I was searching on the Internet for any stuff on the IB Program, and I was really surprised not to find much of anything. The IB website was not very student oriented, and didn't give much useful information. A friend of mine asked me about the IB, and they wern't sure what the heck the EE, CAS, and TOK were. This year, I should be graduating from Upper Canada College with a complete IB Diploma, complete with two bonus points and over a thousand CAS hours in total. Here's just some stuff for the average person who wants to know about what the IB really is.
[Ed: OK, I lied. I wrote this in my last year of the IB program in 1999, and I have since graduated from Upper Canada College and moved on to the Engineering Science program at the University of Toronto. By now, there's probably a heck of a lot more information out there on the IB, and they have completely revamped the IB homepage. But as far as I know, the information given here is still correct in all respects.]
All full IB candidates must complete six IB subjects, spanning two years. You must take three SL courses (Standard Level) and three HL courses (Higher Level). Not only that, but these six subjects must be drawn from the IB groups: Language A, Language B, Mathematics, Science, Humanities, and one option. I'm taking HL Math, Physical/Chemical Systems (i.e. Science), and Computers, and SL English, French, and Economics. All marks are on a scale from one to seven instead of percentages. In most school systems, the teacher gives assignments, tests, quizes and other stuff to give you a mark out of one hundred. The problem with this is that the skill levels of these tests are completely arbitrary and up to the teacher. If the teacher gives easy tests, you could end up with the entire class scoring one hundred percent.
The IB marks are (theoretically) criterion based. If you perform at a certain level, you get a five. These levels are set at their headquarters somewhere in Geneva, and the teacher is unable to give the entire class perfect if they don't deserve it. Almost every subject has "internal assessments", in which some of the stuff done by the class is sent to the IB to be "moderated". If the IB disagrees with the marking, they can haul the entire portfolio over to Geneva to be remarked. In any case, all candidates write externally set IB Exams at the end of their IB2 year, on everything they've learned in the IB.
Six IB subjects with up to seven marks each give a point total of 42. The average point total of all the IB schools is around 28, last time I checked. There are many failing conditions: if your point total is less than 24, if you get a 1 or less in any SL subject, or if you get a 2 or less in any HL subject. You can also fail if you don't do enough CAS hours, fail TOK, or flunk your Extended Essay.
CAS stands for "Creativity, Action, and Service". It's actually pretty simple; creativity means clubs and music, action means sports, and service means community service and volunteering. You must get a minimum of 50 of Service, with at least a 25-75 balance in your Creativity and Action hours, for a total of 150 CAS hours. Believe me, this is not hard. You'll get two and a half years to do these hours, since you get your Foundation Year, IB1, and about half of IB2. IB1 and IB2 stands for the two years where you do your six diploma subjects. I've got over 1300 hours of CAS at this point.
TOK.. ugh. According to the IB, this course (Theory of Knowledge) which you take in your IB1 year is supposed to link all your IB subjects together, sorta like one big tapestry or something like that. Basically, it's more of a philosophy course; you talk about different ways of thinking and looking at the world. The course itself is not marked; your entire mark out of TOK comes from two 1500 word essays you write on some IB TOK questions. I sort of liked it, since we didn't have to do anything in this course.
The Extended Essay (EE), on the other hand, isn't that bad. You write about 3500 to 4000 words on an IB subject of your choice. You can choose your own subject and your own thesis; the only limitation is the word limit and that you must keep your essay in one discipline, like Physics or History. This is important, since each discipline has a different marking scheme for the "subject-specific" criterion. I posted my essay on this homepage, so you can see what the EE is like. The subject is Gravitational Microlensing.
Your marks from your TOK essays and your EE match together on a table to determine how many bonus marks you get. Your TOK and your EE can be marked from Excellent, Good, Satisfactory, Mediocre, Poor, and Fail. I'm predicted to get Excellent on my EE, and I got Satisfactory on my TOK essays. When I look at the table, I get +2 bonus marks. [Ed: I ended up getting Good on both my EE and TOK Essays. But I still got +2.] You can get a maximum of +3 bonus marks, by getting Good and Excellent on your TOK and EE. If you don't submit a TOK essay or an EE, it's a "failing condition" and they won't give you your diploma.
Well, I hope that answered any questions on the IB that you might have had. I'm just a regular IB student, so I'm not controlled by those omnipotent people at IB Central (really I am.. really.. trust me). If you have any questions about the IB, or me, or whatever, just email me at hseeto@geocities.com.