How to Achieve a Perfect 45 at IB: Our Guide to Acing Your IB Exams
In this blog, Rachel, a double first-class Cambridge HSPS graduate, gives tips about how to achieve a full score in the IB. Before she attended Cambridge, Rachel took the IB and achieved a 45, a score attained by only the top 0.44% of students worldwide in her examination cohort. Her subjects were History, Philosophy, and English Literature Higher Level, and Maths, Biology and Spanish Ab Initio Standard Level.
On the Agenda:
Step One: Sort through the syllabus guides
Step Two: Tailor your preparation for each subject
Step Three: Create a schedule
Step Four: Schedule your breaks (especially during the exam period)
Step Five: Don’t neglect CAS and your Extended Essay
Step One: Sort through the syllabus guides
Before you start any revision, it’s important to go through the (long) syllabi for all of your subjects (not the subject briefs), to make sure you know what you could be asked about. After this, you should divide your notes by syllabus points. For example, the Maths SL syllabus guides says I need to know ‘vectors as displacements in the plane and in three dimensions’, so I would write my notes for that topic underneath that heading and repeat this for each heading, just to make sure I covered everything within the syllabus.
For some subjects, particularly in Group 3, you also might be asked to write essays comparing the importance of certain factors. In this case, I would advise you to write notes on each of the factors listed, and why they may or may not have been more important than others. For example, in History HL if you’re doing authoritarian states, you might be asked to compare the importance of economic factors, social division, war, and the political system in the emergence of authoritarian states, so you should write notes comparing and contrasting all of these factors, as opposed to just preparing one argument about why one of these factors was the most important.
Step Two: Tailor your preparation for each subject
Due to the breadth of subjects you cover in the IB, it’ll be impossible for study for each exam in the same way, and you shouldn’t try to. You should try and figure out what works for you for each subject and base your revision on these techniques.
In my experience (this is by no means authoritative as everyone studies in different ways), the following methods were most useful for each subject:
For English (Group 1), I memorised quotes from texts I would be asked to draw on during my exams and practised unseen papers, which I then sent to teachers and had marked.
For Spanish (Group 2), I did a few lessons on Duolingo every day, and used Quizlet to memorise words and phrases. U2 also offers private sessions with native speakers and Oxbridge languages graduates, which I’d recommend to improve your speaking skills.
For History and Philosophy (Group 3), I wrote essay plans which I memorised. I didn’t write any notes that weren’t incorporated into an essay plan, as I wanted to prevent my essays from becoming too descriptive.
For Biology (Group 4), I wrote lots of notes based on the syllabus guide and memorised them. I also practised past papers once it got close to the exams, as a lot of the time it’s about how you phrase the answers more than how much you know – look at the answer sheets after you’ve done practice papers to pick up on patterns regarding words or phrases you may be expected to use in your answers.
For Maths (Group 5), I just did lots of practice questions, as I found this much more useful than having notes.
Step Three: Create a schedule
A schedule is useful for time management no matter which exams you’re studying for, however, it’s especially necessary for the IB, where you have to divide your time between six different subjects. I used an excel spreadsheet to organise my time, making each cell an hour unit, and putting in what subject I’d be studying during each hour. I colour-coded my schedule so that it was easy to see how much time I was allocating to each subject on each day. On my spreadsheet I’d often just put down the name of a subject and a paper, and then I’d also have a weekly planner where I wrote down the specific topics I’d be studying. I also made sure that within that hour, the last 5 or 10 minutes (depending on how tired I was), would be a ‘break’, unless my next hour was a meal or a break hour.
It’s also important that you make sure your schedule is tailored to your body clock and your preferences. For example, I really enjoyed taking Maths Standard, and found it a good way to unwind in the evenings after dinner, when I didn’t feel particularly motivated to do anything else. I hated Biology with a passion, so I made sure to do that in the morning, as I’m definitely a morning person.
I also think it is useful to occasionally schedule in revision sessions where you cover all the topics you’ve looked at in the past week for content-heavy subjects such as history or biology. You can see that I’ve labelled those sessions ‘all in past week’ or ‘all until now’.
Step Four: Schedule your breaks (especially during the exam period)
I know that it can be really hard to take breaks, especially when you have quite a high offer from your firm university. However, it’s important both to stop you from going absolutely insane, but also as it’ll increase your productivity in the long run.
I made sure to put periods in my schedule when I knew I would be spending time doing things I enjoyed (i.e., seeing friends, going for walks etc.), especially during exam period after I’d just taken exams. It can be tempting to try to study immediately after exams as you’re super stressed, but I found that these were my least productive periods, and it was much more useful for me to just try and unwind and get a good night’s sleep before my next exam.
It’s also important to make sure these break periods are in your schedule, as you’ll work harder during the periods when you are supposed to be studying because you know you’ve got a break coming up.
Step Five: Don’t neglect CAS and your Extended Essay
Keep both of these ticking over and make sure you’re updating Managebac or your CAS manager as frequently as possible, as the longer you leave it the more tedious it will get. As for your Extended Essay, it depends on the deadlines you have within your school, but I think the final version you turn in should be at least your fifth or sixth draft to ensure it’s your best possible work, so make sure you’re working on that relatively frequently!
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