“Study harder”

That's the advice everyone hands you the second you start the DP - parents, teachers, the seniors who survived it. 

And in week one, it's the least useful thing anyone can tell you.

Week one isn't asking you for effort yet. It's asking you for decisions. And here's the con it pulls on you: 

It looks like nothing’s odd. 

New timetable, a few introductions, some teacher cheerfully reminding you the exams are 2 years away. 

Nothing due. Nothing to panic about. Yet.

That's exactly the problem. 

The decisions that quietly shape your final 45 all get made while you're still figuring out which building Chemistry is in, and most of them expire faster than you'd think.

Is the IB Diploma really as hard as everyone says?

Short answer: Not in the way you're expecting. The content isn't the problem, the pile-up is.

6 subjects, 3 at Higher Level, plus Theory of Knowledge(TOK), a 4,000-word Extended Essay and CAS - all running at once, all with separate deadlines that nobody coordinates for you. 

Any single piece is completely doable. 4 landing in the same week is what takes people out, and it could happen to you somewhere around November… 

So the skill the DP actually tests is not intelligence. 

It is scheduling. It's testing whether you saw it coming.

And your 1st scheduling decision is one most students do not realise is still open.

Can you change IB subjects or HL/SL levels in DP1?

Short answer: Yes, but usually only for a few weeks and the window is closing right now.

Your school controls this, not the IB. Timetable blocks decide it and they're already setting like concrete. 

So do the boring 20 minute job this week:
Check 2 or 3 courses you might apply to against your subject grid. If they want HL Chemistry and you're sitting in SL, far better to know now than in December. And if an HL already feels too heavy, dropping to SL early keeps everything you've built. While, leaving it to DP2 means restarting IA from 0 as everyone else revises. 

Waiting until you've got a bad grade to prove it is the expensive route, mostly because of what those DP1 grades turn into later.

Do DP1 grades matter if there are no exams?

Short answer: DP1 is where your predicted grades come from and predicted grades are what universities see first.

This is the trap. 

There are no external exams in DP1, so it feels like a warm-up year. 

It is not. 

Everything you cover in October is still examinable in your final papers roughly 20 months later and your teachers build your predicted grades out of this year; the coursework, the class tests, all the stuff that feels low-stakes.

Same story with the EE and your IAs. 

Students who start topic-hunting in DP1 write a decent EE. Students who start in DP2 write whatever they can finish. Those are not the same essay, and examiners can tell.

There is a free move here almost nobody makes in week one, and it costs just about an hour.

How to manage 6 IB subjects without burning out…

Short answer: Build one calendar, download every rubric, and start CAS logging from day one.

4 systems. Set up now, and they run themselves for next 2 years:

1. Download the assessment criteria for all 6 subjects this week. 

IB marks are awarded against published descriptors. Reading them in September instead of discovering them in DP2 is the single highest-return of your Diploma.

2. One master calendar. Not 5.

Every IA checkpoint, EE milestone, CAS deadline and school due dates, in the same place, so you see the pile-ups before they land on you.

3. Log CAS reflections within 10 minutes of the activity.

Otherwise you are reconstructing 18 months of half-memories in DP2, badly.

4. Two 25-minute closed-book recall sessions a week.

On last week's content. Habits take roughly 2 months to go automatic, so start now and by mock season it's just what you do.

That covers organisation. 

It does not cover the thing that actually decides your grade, whether the content is landing.

Is it worth getting an IB tutor in DP1?

Short answer: DP1 is the cheapest possible moment to fix a gap and DP2 is the most expensive.

Here is the maths nobody explains. 

A concept you only half-understood in September doesn’t stay one concept. It becomes the foundation for the next 20 months of that subject and by the time it shows up as a mark on a mock, you are not fixing one topic, you are unpicking a whole term in the year you've got least time to spare.

The Education Endowment Foundation, across 125 studies, found 1:1 tuition delivers around 5 months of additional academic progress over classroom instruction alone. 

In DP1 terms, that is the difference between arriving at DP2 ahead and arriving at it catching up.

It also covers the parts your school timetable does not stretch to: the IA, the EE, and TOK.

Now,

5 decisions. 4 of them you can make tonight, on your own, for free: the subject grid, the rubrics, the calendar, the CAS log. 

Nobody needs to help you with those.

The 5th is… getting help with the subject you already suspect will be a problem. And it is the only one that gets more expensive the longer you leave it.

Mentor Match is running flat 25% off all tutoring packages for the back-to-school intake, with tutors trained specifically on the DP - IA criteria, TOK, HL exam technique.

Book a free trial class and make the fifth one while week one is still week one.

FAQ

What should I do in the first week of IB DP? Confirm your subject and HL/SL choices against university entry requirements, download the assessment criteria for all six subjects, set up one master calendar for every deadline, and start logging CAS reflections immediately.

Can I change my IB subjects after starting DP1? Usually yes, but only for a short window controlled by your school's timetable. The earlier you ask, the better. Switching from HL to SL in DP1 preserves most of the work you have already done; changing subjects in DP2 usually means restarting an IA under time pressure.

Do DP1 grades matter if there are no exams? Yes. Predicted grades — the ones universities see first — are built largely from DP1 work, and DP1 content is fully examinable in your final papers.

When should I start my Extended Essay? Begin narrowing topics in DP1. Students who leave the EE to DP2 typically submit whatever they can complete rather than what they wanted to write.

Is DP1 too early for a tutor? It is the ideal point. Gaps found in DP1 take a handful of sessions to close; the same gaps found in DP2 cost far more time, and often a grade.