Tricks and tips to get perfect 45 in IB DP

We at IB Elite Academy believe the following habits and strategies will help IB DP students to fetch a perfect 45 grade points. This is what works for many IB DP students and hopefully i might work for you too.

Follow the follow tricks and tips to get perfect 45 in IB DP.

1. Pick up the right subjects . Firstly, it’s very essential to choose subjects of your interest, which you can enjoy learning. Choose your Higher level and standard level subjects carefully and smartly. For example IB DP Chemistry and IB DP Biology compliment each other. There are many similar concepts in both subjects. When you study such topic in both subjects, it becomes easily to learn them. Similarly, there are many similar topic in IB Psychology HL and IB Biology. These two subjects also help each other.
2. Study to understand and avoid memorizing as much as possible. Out of all Tricks and tips to get perfect 45 in IB DP, this one is perhaps the most important one. If an IB DP student has score very high grades, he/she has to concentrate understanding the concepts instead of memorizing them.
3. Explained concepts to others to others to test your level of comprehension. My roommate who was weaker in math, sciences, and economics occasionally asked me for help. Spending time explaining concepts to her solidified my own understanding of the concepts especially when she asked questions I couldn’t explain easily. It forced me to study the topic again until I could explain it to her.
4. Keep learning new things everyday and test yourself on them. After a new chapter or lesson, I will sit with a blank piece of paper and map out all the topics I’ve learned from memory. I only studied what I didn’t remember after that.
5. Work hard consistently. I worked hard from the beginning of the semester to the last.
6. Work even harder on your weak subjects. My first English exam was a massive failure (back then English was actually Literature and prior to IB, I had never done Literature at all). I got 27% and it was the first time in my life I failed an exam so badly. I’m happy to say that I took the failure well and only felt the need to improve myself instead of breaking down. I approached my English teacher and asked her for help. She gave me a book on how to write critical essays in literature. I read the book with the goal of understanding the purpose of literature as a subject and in the next exam, managed a 6 points. From then on, I worked extra hard on English until I managed a 7 points in the IB exams.
7. Go beyond expectations for your Extended Essay. I didn’t realize it back then while I was doing it, but my approach for my EE proposal went beyond expectations. According to my juniors, my proposal and EE was later used by the chemistry department as an example of what a good proposal and EE looked like. Basically, all I did was to list all the possible ways my idea and experiment is wrong/flawed, looked for papers talking about the potential flaws in my experiment, and made sure my experiments were as flawless as possible (to the extent allowed by our ill-equipped high school lab). I did it naturally without my supervisor’s prompting because it just felt logical to me. I think he was pleasantly surprised when he read my proposal and congratulated me for basically writing half of my EE in just my proposal. (Actually, looking back, my research question wasn’t so great or innovative, but the way I approached it was certainly rigorous for a pre-university level.)

Anyway, now that I’m a certified working adult and the IB is just a distant memory, getting 45 points isn’t much of a big deal. People say this all the time, but it’s really true – nobody cares about your grades a few years down the road. What matters more is maintaining a spirit of learning and wanting to improve oneself.

• Remarking the EE is usually a good idea– remarking TOK works but less often. I was 5 points away from an A on my EE, my coordinator said it will be hard to get them, but I went forth anyways – and I got that A! For the record, mine was in Arabic A literature SL.
• It’s okay if remarking takes a while.I was at a 70% for Econ SL, needed a 74% to get a 7 (which I always got in high school). I remarked and the results came out after a month, and my final grade was a 77% (shocking huh). If there’s a dispute about your grades, your remarking request will go through multiple rounds of examiners and be reviewed by an examiner board, such as in my case.
• BE PROUD OF YOURSELF.You did it. You beat IB. Your life will hopefully be so much better now. Even if you didn’t make it to your predicted, it’s fine. People may pressure you (e.g parents, classmates), so surround yourself with those who love you and support you, and shut out your haters.

Tricks and tips to get perfect 45 in IB DP

• Believe that you can.That was me with Math HL. I almost failed the first two quizzes, and the second math HL exam. Everyone around me scared me about it. I needed math HL for my major, and I genuinely enjoyed it. I worked hard on it, studied a lot, and believed that I could. I had a list of my dream universities stuck on my window, and an “inspiration board” in my room, where I put my school’s IB results from previous years, and pictures of my friends who got 45s in previous years – and I was like “I will be like them”. Put pics of whatever inspires you – your dream university, career, and look at it. Believe that you can. Put in effort and trust yourself. Fear is your worst enemy. If you get scared, it will control you. I know it’s different if you have been diagnosed with anxiety or similar disorders, however – believing in yourself a little will go a LONG way. Don’t let others’ fear and worry bring you down
• I genuinely enjoyed the process.You can do well on subjects you don’t like (math HL, I’m looking at you), but if you try to enjoy them and learn as much as you can, it will make studying more enjoyable and the content easier to grasp, and you can actually get better grades and save yourself some effort (like me, I was able to skip Calc 1 and 2 at my US university because of Math HL!)
• Work hard, put in all the effort that you can. and make use of your summer before DP Y2! Personally, I tried to live a balanced life during my IB years, but also knew that I have to give it my all. So, I put in as much effort as I can. I would take breaks, yes, I would go on trips with friends and family, I would travel and such, but whenever I had time to study, I would study. I would study consistently during weekdays, then for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I would take the latter half of the day off . My longest break would be for 7-10 days at a time (Christmas Break, Easter Break, Summer was 2 weeks), then I’d get back into the kick of studying. I spent my summer between DP1 and DP2 doing my EE, my internals (finished almost all of them), studied for my SAT Subject Tests and my TOEFL, and did a research internship at a lab (I applied to research-heavy biomedical engineering programs). I approached IB with the mindset of “everything can wait”. Partying till late hours? That can wait till after I finish IB. Traveling for a month? That can wait till the end of IB. Studying consistently during mock exams? That’s precisely what I did. Every day counted. I studied every subject from scratch, solved 10 years worth of past papers for every subject, went to review sessions at my school, and just worked so hard. My mocks and study break period was 8 weeks, I studied for 7 and I took one week off because I was sick, and I also followed the (take three days as half-days and enjoy the afternoons doing nothing) approach. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself for working hard now. I know so many people who wished they studied more and worked harder. Don’t be that person. Working hard now will save you so much time and effort down the road. Plus, the summer after IB will be a summer to do anything and everything you want!
• Study smart.If you know how to do stoichiometry, why study the basics of it again if its concepts are covered in later chapters too? If you already mastered a basic concept, focus more on higher-level concepts that involve usage of basic level concepts. In my case, I did this with integration. In Math HL, we did u-substitution and trig substitution, I didn’t see the need to practice normal trig integration or differentiation for the millionth time during mocks period because I’ll use them again in higher-level concepts. That is an advantage of studying everything consistently during your years – every day if you can, review what you took in class. Do your homework on time. Do well on quizzes and exams. Solve problems from the books. Ask teachers for extra work!
• Work hard on your IAs.They seriously can save your grades. 20% of your overall grade is not little in any way. Also, you’ll learn a lot from your IAs! However, be smart about your IAs, especially in math and science: strike a balance between easy and doable and “will get me a good grade” – don’t choose something insanely hard or way too complicated because it’s too interesting or because it will show the examiner that you’re an intellectual by choosing something hard. Choose something doable, simple, and yet interesting. I wanted to do my Chem IA on the pharmacokinetics of a medication and its effects on ion depletion, but I ended up doing it on reaction yield and biodiesel, which was much easier and simpler but I was also able to get a good grade on that too.
• Ask for help when you need it – don’t be scared. I remember I annoyed my Math HL teacher by going to her office hours almost weekly to ask for help on homeworks and extra worksheets. It shows your teachers that you care, and will solidify your confidence when you know that your thinking and approach are right! Also, if you need recommendation letters, such teachers will be glad to write some for you because they know you well now!
• Know your resources well, and stick to them. I personally used the Oxford textbooks for all my classes (sans Arabic A). I didn’t use the study guides for chem or bio. Some other students did. I would suggest to listen to your teacher’s recommendations, then try resources out, and then stick to what you like early on in DP Y1. This generates consistency in your studying. You’re different – what works for others may not work for you.
• Past Papers. This will be a simulation of what you may see on the exam – expose yourself to as many different types and styles of questions as possible, you’ll really improve your thinking skills.
• Celebrate what you have done with IB. Go out with friends and family. Eat ice cream. Travel. Enjoy the summer before university. I went out with my family for ice cream on results day! (I didn’t go to school to pick up my results lest that if I were to be disappointed I’ll be disappointed at home and not in front of anyone else).
• REMARK, REMARK.Talk to your IB coordinator at school when the remarking window opens and REMARK WHATEVER YOU CAN responsibly. And, when I say responsibly, I mean remark if you’re at the upper range of your grade, so that if you remark and get lower, your overall score doesn’t change. I originally was a 43, with remarking, I got a 45. I know it doesn’t make much of a difference since I am 42+ anyways, but I personally believed that I could get a 45, worked hard for it, and so I remarked.