How do you achieve a minimum grade of 6 in each subject? If you are prepared to dedicate yourself for two years and make the most of the IB Diploma programme, getting a perfect score is a highly attainable aim.

Let me explain.

We are aware that, in addition to doing well in your actual courses, you also have to worry about your TOK and your EE. The second half of this article will cover these themes in more detail. For the time being, let’s examine some of the key actions you must accomplish in order to receive a perfect score:

1. Try to stay ahead by learning new content

You must ensure that you are not falling behind as soon as the new academic year begins. And by falling behind on your syllabus, I don’t only mean in terms of your peers or friends. Make sure you’re performing at your best.

Alternatively, if you are transitioning from DP 1 to DP 2, you should take advantage of your vacation time and other free time to review all you have learned while taking a break from your regular studies.

As a result, you can rapidly review everything you’ve learned so far and plan out the subjects you’ll be studying in the future weeks. Determine the subject you perform best in and which one you need to improve on to organise yourself.

You can correctly manage your time for each subject and concentrate more on your weaker topics if you take a strength and weakness analysis of your grades. Trust us when we advise that planning ahead will help you manage your stress levels over time and prevent a last-minute dash to improve your scores.

Keeping up with classwork and learning new material on time can be challenging, so here are some strategies you can try to incorporate into your everyday life and schedule:

• set a daily alarm for a certain time to wake up,
• set yourself reminders to begin your studies.
• Use sticky notes to make marginal notes in books and to annotate them as you read.
• a schedule to help you plan how you will cover the various topics on the curriculum,
• Lastly, when taking notes, underline important passages with pencils, markers, or both to make it easier to scan through them afterwards.
• To track your progress, try to create a table, chart, or other visual representation of how much you have learned. You can also carry out this task online, using a spreadsheet or any other technique you feel comfortable with.

2. Pay attention to the syllabus

The curriculum for each topic is available from your school at the start of the semester, and you will also have access to the necessary books (for eg. novels, or collections of artistic works).

Utilize the course syllabus to determine how much theory you need to learn as well as how your exam writing will be judged. You will have a better understanding of how to approach the tests and how to write and convey all you know after you have a grasp of the evaluation criteria that will be used to evaluate you.

Once you begin doing this, you will become aware of your unique study habits. Each of us has a different manner of processing the information we learn.

Some of us, for instance, are visual learners who do best when exposed to maps, charts, and other visually perceptive methods, whereas others are auditory learners who would find it much more valuable to listen to a speech or a podcast, which can seem more interesting or easier than reading something.

Identifying your learning preferences and adhering to the course syllabus can ensure that you are aware of the goals of the classes you are taking. You can make a schedule to stay organised throughout the year and maintain clarity.

3. Strive to be proactive

It can be difficult to aim for high marks in each topic, which calls for initiative. Why does this matter?

This implies that you should be able to take action to get ahead of the curve and that you should be able to assess your academic progress independently.

Reactive learning is what you’ll use if you wait for deadlines to motivate you or if your teachers have to push you to study or meet these deadlines. Although there is nothing wrong with reactive learning, it lacks initiative, as you are aware.

Organizing your days and weeks in advance, organising your notes before you review for examinations, or making sure you work consistently on your essays rather than delaying them are all examples of being a proactive student for the IB.

Such devotion is necessary to receive a 7 in each subject. IB requires you to consolidate all of your learning over the course of the 2 years of the Diploma Programme and to bring that knowledge and experience to your exams, unlike learning that is entirely dependent on textbooks.

As long as you achieve high enough scores in the topics you actually intend to major in for your university programme, scoring a 6 for each subject is more than sufficient for institutions to take you into consideration during the admissions process.

4. Don’t take TOK too lightly

It is normal for you to not be very knowledgeable about the TOK evaluations when you are in DP1. You might even question the significance of the material you are learning for TOK. In conclusion, they are!

Since TOK examines how knowledge is acquired as well as how it can be used, analysed, or transmitted, it can genuinely help you improve your critical thinking abilities.

It also enables you to comprehend how many of the topics you choose are closely connected to one another and how each topic is connected to TOK. Thus, even before starting your university career, you are being exposed to the interdisciplinary approach.

Even though you worked hard to earn these three points for your Extended Essay, TOK Exhibition, and TOK Essay, they are still useful since they help you develop your critical thinking abilities. Additionally, you may add the Extended Essay to your university applications and gain first-hand experience writing a comprehensive, respectable academic work with it! So be sure to finish them well.

5. Start early on the Extended Essay

Yes, the IB Extended Essay is a significant component of the Diploma that you should be using to get ready for the future. Think of it as practise for your college research projects. Now, the majority of IB students believe they must write their Extended Essay on the subject they will choose for university. I want to point out that this idea is not always true.

What you need to do is choose a topic that you are genuinely interested in, one that will enable you to write as extensively as you can, and one that will let you to showcase your writing and research abilities. Remember that you are also showing off your capacity to produce an effective paper.

You don’t need to come up with an entirely original idea, either, as each sector is now rather broad for you guys and you don’t need to be experts in the one you choose. So you might choose a subject from your schoolwork.

It is essential to conduct as much research as you can so that you can include your sources in a compelling bibliography. To build your EE before the last minute or just before each deadline with your supervisor, try to start taking brief notes on things that interest you early in your diploma programme.