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How the DP led me to a university where I’ll live and learn around the world

How does an IB education prepare students for their future studies and careers? Diploma Programme (DP) graduate Marley Esch tells us how her DP experience prepared her for an immersive undergraduate degree program at Minerva Schools at KGI.


by Marley Esch

Yes, the DP is challenging, but it’s worth it so keep going.

For me, doing the Diploma Programme (DP) was a very easy decision. After taking AP courses my freshman and sophomore year of high school, I wanted my subsequent courses to be more challenging and engaging. After learning more about what the DP was — it was new to my school at the time — I was very interested in the deeply focused classes and opportunities that written assessments and open-ended questions offered to showcase learning, as opposed to tests that rewarded memorization. Furthermore, I was deeply enamored with theory of knowledge (TOK), which I could only take if I chose the IB diploma.

During my two years in the DP, it became clear it was the correct decision: I was deeply engaged in all my classes as I had hoped. TOK was my favorite course from the start; I loved discussing philosophy and the theories behind why we humans think and believe in the ways that we do. I firmly believe that I would never have discussed these ideas in a high school setting — would never have gained knowledge about knowledge in a structured way — without IB.

TOK showed me how much I love the complexities of the human mind and want to understand these nuances better.

Had I not decided to do the DP, I never would have heard about Minerva, — an institution where the curriculum and approach to learning is centered around many of the same values as IB programmes, such as global mindedness, deep learning, and critical thinking — because I met a Minerva representative at an IB college fair.

I’m in my first year at Minerva so I am not sure yet which direction I will take for my actual degree, but I am currently leaning towards a major in Social Science, with a minor in Arts and Humanities. My English HL class in high school confirmed my love of writing and analyzing works of literature, and TOK showed me how much I love the complexities of the human mind and want to understand these nuances better.

At Minerva, I have the opportunity to reach beyond my comfort zone in these subjects, by learning how to code. I’ve also recently become interested in business, which I never would have expected without Minerva’s first year classes, along with the extracurricular activities Minerva creates for students with organizations around the city. We have opportunities to talk to and learn from professionals around San Francisco — not just listen to them lecture. Every week Minerva holds an hour-long “What I Learned” session, for example, where employees or founders of brilliant organizations (Teach for America, Uber, and Google) share their experiences and students can ask questions and learn about the “real world” after college and what it takes to be successful. These meetings are really unique to Minerva: small groups of students get to truly pick the brain of interesting people, and make connections that might help us later on.

…the extended essay and the multiple IAs and papers during IB will really prepare you for the intensive academic work.

My advice for current DP students? Yes, the DP is challenging, but it’s worth it so keep going. The DP has such a well-rounded set of courses that you can truly discover what direction (or, if you’re like me directions plural) you may want to pursue as an undergraduate. In my experience, the DP also better prepares you for college than other advanced classes do because it requires a much higher level of writing and research skills. Once you get to college, 5-8 page papers are nothing out of the ordinary, so the extended essay and the multiple IAs and papers during IB will really prepare you for the intensive academic work you will start doing very soon. Stick with it because it really and truly pays off.


Marley Esch is a 2017 graduate of Rockwall-Heath High School, Texas, US and is a member of Minerva’s Class of 2021. She was a proud participant at the 2016 IB World Student Conference in Bluche Switzerland which focused on Global Citizenship: Exploring Individual and Collective Responsibilities. This story can also be found on Minerva’s Medium channel, which includes interviews with DP graduates Sho Hirara and Menita Rhangar.

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