Hey guys! I'm the guy from Get an A in TOK - I'm working on my script for the breakdown video, but I figured I'd share my stream of consciousness thoughts on the titles before you get super stressed!

The Tldr is that these may be collectively the easiest TOK Essay titles ever.

Title 1: Do we gain a better appreciation of the human experience from the artist or the historian? Discuss with reference to the arts and history.

This is one of the most subjective TOK essay title’s I’ve ever seen. The most essential thing to do in this title is to be hyper-specific on what “better appreciation” actually means. A lot of students are going to write really general, personal, and subjective essays because they write about their own appreciation and assume that everyone else will agree with them.
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Title #2: If values change over time, how can they, nevertheless, continue to guide the pursuit of knowledge? Discuss with reference to two areas of knowledge.

This one really surprised me because, while values are a standard TOK term and concept, they’re not often focused on. Usually we write about ethics and morals, not values. Because of that, you’ll want to differentiate between these three briefly, and then also approach it in a way that you couldn’t if you were focused on ethics and morals.
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Title #3: In the production of knowledge, how can knowledge be reliable if it is built on assumptions? Discuss with reference to the human sciences and one other area of knowledge.

I absolutely love this title, and it’s one of the things that I bring up (in reference to maths) when I’m trying to confuse people about what TOK is. The natural direction here, and the one that examiners will tacitly expect, is to talk about the mathematical axioms. Those are the real things that inspire a title like this – so absolutely write about those, but also remember that just mentioning and identifying them does not make you unique. It makes you ready and prepared to write something unique.
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Title #4: To what extent do you agree with the claim that "any coincidence is worth noticing; you can throw it away later if it is only a coincidence" (Agatha Christie). Answer with reference to mathematics and one other area of knowledge.

I love titles that use a quote from one AOK and then use it in another. Christie’s quote is talking about art, but you’re asked to write about maths and one other AOK. The main approach here is to figure out what makes something worth noticing, and then contrasting that with what makes something worth keeping (I’m assuming that would be what makes something knowledge, right?!). Thinking about AOK experts agreeing on something and that making it knowledge is what I’m feeling (right now) may be the best approach. What makes something considered knowledge?
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Title #5: In the production of knowledge, when choosing one explanation over another, to what extent should simplicity be prioritized? Discuss with reference to two areas of knowledge.

I’m not sure how popular this one will be, because some of the others…cough…TITLE #1…are so easy, but this one is going to have so many potential examples that I could see many students choosing this one. This title is asking you to make a values-based judgement, the extent to which simplicity should be prioritized, but it’s important to make this judgement at the end, after looking at many times in which experts did so. This title gives a great opportunity to make a clear decision – avoid middle-of-the-road answers here, especially in the conclusion!
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Title #6: In the pursuit of knowledge, what value is there in exploring the paradoxical or the counterintuitive? Discuss with reference to the natural sciences and one other area of knowledge.
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This is such a strange title because it’s so vague and open ended. There are also so many potential topics, ideas, and examples that can be used for this. That also makes it hard: when something is so broad, we can spend more time researching than we really need to. It’s nice to be given the natural sciences, which helps us to narrow it down a bit, but other than that, every AOK works, and virtually anything in the Arts (which is always the most used AOK) can work. Don’t fall into analysis paralysis here when figuring out your approach. 

so, I wouldnt consider myself an honor Student, I am good at some things and worse at others and except for being pretty good at english, biology, German, history and maybe politics im rather average. Now, my father really wants me to take the IB instead of picking regular courses because he says I can study wherever I want, but I don’t really want to Risk failing to get certified for something Im not sure I really need, and I’m kinda worried because I don’t want to take Double the exams when I’m Not even insanely good at school or anything.

I go to a reasonably competitive school.
3/50 people got 45/45, and 36% of people got above 40

I just want to know how other schools around the world compare

To my fellow m27 people,

We got our essay titles!

1. Do we gain a better appreciation of the human experience from the artist or the historian? Discuss with reference to the arts and history.

2. If values change over time, how can they, nevertheless, continue to guide the pursuit of knowledge? Discuss with reference to two areas of knowledge.

3. In the production of knowledge, how can knowledge be reliable if it is built on assumptions? Discuss with reference to the human sciences and one other area of knowledge.

4. To what extent do you agree with the claim that “any coincidence is worth noticing; you can throw it away later if it is only a coincidence” (Agatha Christie). Answer with reference to mathematics and one other area of knowledge.

5. In the production of knowledge, when choosing one explanation over another, to what extent should simplicity be prioritized? Discuss with reference to two areas of knowledge.

6. In the pursuit of knowledge, what value is there in exploring the paradoxical or the counterintuitive? Discuss with reference to the natural sciences and one other area of knowledge.

Goodluck!!

I don’t know how to ask this, but let’s say that I die before the final exams, will my parents get back the money they paid? Will they get a refund for the 2 years perhaps?

wsg yall i live in india and i am in 8th grade in the icse board want to switch boards mainly cuz of the vast icse syllabus that makes it near impossible to cram wanted to ask y'all if ib is worth it my school asks a lot of concept based, wanted to know the opinions of the students.

i’m in dp2 now and i want to do smth biology focused in the future like immunology or microbiology and i’ve been taking chem hl(forcefully bcs i was the only one in the class who chose sl so they just made me do hl too)

i do get good grades but thats because the teacher gives us pretty easy tests
n i dont know a lot of questions even from textbooks honestly and the teacher wouldn’t give us enough explanations and i can’t afford to get private tutoring either (ai or videos didn’t help me at all too)

plus i don’t think i’m good at chem though i pretty enjoy learning it and im scared im going to flop a lot at final

so i don’t know if its worth it esp if i want to do biology focused majors

will choosing chem sl give me a huge disadvantage for applying to uni?

I've started my IB journey not in the best way, earning 3 on my first mock exams for Math which of course was an underperformed but still. I've started studying harder and optimizing my exam techniques and I've achieved 6 on my end of the year mocks, still making some stupid mistakes. Over the course of last year I realized that I really like maths and I want to pursue a degree in it or something related.
Now looking at my dream places in UK and France I realize that I need 7 predicted in Maths which is of course the most important subject they are looking at. I'm asking for ways to maximize my predicted grade(if possible) so I can achieve my dream places. Unfortunately our mocks take place in February which is past the application deadlines so I would have to prove it in regular exams or in other way(?). For context on those end of the year mocks I ended up getting 37/42(pretty close to 39 if not the margins on languages) and I'm aiming to get 39/42 predicted(the way my school gives them is out of 42).
If you have any tips/personal experience in how is it possible to increase the predicted grades than please share

I am currently in DP2 right now, and based on my DP1 report card, I think my predicted is approximately 30-33. I need to bump it up, and I need advice.
Econ HL: 7 most likely
Math AI HL: 6 most likely
Eng LL HL: 5 most likely
French B SL: 5 most likely
Physics SL: 6 (according to my report card)
Visual Arts SL: 3 (according to my report card)

I need advice on how to improve physics, french b, and visual arts.

hii i wanna take AAHL math HL langlit HL econ SL physics SL Chinese B but which SL should i choose out of comp sci and business mg bc i wanna double major later in astrophysics while doing econnnn i heard comp sci is quite heavy and business is easy what are your experiences? share plss!!

I heard they changed a lot of stuff so I wanted to know if it's somewhat usable now

hi !! im starting my first ever year in an ib school as a dp1 student soon (about 2 weeks from now) and im wondering what i could do to prepare myself and help me get a small boost to (hopefully) good grades. like i said im new to the ib program in general so i dont know what the environment is like / how heavy the workload is.

my list of subjects are:

eng lit HL
physics HL
either math ai HL or history HL ( i still havent decided)
german b SL
va SL
math ai SL / history SL

i cant decide whether i should put math ai or history as hl 😭 im very indecisive 🥲 anyways, tips and advice are always welcome !!! thank you so mych in advance!

Hi

I’m having a mental breakdown rn, it’s the start of dp1 and I heard that this years’ predicted grades matter more than dp2’s

To get to the uni (UK) I want I need 7s and 6s with 39/45

im a currently taking AA HL, Econ HL, French HL and business HL that I’m gonna drop to sl , in SL I’ve got English lang lit and design

I’ve started studying this summer for aa hl with a tutor (around 25 hours) but I feel like Im gonna fail everything

Im really motivated in achieving high grades and I’m willing to put the amount of work, but somehow I feel like 7/6s are unacheivable from what they tell us

the EE and IA criterion’s have moved more towards evaluation rn which im shit at

I was getting good grades in MYP4/5 in maths and apart from that (French) I was kinda average, with a miracle I started with 2s in English and I ended with a 7 on the myp5 mock exam, my french teacher really likes me but I don’t have such a good relationship with my econ teacher

thank you for reading and advice

How do you guys study daily , like what do you even study and where ? I’m taking math aa hl and physics hl . And what should be a study routine I should do everyday . Even long before exams .

Hi guys! Is there anyone offering free chem hl tutoring? thank you so much!
ps. any tutoring in bio, econ and german b would be really helpful too!!!
thank you guys 💗

My teacher said nothing about this, and the final version is behind the corner. I’m doing poetry, and there are many different interpretations of it, so I looked for some external resources to support my claims so I don’t get accused of plagiorism. Is that alright or am I in trouble? :,)

HII!! I'm a 10th grader currently in ICSE in the middle of my midterms (kolkata) and was interested in shifting to ibdp next year, so I just had a few questions!

1. is IB in india worth it? — I saw some posts where some schools had under qualified teachers, really shitty systems and was hoping it's a little better than how they described it

2. how different is it from the general indian boards like icse, cbse, all that? — i know its different and some people say it's "much harder" but idk!

3. when do school years start? — for usual schools in other boards it starts in April, is it the same?

4. what do you tell people when someone asks you "what's your stream?" because you just choose a combo of subjects right so how do you even explain it to someone 😭

5. my parents were fully ready for the change but they were just worried that "what if you don't get any chance abroad" and although I think the chance for that is pretty low, what do you do in that case? do Indian universities accept ib like that? wouldn't you have to take a gap year and study for JEE and all that if you really couldn't go abroad after IB?

any other general advice is appreciated :D

Hello,

I just started IBDP and wish to apply at a very competitive course that requires TMUA.

I am right now very concerned that having Maths AI HL background will not be enough for the TMUA, and I really want to ace this test.

I would appreciate any help, information, and guidance 🙏 😊.

i feel like most of the times im writing what i will do and then finding citations that fill that criteria instead of actually researching, but this is because i dont even know what to research for most of my project, any tips?

I go into 10th grade this September, I know that start IB starts at 11th grade but I still want to get ahead. My teachers have told me to do a general preparation but nothing much and I’m a bit worried that it won’t be enough

I can help with English HL Essay, EE, and all 3 Econ IAs
DM me if you're interested or have any questions!

SAME AS TITLE, ARE THEY OUT?

It's so over. My CMM is due next week and I haven't even put together my project yet. To make matters worse, I really do care about doing well in music. Time to pull several all nighters. Time to create something that's probably just going to get a 5 or 6 anyways.

guys I was busy throughout the summer break. Do you guys think I’m able to finish my IAs in Dp2??

These are my subjects; math aa SL, chem HL, business HL and for bio we did not start data collecting