The concept of "international" education was born with the founding of the League of Nations in the 1920s. As the League itself and the organisations attached to it began to take shape, attracting many expatriates to the headquarters in Geneva, it became apparent that a holistic approach to education was necessary to satisfy these expatriates' diverse educational needs and the requirements of the universities in their home countries. The IB Diploma, launched in 1968, was thus the result of half a century's experience with educating children of expatriates, and it still very much lives up to this tradition today.

The raison-d'être of the IB has, of course, broadened over the years. It now caters for expatriate students as well as nationals on all inhabited continents, in private and public schools as well as international schools, and is taught in English, French and Spanish. It is the only truly "international" diploma.

IB in America, and how it's done elsewhere

It is important that you remember why the IB was created and the IB's international character if you intend to become an IB student yourself. Although the IB is becoming increasingly popular in North America, Americans are particular about the way they treat the IB and this has important implications.

The IB Diploma was in fact not made for the American system. In the USA, high school curricula and university admissions are not tied by national standards, and the goal of any programme such as AP and IB will be more to provide college-level course credits than to enable study at these universities in the first place. For this reason, a number of public schools choose to follow the IB in America and do so alongside other curricula, such as Advanced Placement. IB is often not the dedicated high school programme.

In contrast, most European countries will have a national diploma programme that will be a prerequisite to university admissions: the UK has the A-Levels, France has the Baccalauréat, Germany has the Abitur, Switzerland the Maturité, and so on. European colonisation has extended this tradition to many other countries around the world. In these countries, IB serves as an alternative to these national systems, for example for foreign students who intend to return home for university studies, private boarding schools that want to attract international students, or nationals who feel they would benefit from an education in English. Most non-American IB schools are private, partly because public schools are committed to the national curriculum.

This matters to you because these are the people against whom you, as an IB student, will be compared to. They depend on their IB results in a way you, as an American, do not. As a result, you may find it more challenging to achieve high marks on the IB than on, say, AP. If you want to study in the US, this is not too much of a problem - but if you wish to go to, say, the UK, you may wish to reconsider how serious of an IB student you want to be.