 Getting admitted to a university is a complex equation that involves a number of variables. But what if I told you that one of those variables could raise your chances to get into some universities by as much as 52%? Hello my people, my name is Meacham, and today I'm here to tell you why you should do the IB. Now if your school doesn't have IB and you're already thinking that you're gonna leave this video, I mean you could, but also you could just skip to the chapter at the end where I explain how you could encourage your school to adopt the IB. We do chapters now, doesn't that mean? So let's first clarify what I'm talking about. When I say the IB, I'm referring to the International Baccalaureate and specifically the Diploma Program. The International Baccalaureate Organization now has four different programs that it offers to schools. There are three that I'm primarily concerned with, those being the PYP or Primary Years Program, the MYP, the Middle Years Program, and of course the DP, the Diploma Program. The IB has blown up huge in the last few years. They've actually more than doubled their enrollment. There are now over 2 million IB students worldwide, but curiously, most of that growth is happening in developing countries. Why is that? Because it's better. In my experience as a teacher, I have worked in a variety of different systems. I've worked for schools that operated completely according to the Peruvian curriculum. Those experiences haven't been the best. I got a lot to say about it. I'm gonna be doing a live stream soon where I rank all the jobs I've had and give my opinions on each one and what I think is good and bad. So if you wanna subscribe to the channel so you see that, that would be cool. But I've also taught in international environments like in the Italian curriculum and also in a school where every single program of the IB was available. By far the best experience I had was at the school which had all three IB programs in place. There are certain things that the IB does that other school curriculums just don't. For example, the IB places a huge emphasis on student autonomy and the freedom to figure out the best way to do things. It's very much an inquiry-based, problem-based learning approach. So what that means is there's no specific list of contents that you must learn by the end of the year. Instead, there are just skills that you are developing by exploring different material. They even have a whole grade in their system dedicated to how you approach learning. It's not like the behavior grades you get at a lot of schools that are just kind of arbitrary impressions of what your teachers think of you. The IB really was designed as a way to solve some of the problems with traditional educational system. I can say from experience that it does that well. The diploma program in particular has a few characteristics that make it stand out. For one, you have to do an extended essay which honestly will be harder than almost any assignment you get in your first year of university. It's tough, but it makes you stronger and it gets you ready for college. One study showed that 97% of IB students felt well-prepared for higher education after their graduation. Another study showed that IB students that had gone into the University of California system had a higher GPA on average than all of their peers. However, in my opinion, the most important thing about the IB is that it's evaluated by outsiders. Your final grades in the diploma program are not just what your teachers say. You take exams that are sent back to the IB for review and that means that ultimately it's your abilities that get graded, not your teacher's subjective impression. This is a big deal to international universities because they don't really know how to measure your school. What if your school just gives good grades to everyone? Those schools are gonna have a bunch of students with high grades and universities won't know what to make of it. When they see a grade from the IB, they're more likely to trust it and that trust has some real benefits for you. To start with, if you do the diploma program, you are literally 22% more likely on average to get into universities in the United States. Some universities value it a lot. Harvard's general acceptance rate is about 5%, but IB students get in around 12% of the time. Normal people who go to normal schools have about an 8% chance of getting into university Chicago, but IB students have a 60% acceptance rate. Even outside the United States, the IB opens up a lot of doors. If you're in Peru, you only have 11 years of education, so doing the IB gives you an extra 12th year and it gives you a credential that is valid and recognized by European countries. That means you don't have to do foundation year or do a local year of university. You can go straight to studying abroad. Now, of course, just doing the IB doesn't automatically guarantee you a life of easy access. You do have to get a good score. The IB grades each of the six courses that you have to take out of seven points and they also add three points for your extended essay and community action service grades. That brings us to a total of 45 points. If you get 24, you get a diploma, but generally you're gonna wanna get at least 35 if you're gonna try to apply to high-end universities. 38 to 40 is really a must if you even wanna be considered for IB League applications. Anything over 40, you're pretty much given a golden ticket to go do whatever you want. If you do well on your IB exams, you can even get college credits so that you don't have to take as many courses in your first year. Which courses you take matter a lot. IB courses come in two styles. There's high level and then there's standard level. It's the same course, same material. The only difference is the number of hours. Generally colleges prefer to see you take high level courses wherever possible. You should definitely shoot for high level math or physics if you're trying to apply to any sort of science or engineering degree. If you're coming from a country that doesn't speak English natively, you really should take English A high level. Many universities abroad will let you use your English A high level exams in lieu of an IELTS or a TOEFL. So to review, not only are you gonna have an easier time getting into universities, you're gonna maybe get credit for some of the courses you take and you might be able to get out of certain exams. So should you do the IB? The answer is yes. I know that telling you to spend another year in school is hard to hear. School sucks, I know. Most people don't wanna spend any more time there than they have to and I get that. Having said that, if your school offers the IB and you don't take it, it's a really bad look to universities. It kinda makes you look lazy and when you look at the benefits that you could get from taking that extra year, why wouldn't you? It's not even an extra year. It's really only like a year and a half of real content followed by a couple of months of exam prep and then you do the exams and you're done. So what if your school doesn't have the IB? What if it doesn't have any of the IB programs? Or what if it just has the diploma program? Students that have gone through all three programs typically have better results in the diploma program and they typically have higher scores in reading, math, and science. So if your school doesn't have all these programs, what should you do? It's time to put on the pressure. If you have a student council, petition them to present a proposal to the school authority. Tell your teachers that you're interested in the IB and let them know that they would probably like working in it too. Tell your parents that you'd like to see the IB stuff in the school. One of the reasons a lot of schools don't switch is just because switching is a little bit hard. It's not an instant process. It takes time. You have to pay a fee to the IB to have them send somebody over to help council and guide your school through the transition. It's not a process that'll happen overnight. So if you're a junior or a senior and you're looking at this thinking, man, there's no way I'm gonna get IB in my school by the time I graduate. That's probably true. But just because you had it rough doesn't mean the next generation has to suffer too. If you're a senior, you're someone graduating, you should also lobby for this too because it benefits everyone else around you. As I was going through the comments not long ago, viewer Muhammad said something that struck with me and I've been thinking about ever since. He said that he wants to study abroad to get out of the cesspool of a country that he lives in. And I know a lot of people here in Peru feel the same way. But I really do believe that the IB can not only make our countries less of a cesspool by educating people well, but they can also give us the tools to lead that cesspool. So everybody wins. Let's make it happen. And I will see you next week.