I rec­om­mend that, before you start writ­ing your essay, you pre­pare an out­line. This will help you to clar­ify your ideas and keep you on track as you write.

You can pre­pare your out­line by answer­ing the fol­low­ing questions:

My KI is…
My short answer to the KI is…
My first per­spec­tive on the KI is…
My sup­port and exam­ple are…
A counter claim to this per­spec­tive could be…
An exam­ple (or other evi­dence) for the counter claim could be…
My mini con­clu­sion and link to the KI are…

My sec­ond per­spec­tive on the KI is…
My sup­port and exam­ple are…
A counter claim to this per­spec­tive could be…
An exam­ple (or other evi­dence) for the counter claim could be…
My mini con­clu­sion and link to the KI are…

My third per­spec­tive on the KI is…
My sup­port and exam­ple are…
A counter claim to this per­spec­tive could be…
An exam­ple (or other evi­dence) for the counter claim could be…
My mini con­clu­sion and link to the KI are…

My forth per­spec­tive on the KI is…
My sup­port and exam­ple are…
A counter claim to this per­spec­tive could be…
An exam­ple (or other evi­dence) for the counter claim could be…
My mini con­clu­sion and link to the KI are…

My over­all con­clu­sion is…

After you have com­pleted your out­line, you should keep refer­ring back to it (and the mark­ing cri­te­ria) as you write.

This kind of out­line is more suf­fi­cient. It will help you orga­nize your thoughts, even if you don’t have to stick to it reli­giously when you’re writ­ing your real essay. (Here is some advice on struc­tur­ing your real essay). How­ever, if you’d like another, more in depth expla­na­tion of ToK Essay Out­lin­ing you can fol­low the one from ToK­Talk, here: Start­ing and Plan­ning the ToK Essay.

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Here are my top tips for get­ting to top marks on your The­ory of Knowl­edge essay.

1  All ToK essays are cross-disciplinary; they are never just about one way of know­ing (per­cep­tion, lan­guage, rea­son, emo­tion) or one areas of knowl­edge (math­e­mat­ics, nat­ural sci­ences, human sci­ences, his­tory, ethics, the arts). In gen­eral you’ll want to include at least 3. But be care­ful about which ways of know­ing and/or you’re going to include. Review all of your notes to refresh your under­stand­ing and make sure you’re see­ing the rel­e­vant con­nec­tions and make sure (after you’ve done your research) that you have inter­est­ing points to make (claims and counter claims).

2  Make an out­line first. The out­line is your road map and it’s where you make a lot of your major deci­sions. It will also help you to develop an argu­ment, with each para­graph build­ing on the one before.

3  Research in a lot of dif­fer­ent ways: web­sites, your class notes, talk­ing with peo­ple (par­ents, class­mates, your teach­ers). Find argu­ments which sup­port both sides of (for and against) your the­sis and exam­ples that sup­port your claims and coun­ter­claims. As you develop insights you can use, make sure to record them.

4  Make sure you have clar­i­fied the scope of your essay. Make it clear, in your intro­duc­tion, which AOI’s and/or AoK’s you’re using. And define your key terms care­fully, in ways that are use­ful to your argu­ment. Dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tions rarely do this.

5  It’s easy to for­get that ToK is about devel­op­ing your abil­ity to think for your­self. Give your­self some time away from your out­line, to reflect before you begin your real essay. And then try to give your­self a few breaks from your essay as well, so you can come back to it with fresh eyes. It’s hard to see the weak­nesses of your think­ing while you’re busy try­ing to get it done (i.e. in a hurry). Come up with your own ideas.

6  Read at least 3 exam­ples of excel­lent ToK Essays writ­ten by other peo­ple. Here is one.

7  Keep edit­ing. Each of your para­graphs should show oppos­ing view­points con­cisely. Com­pare two oppos­ing ideas about how nat­ural sci­ence might relate to your knowl­edge issue.

8  Use spe­cific and qual­i­fied lan­guage. Rather than writ­ing that “all sci­ence always pro­vides use­ful insights,” instead say that, “chem­istry often pro­vides use­ful insights.” Words like often or some­times (instead of always), might or could (instead of should) help to keep from over­gen­er­al­iz­ing or say­ing more than you can actu­ally sup­port in your essay.

9  To prove your essay’s the­sis you’ll need to rely on evi­dence. Var­i­ous types of facts are fine (quo­ta­tions, sta­tis­tics, … In all things, avoid using clichés and com­mon exam­ples. If you can use exam­ples that the marker hasn’t heard before this will show that you are think­ing for yourself.

10  Read it out loud, after you have fin­ished it. This will help you to find mis­takes and areas that don’t flow as well as you thought.

Other Use­ful ToK Essay Articles

Six steps to writ­ing a good TOK essay: A stu­dent guide by Colleen H. Parker at SPHS

Writ­ing a TOK essay, by Richard van de Lagemaat

How to Write a Good TOK Essay, By Peg Robinson

This in link TheoryofKnowledgeStudent.com goes through a vari­ety of exam­ples of how to answer some of the ques­tions from pre­vi­ous years.

Mr Hoyes’ Notes on The ToK Essay

How to Write a Good ToK Paper, from Col­lec­tive Thinking

Writ­ing a TOK Essay, from ‘Find­ings’ Part One, Two, Three, Four, and Five.

10 Tips on Writ­ing a Good The­ory of Knowl­edge Essay, from the Amer­i­can Inter­na­tional School of Lusaka

Guide to writ­ing the TOK Essay, from IBCram

Tips for writ­ing a good ToK Essay by Ric Sims @ Noth­ing Nerdy

And con­sider some com­mon prob­lems, from ToK Talk

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As you write (before and dur­ing your writ­ing, and then again when you edit) touch base with the grad­ing cri­te­ria. You can find that doc­u­ment here, a. Make sure you under­stand them and then make an effort to adjust your essay so they match the criteria.

ToK expert Richard van de Lage­maat  has done a really great job of sum­ma­riz­ing the cri­te­ria with this table:
and to remem­ber these, he has also cre­ated a mnemonic, “the 4 C’s”: A, B, C, and D roughly stand for Con­tent, Cre­ativ­ity, Crit­i­cal think­ing and Clar­ity. Let me expand on these:

CONTENT (A): Show think­ing about the knowl­edge issues

CREATIVITY (B): Show individual/personal insights, that you can think for yourself

CRITICAL THINKING ©: Show think­ing about argu­ments and counter-arguments, that you not only under­stand the the­ory involved, but also the weak­nesses of these theories.

CLARITY (D): Show that you have done a great job edit­ing your essay; you have struc­tured it so well that it’s easy to under­stand and accurate

Keep these in your mind as you write.

You might also enjoy read­ing this “Tok Essay Mark­ing Cri­te­ria Intro­duc­tion” from ToK Talk

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Essen­tials

You can down­load the new eco­nom­ics course guide here: 2013 Guide. And for those still on the old guide that one is here 2003 Guide.

The IB Course Com­pan­ion is writ­ten specif­i­cally for this course. It is very read­able and easy to under­stand.
The Eco­nom­ics for the IB Diploma book is also very good. It’s per­haps a lit­tle more comprehensive.

IB Eco­nom­ics Websites

Welker’s Wiki­nomics — A web­site cre­ated by an IB eco­nom­ics teacher con­tain­ing use­ful IB lec­ture notes as well as a blog
Tutor2U — A resource for AS, A2 and IB eco­nom­ics revi­sion
Biz/ed — A gen­eral resource for learn­ing eco­nom­ics, listed by topic.
Essen­tials of Eco­nom­ics — Sum­maries, online quizes and case stud­ies relat­ing to the text­book “Essen­tials of Eco­nom­ics”
Eco­nomic Pol­icy Debate — Is a place for online debates regard­ing cur­rent con­tro­ver­sial ideas in eco­nom­ics. For IB Econ stu­dents, it’s a good place to review key con­cepts and evaluate.

Videos

Some really good video lessons from EconClassroom.com
Paj Holden’s YouTube page is also full of great IB Econ-specific videos
Econ Sto­ries — A funny rap video show­ing the dif­fer­ent eco­nomic philoso­phies of Keynes and Hayek

Pod­casts

Planet Money. One of my favourite pod­casts. They do a great job of mak­ing sense of com­pli­cated con­cepts. Very enter­tain­ing. (Just add it to your pod­casts in iTunes). Highly rec­om­mended
The Econ­o­mist Mag­a­zine — Editor’s High­lights. Use­ful if you don’t have time to read the Econ­o­mist. Key sec­tions of the weekly audio edi­tion are read to you. (Just add it to your pod­casts in iTunes).

Arti­cles, Blogs and Blog Posts

Some stu­dent notes on the IB Eco­nom­ics course, by sec­tion. Not the best notes in the world, but use­ful for a quick review.
Paul Krugman’s Blog “The Con­science of a Lib­eral” — A blog writ­ten by the Nobel Lau­re­ate, from a Keyn­sian per­spec­tive. Def­i­nitely worth a read a read a few times a year.

Inter­nal Assess­ment (IA)

A quick primer on the IB Eco­nom­ics IA. The basics. Worth read­ing to make sure you’re clear on the require­ments. Highly rec­om­mended

Extended Essay (EE)

The 4 Ques­tions You Need to Answer at the Start of Your Extended Essay process. Avoid com­mon mis­takes and set your­self up for a suc­cess­ful Extended Essay.
Extended Essays in Economics. Andrew McCarthy’s post on EE’s in Eco­nom­ics
An excel­lent exam­ple of an Eco­nom­ics Extended Essay, from a stu­dent in Hong Kong.

IB Eco­nom­ics Research Resources

Gap­min­der is a great source for sta­tis­tics and videos explain­ing the state of the world. Highly rec­om­mended
The Econ­o­mist — Arguably the most influ­en­tial and impor­tant pub­li­ca­tion in the world
Asian Devel­op­ment Bank — Eco­nom­ics and sta­tis­tics resources of the mul­ti­lat­eral, Asian-oriented devel­op­ment finance insti­tu­tion that pro­motes eco­nomic and social progress
Bank of Eng­land — The web­site of the Bank of Eng­land, the UK’s Cen­tral Bank
CIA World Fact­book — An online resource on the his­tory, peo­ple, gov­ern­ment, and economies of every coun­try in the world.
Eco­nomic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean — The UN’s Eco­nomic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean. Some very inter­est­ing real life exam­ples.
Fed­eral Reserve — The web­site of the US Fed­eral Reserve, the cen­tral bank of the United States
Gold­man Sachs’ Global Eco­nomic Out­look — Global eco­nomic research put out by one of the lead­ing invest­ment banks, Gold­man Sachs
Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund — The web­site of the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund — the “cen­tral banker’s cen­tral bank”
UN human Devel­op­ment Reports — The web­site of the UN’s Devel­op­ment Pro­gram
World Bank — The web­site of the world bank, the world’s pre-eminent (and often con­tro­ver­sial) devel­op­ment bank
World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion — The World Trade Organization’s web­site, con­tain­ing a wealth of eco­nom­ics research and information

Use­ful Links and Videos by Topic

Unit 1

Video — An intro­duc­tion to oppor­tu­nity cost. (From Paj Holden)
Video — An expla­na­tion of the Pro­duc­tion Pos­si­b­lity Curve (aka the Pro­duc­tion Pos­si­bil­ity Fron­tier). From (Bryn Jones)
Video — Watch a quick clip on oil scarcity
Flash — An inter­ac­tive les­son on types of economies. (Watch out though, they’ve done the spec­trum dia­gram back­wards to the way we do it). (From www.cba.edu.kw)
Video — A doc­u­men­tary on the finan­cial cri­sis (From PBS). This isn’t some­thing we have time to really go into dur­ing class. But if you’re inter­ested in it, it’s a good case study.

Unit 2

2.1 Mar­kets (Sup­ply, Demand and Price Con­trols)
A video on Sup­ply and Demand, here.
A sup­ply and demand review les­son, here.
Flash — An inter­ac­tive exten­sion activ­ity on demand. (From www.cba.edu.kw)
Flash — An inter­ac­tive exten­sion activ­ity on sup­ply. (From www.cba.edu.kw)
Video — Case study of the demand for oil increas­ing in China. Fairly in depth, but good if you have a few min­utes. (From CBC News)
2.2 Elas­tic­i­ties
Video — Watch these two videos on PED this one and this one.
Video — Here’s another video on PES.
Flash — A self-directed les­son on Elas­tic­ity.
Video - Elas­tic­ity and total rev­enue. (From Bryn Jones)
Video — An expla­na­tion of cross price elas­tic­ity of demand (aka cross elas­tic­ity of demand, or XED). (From Phil Holden)
Text — Some good exam­ples of elas­tic­i­ties (scroll down a bit) and an overview of elas­tic­ity in gen­eral.
2.3 The­ory of the Firm
Video — An expla­na­tion of cost curves. (Phil Holden)
Flash — a quick overview of mar­ket types. (Turn down your speak­ers. This is loud for some rea­son).
Video — An expla­na­tion of monop­o­lis­tic com­pe­ti­tion.
Video - Con­sumer and pro­ducer sur­plus. (from Bryn Jones)
Video - Eco­nom­ics and Dis­ec­o­nom­ics of Scale. A video that is a bit on the dull and slow­side, but it’s a good review (or pre­view of the LRAC curve).
2.4 Mar­ket Failure
Video - A short clip on exter­nal­i­ties, from the doc­u­men­tary, “The Cor­po­ra­tion”.
Video - Pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive exer­nal­i­ties. (from Bryn Jones)
Video — Another take on dia­gram­ing neg­a­tive exter­nal­i­ties.

Unit 3

Intro­duc­tion to Unit 3
Test — A very quick overview of the macro­eco­nomic objec­tives and (some of) the major inter­ven­tions avail­able to gov­ern­ments. (From Eco­nom­ics Help).
Blog — A quick intro­duc­tion into the dif­fer­ences between Macro and Micro. (From Jason Welker)
An hour long doc­u­men­tary about the Crash of 1929 and the sim­i­lar­i­ties to the reces­sion of 2008(From PBS).
3.1 Mea­sur­ing National Income
Video — Stiglitz explain­ing the lim­its of GDP as a mea­sure for eco­nomic achieve­ment. It’s inter­est­ing to think about how we mea­sure eco­nomic suc­cess (i.e very often sim­ply as GDP growth) con­sid­er­ably influ­ences us.
Video — A video on the cir­cu­lar flow of income (from Paj Holden, on YouTube) We’ll cover this in class, but if you’re keen to get ahead, or would like to review, this is a good one.
Appli­ca­tion — Have some fun with this tool from Gap­min­der. See what you can learn about all the dif­fer­ent indi­ca­tors and how country’s have devel­oped over time
3.2 Intro­duc­tion to Devel­op­ment
Video — A quick les­son on the diffrences between GDP and GNP. (From Paj Holden)
3.3 Macro­eco­nomic Mod­els
Video– Here is a video we use in class, on the 5 essen­tial dia­grams for AS and AD. It’s very good.
3.4 Demand-Side and Supply-Side Poli­cies
Flash Game — A mon­e­tary pol­icy game where you use inter­est rates as a tool for con­trol­ling infla­tion. Pretty cool. –Look, I’m an Eco­nom­ics teacher, this is what excites me!
Video — A review of fis­cal pol­icy and the mul­ti­plier effect (from Paj Holden, on YouTube), incase you’d like to review this.
Flash — An inter­ac­tive les­son on mon­e­tary pol­icy. (From www.cba.edu.kw)
Video — The Philips Curve and NAIRU explained.
Video — A news pro­gram dis­cussing how Aus­tralia is the first G20 coun­try to raise inter­est rates fol­low­ing the reces­sion. Just watch the few 5 min­utes. (From PBS)
Video — A dis­cus­sion of the cur­rent Amer­i­can fis­cal deficit. Again, rather lengthy. You may sim­ply want to watch the first 5 min­utes to get a sense of the sit­u­a­tion. (From Char­lie Rose).
Video — Intro to Fis­cal Pol­icy. (From Bryn Jones)
Video — A cou­ple of clips on Mon­e­tary pol­icy here is Part 1 and here is Part 2. (From Bryn Jones).
3.5 Unem­ploy­ment and Infla­tion
Flash — An inter­ac­tive les­son on types of unem­ploy­ment. (From www.cba.edu.kw)
Flash - An inter­ac­tive graph, show­ing the dif­fer­ences in how dif­fer­ent groups have been effected by the reces­sion. (From the New York Times)
Video - Three rea­sons defla­tion is so bad for economies. (from Paj Holden)
Flash/Audio — A very good his­tory of US gov­ern­ment responses to reces­sions since the 1960s. Lis­ten to the audio clips for each sec­tion, to hear how the gov­ern­ment tried to bal­ance infla­tion, fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity and unem­ploy­ment. (From the New York Times).

Unit 4

4.1 Rea­sons for Trade
Watch this about how the world is chang­ing (from Shift Hap­pens)
Read this: Is Glob­al­iza­tion a Force for Evil in the World and answer the ques­tions at the bot­tom.
Video — A review of the dif­fer­ences between com­par­a­tive and absolute advan­tage.
Video - Mil­ton Fried­man on the won­ders of the pen­cil (really it’s an expla­na­tion of the free mar­ket and the ide­ol­ogy that free trade pro­motes peace).
4.2 Free Trade and Pro­tec­tion­ism
Flash — See some exam­ples of pro­tec­tion­ism here.
Flash — A great walk through a World Trade and Tar­rifs Graph. (from cba.edu.kw)
Video — A very good dis­cus­sion on pro­tec­tion­ism at the moment (2009). (From Char­lie Rose)
Video - How gov­ern­ments use tar­rifs and quo­tas to restrict trade (From Bryn Jones)
4.4 World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion (WTO)
Video — From a few years ago, a WTO Rul­ing on Soft­wood Lum­ber exports from Canada to the US — Pro­tec­tion­ism (From CBC).
Video — Some more his­tory. Cana­di­ans protest­ing APEC in 1997. A good reminder of where our cur­rent protest move­ment comes from. (From CBC)
Video - Some insight into the anti-WTO move­ment. A bit lefty, but still pretty insight­ful. They make some good points. (From WTO Turn Around.org)
Video — WTO and the chal­lenges of trade jus­tice. (from Trade Aid)
4.5 Bal­ance of Pay­ments
On Bal­ance of Pay­ments, please read this.
Flash– An inter­ac­tive les­son on Bal­ance of Pay­ments. (From cba.edu.kw)
Video - Cur­rent account deficits and exchange rates (the Marshall-Lerner con­di­tion). (From Phil Holden)
4.6 Exchange Rates
Flash — A basic intro­duc­tion les­son on exchange rates. (From cba.edu.kw)
Site — See how the Big Mac Index looks after you fac­tor in today’s exchange rates. (From oanda.com)
4.7 Bal­ance of Pay­ment Prob­lems
4.8 Terms of Trade

Unit 5

5.1 Sources of Eco­nomic Growth and Devel­opment
Web page — A good expla­na­tion of the dif­fer­ences between LDCs and MDCs.
5.2 Con­se­quences of Growth
5.3 Bar­ri­ers to Eco­nomic Growth and Devel­op­ment
5.4 Growth and Devel­op­ment Strate­gies
5.5 Eval­u­a­tion of Growth and Devel­op­ment Strategies

We’re not quite to 99 yet. If you know if any great resources to help your fel­low IB Eco­nom­ics stu­dents, please either email me via the “con­tact” page or link to them in the comments.

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Here is a rough out­line of how you could struc­ture your TOK essay. Feel free to mod­ify this or take a com­pletely dif­fer­ent approach, as long as you are meet­ing the require­ments of the rubric.

The fol­low­ing is the struc­ture I sug­gest you try for your TOK essays. In the end you will be bring­ing your total word count (not includ­ing the bib­li­og­ra­phy) to just-under 1600 words (1200 words is the minimum).

If you are using this to pre­pare your real TOK essay, you will want to have an addi­tional para­graph and more counter claims,

Firstly, extract a KI from the title. The KI is in the form of a ques­tion. At OFS we encour­age you to begin the KI with words like:

To what extent…
How do we know that…
How reli­able is…
How cer­tain is…

These invite an open ended response, indica­tive of TOK think­ing. In gen­eral, also make sure that your ques­tion is directly related to know­ing. I can’t actu­ally tell what your KI should be, but you are allowed to dis­cuss this among yourselves.

I rec­om­mend that, before you start writ­ing your essay, you pre­pare an out­line for the essay. You can find spe­cific, step-by-step details on how to out­line your essay, here.

The The­ory of Knowl­edge Essay Structure

Short intro of about 100 words. that states the KI and gives a short answer of your own (which you will defend in the body of your essay) and then makes clear the way you are going to explore and the KI and how you are going to develop your the­sis (which ways of know­ing and/or areas of knowl­edge you’re going to use).

The first para­graph of the body of the essay is about 350 words. It begins with a topic sen­tence that makes a claim (in TOK lan­guage) about the KI — first argu­ment about the KI. The next 2–3 sen­tences explain the claim or argu­ment. Then fol­lows an exam­ple to clar­ify and sup­port the claim. Next is a counter claim, with an exam­ple if word lim­its per­mit. The para­graph ends with a con­clud­ing sen­tence sum­ming up the argu­ment and link­ing it clearly to the KI.

The sec­ond para­graph of the body, again about 350 words, mim­ics the struc­ture of the 1st para­graph. It offers a sec­ond claim in response to the KI, with the ensu­ing expla­na­tion, exam­ple, coun­ter­claim (exam­ple) and con­clu­sion that is linked to the KI

The third para­graph of the body, again about 350 words, mim­ics the struc­ture of the 1st and 2nd para­graph. It offers a third claim in response to the KI, with the ensu­ing expla­na­tion, exam­ple, coun­ter­claim (exam­ple) and con­clu­sion that is linked to the KI

The forth para­graph of the body, again about 350 words, mim­ics the struc­ture of the other body para­graphs. It offers a forth claim in response to the KI, with the ensu­ing expla­na­tion, exam­ple, coun­ter­claim (exam­ple) and con­clu­sion that is linked to the KI

The con­clud­ing para­graph, of about 100 words, briefly sum­ma­rizes the argu­ment, gives the the­sis or con­clud­ing answer to the KI based on your body para­graph argu­ments and con­clu­sions. Try to explain the main insight of your essay in a new way. Also sum up the con­se­quences of the insight (i.e. for other Real Life Situations).

This will bring you right up to the 1600 word limit. Again, you can fol­low this for­mula or not. Ulti­mat­ley, you’ll want to also make sure you’re keep­ing in mind, the rubric require­ments, your out­line, and also fol­low­ing the essen­tial Top Tips to ensure you are scor­ing your best.

And of course enjoy­ your­self. This is a real oppor­tu­nity to take your think­ing to the next level and pre­pare your­self for uni­ver­sity.

(Thank you to Mr Hell­ner and Mr Bal­lard who came up with most of the ideas for this structure).

If you would like more infor­ma­tion on how to struc­ture your essay, here is another very good approach to struc­tur­ing your ToK Essay from Mr Hoyes.

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As you do your IB Com­mu­nity, Action and Ser­vice activ­i­ties you’ll need to reflect on your learn­ing. This serves as evi­dence of all that you have accom­plished, but it also helps you to make sure you are learn­ing as much as you can out of each activity.

Writ­ing is like that. William Faulkner said, “I never know what I think about some­thing until I read what I’ve writ­ten on it” and I agree. Writ­ing forces us to focus on what’s actu­ally going on, so it helps us to notice things.  

So as you do your 150 hours of com­mu­nity, action and ser­vice activ­i­ties you’ll want to make sure that you lock-in as much learn­ing from those activ­i­ties as you can. Think of this as a time to learn things about your­self: how you like to work, the ways you like to con­tribute to soci­ety, what your val­ues are, what activ­i­ties you enjoy and a time to learn about all the skills you’re going to need to develop that you haven’t yet. 

For each of your big activ­i­ties you’ll want to do 3 reflections. 

If you aren’t sure what to write about, we rec­om­mend you answer the ques­tions listed below. They are designed to help you to think crit­i­cally about your expe­ri­ences. But feel free to go beyond these ques­tions. If you only try to tick the boxes you might miss out on some impor­tant learning.

So I rec­om­mend, touch­ing on each of the rec­om­mended points (from A to N), but also feel free to go beyond these or to only focus on some of them if they help you to do a more use­ful reflec­tion. (These were devel­oped by Mrs Mares).

Reflec­tion #1 Questions

Why have you cho­sen this activ­ity? (A)

What do you hope to gain/ learn from this activ­ity? (B) 

What if any­thing about this activ­ity makes you ner­vous or concerned? ©

What chal­lenges do you expect from this activ­ity? (D)

What are you most excited about? (E) 

After your first few weeks, what are your first impres­sions? Con­cerns? (F) 

Reflec­tion #2 Questions

How is this activ­ity going so far? (G)

What chal­lenges have you faced? How did you/ do you plan to resolved these? (H)

What has been suc­cess­ful about this activ­ity so far? (I)

What have you learned about your­self so far in terms of: work­ing with oth­ers; things you do well, areas requir­ing improve­ment; commit­ment and per­se­ver­ance; meet­ing dead­lines; and devel­op­ing lead­er­ship skills (J).

Reflec­tion #3 Questions

Over­all, was this activ­ity a suc­cess? Why or Why not? (K)

What could have you done to make it more suc­cess­ful? (L)

What was the most sig­nif­i­cant thing you learned from this activ­ity? (M)

Chose at least ONE of the learn­ing out­comes (below) and reflec­tion on them/it (N):

I have increased my aware­ness of my own strengths and weaknesses

I have under­taken new challenges

I have planned and ini­ti­ated this activity

I have worked col­lab­o­ra­tively with others

I have shown per­se­ver­ance and com­mit­ment in my activities

I have engaged with issues of global importance

I have con­sid­ered the eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of my actions

I have devel­oped new skills

Your FINAL CAS self evaluation

When you have finally com­pleted all of your CAS activ­i­ties for IB (in year 12) you will also want to reflect on all of your activ­i­ties, as a whole, and what you have learned from CAS over­all. We ask that your final reflec­tion be at least 500 words. Take advan­tage of this. Use it as an oppor­tu­nity to tie together and sum­ma­rize all of your main insights. You will be able to use these insights in future job inter­view and in your col­lege appli­ca­tions. You can use the fol­low­ing prompts to help you reflect:

Per­sonal Achieve­ments that you have devel­oped through CAS. For exam­ple: meet­ing chal­lenges, reg­u­lar par­tic­i­pa­tion and com­mit­ment, aware­ness of per­sonal lim­i­ta­tions, progress in a new role, learn­ing from expe­ri­ence, help­ing to solve problems

Per­sonal Skills that you have devel­oped through CAS. For exam­ple: think­ing cre­atively, plan­ning and orga­ni­za­tion, resource man­age­ment, iden­ti­fy­ing suc­cess and failure

Per­sonal Qual­i­ties that you have devel­oped through CAS. For exam­ple: per­se­ver­ance, self-confidence, humil­ity, respon­si­bil­ity, com­mit­ment, punctuality

Inter­per­sonal Qual­i­ties that you have devel­oped through CAS. For exam­ple: adapt­abil­ity, col­lab­o­ra­tion, empa­thy, respect

Aware­ness of Global Issues that you have devel­oped through CAS. For exam­ple: eth­i­cal appre­ci­a­tion of human­i­tar­ian and envi­ron­men­tal issues, action from a local, national, and inter­na­tional perspective

Final Learn­ing Outcomes

It is very impor­tant that you cover all of the learn­ing out­comes and show how you have met each of these. This is the main part of this sum­mary. And (at OFS) we also ask you to fill in a another doc­u­ment, a check­list.

You do not need to reflect on every CAS activ­ity, but rather cover impor­tant events and activ­i­ties in each area of CAS (Com­mu­nity, Action and Ser­vice). You may want to think about and com­pare how you felt about at the begin­ning of your time doing CAS and how you feel about it now. Think about how CAS has changed you as a per­son. As with your col­lege appli­ca­tions, be as spe­cific as you can. What have you learned? What have oth­ers gained?

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Your col­lege admis­sion let­ter or essay is one of the most impor­tant doc­u­ments you will ever write. I want to show you how to write your­self to the head of the pack.

To do that I need to first explain to you the con­cept of Stump Speeches, which are often used by politi­cians. Regard­less of the ques­tion a politi­cian is asked they will try to answer it in a way that lets them talk about a few areas where they are strong. One guy will always come back to talk about cut­ting taxes. Another will always come back to talk­ing about eco­nomic growth because they know, from their research, that when they talk about these spe­cific things, peo­ple like them more. I’m going to tell you what to say in your col­lege admis­sion let­ter (or col­lege admis­sion essay) so that the read­ers at Stan­ford or Yale will want to choose you over every­one else.

The peo­ple who are going to be read­ing your let­ter want to see that you tick cer­tain boxes. So you need to think about these peo­ple as your mar­ket. You are try­ing to sell your­self to these essay read­ers at Har­vard, Colum­bia or UC Berkley. So you’ll want to answer the essay ques­tion in a way that let’s you touch on the Four Traits every top col­lege wants to see in their new students.

The good thing is that once you’ve devel­oped your let­ter for one school you can use much of the same con­tent as a Stump Speech, to use (slightly mod­i­fied) for another college’s admis­sion letter.

Below I describe the four traits (that the read­ers of your essay are gen­er­ally look­ing for) and explain how you can show that you have these traits.

The four traits:

1Show them that you are hard work­ing. Pro­vide evi­dence of this. Hard work­ing doesn’t just mean good grades. They want to see real evi­dence that you will stick with some­thing even if you aren’t good at it at first. Try to tell a story to make it clear how hard work­ing you are. You stuck with a hard sub­ject until you mas­tered it. You did an over­seas work­ing hol­i­day in Cam­bo­dia, where it was hard, but you worked through it.

2Show them that you know about their spe­cific col­lege. Tell them details about the col­lege and even the spe­cific pro­gram. This shows that you’ve done your home­work about the place, which will make them think that:

a) You are the kind of stu­dent who does their homework.

b) You are tak­ing the deci­sion seri­ously, and

c) You appre­ci­ate and value the school. Every­one wants to be told that their uni­ver­sity is great. I went to Queen’s Uni­ver­sity in Canada and I love hear­ing great things about it. By valu­ing the school you’re sub­tly telling them that you would fit in there. You are Queen’s Uni­ver­sity material.

Also (if this is true) you may want to con­vey the idea that you have been inter­ested in this school for a long time. You have always admired pro­fes­sor so and so and the way he has used the study of what­ever to help develop the such and such. All of this should be true, of course.

3Show evi­dence of con­tri­bu­tion to the com­mu­nity. Show you have a con­science, that you care about other peo­ple. Uni­ver­si­ties really do care about this. They want to see them­selves and their stu­dents as help­ing the world. So show them, using real-life exam­ples, that you like to do your part to make a real difference.

4Finally, explain your vision for your­self in the future and how LSE or Prince­ton fits into that plan. Here is where you can really grab them. Even if you aren’t com­pletely sure your­self yet about what you want to do in the future, you’ll still want to paint a pic­ture for the reader of where you see your­self in 15 years. And again it should be clear why you need to take this spe­cific pro­gram in order to achieve that vision. For exam­ple, you might say that, “My dream is to work for the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion, help­ing raise the health stan­dards of chil­dren in devel­op­ing coun­tries.” If you aren’t sure, pick some­thing that you think you might like and go with that. You are allowed to change your mind later, but the reader of your essay will enjoy feel­ing like they are play­ing a part in mak­ing your dream come true (espe­cially if this dream is about help­ing people).

Those are the four traits. How­ever, I’d like to touch on two other things you should keep in mind.

How to Use Evi­dence to Strengthen Your Admis­sion Essay

You notice that I keep using the term “evi­dence”. By evi­dence I mean spe­cific details about what you did: loca­tions, num­ber of peo­ple involved, the amount of money you raised. Basi­cally I’m say­ing pro­vide details.

So don’t just say:

“I raised money for charity.”

Instead say, say,

“I worked in a team of 5 stu­dents to raise $800 for the Japan­ese Red Cross Society’s Tsunami Relief Campaign.”

Do you see how that sec­ond sen­tence is a mil­lion times bet­ter than the first one? Speci­ficity and detail makes it much more com­pelling and con­vinc­ing? Of course, as always, these things also need to be true as well.

How to Use Sto­ries to Strengthen Your Admis­sion Essay

Sto­ries are bril­liant ways of grip­ping your reader. You won’t have time to tell a whole story of course, but you can use the small ver­sion of a story, an anec­dote, to reveal aspects of your­self. (The 20 sec­ond story explains how anec­dotes make you and your mes­sage mem­o­rable). Sto­ries are pow­er­ful. And they also work as evi­dence because it’s hard to tell a con­vinc­ing story about your­self that isn’t true. Also peo­ple can relate to them, so they start to feel like they know you.

So they are a great tool that you should take advan­tage of. You might want to tell us, for exam­ple, about when one of your per­sonal heroes did some­thing that made a dif­fer­ence in your life and what this expe­ri­ence taught you. So try to tie-in a real life story of when you had an expe­ri­ence which helped you to develop the Four Traits.

**Update**

I just got this advice from a friend of mine, who is an Aca­d­e­mic Advi­sor. It pro­vides some more insight into how you should approach the UCAS essay (UK) and a US uni­ver­sity appli­ca­tion essay differently: 

–The UCAS essay should focus on why you will be a good fit for that course (i.e. Eco­nom­ics, Biol­ogy, Med­i­cine).  So while men­tion­ing ECAs or vol­un­teer activ­i­ties is great, using that as evi­dence for why you should be admit­ted to the course is impor­tant.

–In a US col­lege essay, the ques­tions they want you to answer can be a lot more “squishy”, some­thing like “dis­cuss a char­ac­ter from lit­er­a­ture that has influ­enced you and why”.  They may just want to know you can write and show are a cre­ative thinker, even if you are apply­ing to Engi­neer­ing.  So while evi­dence is impor­tant, how the evi­dence is used is crucial.

Also, as one inter­viewer from Oxbridge I heard speak said, UK uni­ver­si­ties often are look­ing for “pointy” stu­dents who are good at a par­tic­u­lar thing and really want to study that sub­ject, because they will be study­ing it inten­sively for three years. Whereas, the US, in par­tic­u­lar smaller and more selec­tive col­leges, are look­ing for more well-rounded stu­dents who are a good “fit” for their cam­puses. So a stu­dent who gets in to Oxford may not nec­es­sar­ily be a good can­di­date for Yale or Stanford.

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I have found that the biggest chal­lenge my stu­dents are hav­ing, in terms of scor­ing the top marks in the Busi­ness IA, is related to their use of ana­lyt­i­cal tools.

In gen­eral, you have a Research Ques­tion and you’re try­ing to arrive at your answer. A very com­mon mis­take is that stu­dents do a lot of analy­sis, but they don’t con­nect it prop­erly to the Research Ques­tion (RQ) or to their Answer (Ans).

I have wracked my brain to make this more straight­for­ward and I’ve come up with the fol­low­ing dia­gram, which you can fol­low to make your IA analy­sis a more straight­for­ward process. If you fol­low it, it should raise your per­for­mance in sev­eral aspects of the IA Busi­ness rubric.

By this point, you have cho­sen an appro­pri­ate RQ. if you aren’t sure about that, I rec­om­mend read­ing this arti­cle first (and fol­low the ‘4 tests’ it advises to check your RQ).  So now you know that you need to do a few things. You need to get an answer to your RQ, you need to do a lot of analy­sis and you need to do a lot of research. Where most peo­ple go wrong is con­nect­ing these things prop­erly. For exam­ple, many stu­dents Answers (their Find­ings) are not clearly related to their analy­sis at all. There is no clear link between their analy­sis and their even­tual Answer. By fol­low­ing the model I’m sug­gest­ing you won’t make this mistake.

There are also three aspects to an analysis

1Con­nect your ana­lyt­i­cal method (i.e. PEST, Deci­sion Tree) to your RQ. Make it clear HOW this method is needed if you are to answer your ques­tion. Again some types of analy­sis will be more suit­able for your spe­cific RQ. You can­not sim­ply do any old type of analy­sis. It is impor­tant that you do the right type of analy­sis, the analy­sis that answers your question.

2Per­form the analy­sis cor­rectly (and care­fully), show­ing you know the pur­pose of it. Be very care­ful to do a cor­rect job of using the model. Fill in all of the boxes (i.e. of your SWOT), or care­fully do your NPV cal­cu­la­tions, explain­ing your work as you go.

3Finally, after you have com­pleted each method, comment on your find­ings in a way that relates directly to your Answer. Do briefly after each analy­sis (i.e. after your IRR cal­cu­la­tion and after your Boston Matrix). You don’t need to tell us every­thing that you’ve just shown us. Just sum­ma­rize the main find­ings which relate to your Answer. The idea is that, by the time we get to your actual final con­clu­sion, your con­clu­sion is actu­ally obvi­ous to the reader.

This makes for a good report, which would be more use­ful to your man­ager because you’ve shown the man­ager, step-by-step 1) Why this analy­sis is nec­es­sary, 2) What the analy­sis shows, and 3) How that analy­sis relates to what the Busi­ness should actu­ally do. You have there­fore made it easy to under­stand and more con­vinc­ing.

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This is your lucky day. You are finally going to find out the secret time-management weapon which has only been known to a few wildly suc­cess­ful stu­dents. Until now.

(WARNING: Do not read this unless you are pre­pared for incred­i­ble aca­d­e­mic suc­cess! How­ever, if ready to have your life com­pletely changed, read on.)

I have had the plea­sure of teach­ing stu­dents who have ended up going to Cam­bridge, to Oxford, to LSE, to Har­vard and to a range of other Ivy League uni­ver­si­ties. They were not com­pletely alike, but they did have one behav­ior in com­mon. After work­ing closely with these stu­dents I am con­vinced that it was this sin­gle secret-behavior that set them apart from the crowd. It actu­ally made it eas­ier for them to learn more effi­ciently, to under­stand con­cepts in a deeper way than their peers. In a way, these stu­dents had an unfair advan­tage. And that’s why I feel you should have it too.

But before I share it with you, let me explain how hard-working stu­dents com­monly behave.

Often, we, as well-intentioned, hard-working stu­dents make a sim­ple mis­take. We know that we are will­ing to do what­ever it takes to suc­ceed. We real­ize that we will need to spend hours at home prepar­ing for our tests and (because we real­ize how impor­tant High School is to our future suc­cess) we put in this time with­out com­plaint. We have a space at home we each review the mate­r­ial our teach­ers have taught us. We make sure we under­stand every­thing our teach­ers have cov­ered. Our study-spaces have pic­tures of us with our friends, which helps keep us moti­vated. It has plants, to keep the air fresh and to keep us relaxed while we spend hours and hours there each week. Maybe we have been told that this is what will make us successful.

This is the tra­di­tional approach taken by those of us who do not under­stand the secret.

The secret time man­age­ment weapon my top stu­dents use allows them to learn most of the mate­r­ial with­out these end­less hours of revi­sion at home before each test. What is it that they do? Quite sim­ply, it is this: Top stu­dents learn while they are in class. That is the secret. They learn while they are actu­ally in the class.

I know that doesn’t sound rev­o­lu­tion­ary. But, think about it for a moment. If you’re hon­est with your­self, you might real­ize that many of your peers (and maybe you your­self) spend a lot of your time in class not actu­ally chal­leng­ing your­self, not think­ing about and chal­leng­ing the mate­r­ial and there­fore not actu­ally learn­ing. And this means that you must do it later, prob­a­bly at home, by yourself.

Why do extremely hard­work­ing stu­dents approach learn­ing this way? I’m not sure. Partly, it isn’t their fault because they may have never learned to do it any other way. They may also feel that it will be eas­ier to learn with­out any dis­trac­tions. I made this mis­take when I was young. It meant I was nor­mally stressed out before my tests because I found it hard to learn the mate­r­ial alone, at home, at my desk. It wasn’t until my final year of High School that I real­ized how much time I could save by stay­ing focused on learn­ing while actu­ally in the les­son. Even bet­ter, if I read though the chap­ter (or the novel, etc) before the teacher went over the mate­r­ial in class, I could say truly-insightful things dur­ing the actual les­son. And this was great because it meant I could have a gen­uinely inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion with the teacher; the teacher could chal­lenge these insights I was hav­ing and expand my under­stand­ing, push­ing me fur­ther, far beyond what the other stu­dents could under­stand because (at that moment, in the les­son) they were just hear­ing about the con­cepts for the first time.

I promise that if you apply that secret con­sis­tently you will not be sorry. As I’ve said, I have seen it applied by all of my most suc­cess­ful stu­dents and it worked well for them.

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Some­times (nor­mally in 8-mark ques­tions) you will be asked to eval­u­ate. This is about going beyond the insights you have made from doing your analy­sis (your Dr Tests).

But let’s make sure you are clear on the dif­fer­ence between analy­sis and eval­u­a­tion. By ana­lyz­ing in Busi­ness we mean giv­ing your Defi­ni­tions, Expla­na­tions, Exam­ples and Devel­op­ment (mak­ing sure you have fully answered the ques­tion) (Doing the ‘DEED’). And then, after you analy­sis is done, you go on to eval­u­ate, to make sense of it for the reader. You are telling us, in clear terms, what we should think about the situation.

This is a bit like The­ory of Knowl­edge because you are not only show­ing that you can think about things using the course the­o­ries, but also show­ing that you can think about things in a com­pli­cated (or com­plex, or advanced) way. You can con­trast the results of two ways of apprais­ing an invest­ment oppor­tu­nity for exam­ple and tell us which insights are most impor­tant for this par­tic­u­lar com­pany. Busi­ness peo­ple (if you tell them some the­o­ries) will often say, “So what?!” They want to know what these insights of yours (from your analy­sis) really mean for their busi­ness. So it is often by doing good eval­u­a­tion that you are really help­ing busi­nesses to cope and improve.

Stu­dents gen­er­ally strug­gle with this. Even if you feel like they know good eval­u­a­tion when they see it, they don’t know HOW to do it. So this note shows you exactly what to do when you’re eval­u­at­ing in business.

This acronym will help you to remem­ber the 7 dif­fer­ent aspects of good busi­ness evaluation:

Seri­ously Fantas­tic Lead­ers Will Profit People Consis­tently

Or

 Some Foreign Leader Wrote Phoney Public Comments

Try to do all 6 parts.

Stake­hold­er Impacts

- What effects would this change (i.e. a focus on Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­ity) have on dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers (Suppli­ers, Owners, Con­sumers, Govern­ment, Rivals, Investors, Managers and Employ­ees — the “SOC GRIME”)?

- Are there some unde­sir­able effects on some of these stakeholders?

- Is the pol­icy great for some (i.e. own­ers), but bad for oth­ers (i.e. consumers)?

Func­tional Area Effects

- What will this change mean for the dif­fer­ent parts of the busi­ness: the Mar­ket­ing, HR, Pro­duc­tion and Finance teams?

- In a way, these are the inter­nal effects, whereas in the stake­holder effects you will look at employ­ees and own­ers in gen­eral, but you will mostly focus on exter­nal stakeholders).

Long-term and short-term Consequences

- Some changes can have great ben­e­fits for a busi­ness in the long-term change good in the short-term, but over in a few years it will have unde­sir­able consequences?

- Will the pol­icy be really hard on short-run prof­its, but bet­ter for prof­its in the long-run, maybe due to increased cus­tomer loyalty?

- Or, will this pol­icy fix one prob­lem, but cre­ate another?

Weak­nesses of the Analysis

- How sure can we be about the con­clu­sions we’ve made? Is the answer com­pletely obvi­ous? Or are there some weak­nesses in the approach we’ve taken?

- Is there some other data  (i.e. finan­cial data) which we would need in order to answer the ques­tion with com­plete confidence?

Pri­or­i­ties

- Dis­cussing the pri­or­i­ties of the busi­ness is also a good way to keep things in per­spec­tive. For exam­ple, an eth­i­cal pol­icy may be good for soci­ety, but social wel­fare is not gen­er­ally the pri­or­ity of a business.

- You can never go wrong, con­nect­ing a ques­tion back to profit or sur­vival of the busi­ness –the main aims most businesses.

- So what are the pri­or­i­ties of the dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers and which of these stake­hold­ers (and there­fore which pri­or­i­ties) will come first?

Pros and Cons

- What are the advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages (costs and ben­e­fits) of this change or approach? Are the costs worth the benefits?

- What are the argu­ments for and against this change or approach?

Con­clu­sions

- What have our mod­els and our the­o­ries (our Dr Tests) shown us? And then take this a step fur­ther: what do all of the tests together show us?

- What big con­clu­sions can we draw?

So there you go. Try to go through each of the eval­u­a­tion types, in order when­ever you are asked to eval­u­ate in IB Busi­ness exam questions.

To help you remem­ber the mnemonic, you may want to con­sider, firstly, whether you agree with it. Does it seem true to you? Is lead­er­ship about con­sis­tently prof­it­ing peo­ple? What do you think? The other thing you might try to do is to cre­ate your own mnemonic. By think­ing cre­atively about it you can stick it in your own mind.

(Also, if you take Eco­nom­ics as well, you might like to read this post on Eval­u­a­tion in Eco­nom­ics.)

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