goals, consider reaching out to us at All Round Education Academy. Our team is committed to guiding students in making informed decisions. For more information, please contact us at tuition@allround-edu.com or +852 6348 8744. We’re here to assist you on your educational journey!