IB Diploma Study App: Revise Subjects and Practise Written Answers

What the IB Diploma involves

The IB is run by the International Baccalaureate Organization. Students take six subjects, three or four at Higher Level and the rest at Standard Level, from groups such as language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics and the arts. The core includes Theory of Knowledge, the Extended Essay and CAS. Subjects are assessed by external exams and internal assessments marked by teachers and moderated. The total is out of 45 points plus core bonus points. Subject guides are published by the IB and are the authority for what is examined.

Why it is hard and how to revise

The load is the difficulty: six subjects, plus the Extended Essay and Internal Assessments, with exams after the long course. Revision needs to be efficient. Use each subject guide as the checklist, practise past papers with markschemes, and learn the command terms the IB uses, such as "discuss", "evaluate" and "to what extent", since they decide what a good answer looks like.

Retrieval and spacing help in every subject. Recall without notes, check, then repeat after a gap. Leave several weeks for timed past papers.

A plan using Type to Study

Upload class notes or textbook chapters for one subject at a time. Typed recall works well for content-heavy subjects such as Biology, History, Economics and Psychology. For each unit, read the lesson, retype key models and definitions, and use Q&A to type model answers for paper-style questions.

Keep your Theory of Knowledge ideas and example bank in a short course too, so you can recall examples quickly. Type to Study will not write your Extended Essay or Internal Assessments, and the IB expects those to be your own work. Use it to learn and revise, not to produce submitted work.