IB Diploma Matters – Diploma Students and Early Entry into University

Written by Stephen Walther, IB Co-ordinator

It is very pleasing to me to see that Australian universities are following the example of overseas universities and have now begun accepting early entry from IBDP candidates. The Australian National University have, this year, decided to accept early entrance students, placing less emphasis on the ATAR system for ranking students.

ANU has decided to only accept students who have at least "three points" on the new co-curricular or service schedule, which had been designed to assess "the whole person".

This policy perfectly aligns with the IB Learner Profile and the IB philosophy. In the Diploma this can be seen in the Core component that we call CAS (Creativity, Activity and Service). In this students have to be engaged in Creativity (e.g. music tuition or membership of Wordsmiths creative writing club), activity (e.g. weekend sports, cycling or even College sports training) and Service (such as the activities which our MYP students will be well familiar).

The ANU are prepared to accept students on the basis of a predicted grade that the College decides upon in September. If students’ final score is more than or less than three of their final IBDP score, their acceptance will be confirmed. For example, if a student applied for a university programme which has a published IB requirement of 31 and they were successful for the IB Early Entry Scheme, as long as their final IB score is 28 or above, their offer will be confirmed on 11 January 2019.

This development seems to be a growing trend in international and Australian universities, with Macquarie University (my alma mater) making unconditional offers to IB students on December 7 based on their predicted final results provided by schools, just weeks after their exams end on November 17 and well before IB results are released 5 January. The University of Sydney will also make conditional offers to IB students by December 1 based on their predicted grades.

If you would like to know more about the IB Diploma generally, please feel free to contact me: swalther@somerset.qld.edu.au

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