ngbrdad:

Hi need some help.


My son didn't really study hard during year 3 or 4 so he ended up with only Lag Art with a grade 6 and Chinese grade 7 with the rest all 4s or 5s

So his options for HL subjects for the IB diploma at year 5 is limited to Lit+Lag Art, any Group 3 subjects, Computer Science.

We are thinking about Lit+lag art, Econs and Comp Science as HL with Chinese, Chem and Math as SL.

Or is it better to do lit/lag, Econs with History at HL ? My boy didn't do history for year 3 and 4 but enjoyed IS. He would prefer history at HL over Geography .

Or better to take Business Studies at HL compared to Econs ?

Hi ngbrdad! I run yeartoyear.ac which might be of help in resolving some of your doubts; there's an article on Econs vs. Business

I recently graduated from ACS and frankly, IB subject combinations aren't the end-all. CS/Econs/Lang&Lit sounds good - however History is great too. CS is a niche subject, few people take it and it may require a good bit of prior knowledge to excel in. Lots of folks in similar positions end up taking History HL and doing great in it, since we have an extremely strong humanities department. If he prefers writing essays to writing code (I personally do), History is definitely a good option.

As for SLs, I would urge your son to consider Environmental Systems and Societies if he is more inclined to the humanities. It's a blend of geography and biology but from what I've seen appears to be a pretty fun/useful subject. That said, SLs hardly matter for anything except grades so if he feels more comfortable with Chemistry then he should go ahead with that.