The differences between Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs are endless, but now, as course selections come to a close for the new school year, students have chosen to take either AP or IB.

“[Choosing AP or IB] depends on the student,” Advanced Academics coordinator Lindsay O’Neal said. “Both are going to involve a significant amount of reading, and both will probably involve a significant amount of writing. They’re both going to be challenging.”

In Allen, there are currently 1,476 AP students and 411 IB students, 28 of whom are full IB diploma seniors and 15 of whom are full IB diploma juniors.

“In IB you really have to know your facts,” senior Florian Melzer, a full IB diploma student also enrolled in AP calculus, said. “You have to know what happened, where it was [and] the implications and historiography, whereas in AP you read a lot, and you try to retain that information, and if you’re asked a question about it, you’re able to answer. In IB you actually have to use the information.”

Junior Isabella Vo said between her AP schedule (consisting of five AP classes) and extracurricular activities, time management is the hardest part of coursework; she said she has to plan every hour of her day in order to get everything done.

“It is so stressful,” Vo said. “I’m in Interact, Student Council, HOSA and gymnastics, which is almost every day, and I do a lot of church things, too. I try to manage my time really well.”

According to O’Neal, one program is not better than the other. She said colleges look at them similarly. The only difference is that with an IB diploma, a college knows exactly what was studied, that the student completed 150 hours of community service and activities and that a 4,000-word essay was submitted.

“[Some factors in the choice between AP and IB were that] AP is work you can make up if you fail something, but in IB you do it, and that’s your final grade, and there aren’t many grades, so you have to do really well,” Vo said. “I had heard IB is more creative based.”

To find the best fit, O’Neal will sit down with a student and create several mock-schedules to help each student make the make the right choice for them based on their academic desires.

“Most students will sit down and look at those two schedules, and one will feel right,” O’Neal said. “And that sounds kind of cheesy, but you can almost see it in their faces.”