How to achieve a 7 in IB Economics HL – 10 Key Tips

Anyone can get a 7 in IB Economics HL.

But that does not mean it is easy at all.

In fact, it’s very difficult to do well in IB Economics. It requires a lot of work, practice and detailed knowledge of exam technique.

I have tutored several students in IB Economics HL to achieving a grade 7 in their final exams. So I know what it takes to improve your grade.

See below my ten key tips for raising your grade in IB Economics HL.

For 24 model answers to 15 mark paper 1 questions, check out the links below:

Contents

1. Practice questions and papers

Academic research shows practice tests improve grades for students.

Practice papers improve your time management, content understanding and active recall.

Make sure to review your answers and note mistakes.

You can find practice papers online or from textbooks. Practice papers will arrive shortly on this website for IB Economics HL.

2. Content mastery

Learning the content takes time. There is no easy way around this.

You need to go through the syllabus item by item. Put a cross next to things what you don’t understand.

Revise and read about areas you don’t understand. Use notes, videos or ask for help.

“Active recall” and “spaced repetition” are important revision techniques. But there is much more to revision.

For more revision tips, see the article here:

3. Graph practice

Graphs are often missing key items.

Labels or coordinates in particular are often missing.

These are sloppy mistakes. They are also easy to avoid.

After drawing a graph, do a quick mental check to see if the graph looks ok.

Or use an acronym, like SCALE.

S = shifts (is the correct shift shown?)

C = coordinates (have you added p,q or p1 q1?)

A = axes (did you label the axes?)

L = labels for lines (label the supply and demand curves)

E = explain (the graph in the text)

SCALE

4. Timed conditions practice

A key mistake is not managing time, particularly in papers 2 and 3.

Running out of time early means less time for the essays.

Do lots of practice exams and essays in timed conditions.

Missing questions because of time is a worst case scenario for most students. Put in the practice to avoid this.

5. Spend more time revising harder areas

Some of the hardest topics I see IB students struggle with most include:

• Externalities and common pool resources

• Market power

• Monetary policy transmission mechanism

• The balance of payments.

Pick the areas you struggle with most. Then I recommend extra revision of key analysis chains and evaluation points.

6. Ace the internal assessments (IAs)

The IAs allow you a lot of time to write your responses.

I will write more about IAs in a further article.

But a few key tips for IAs are:

• Put in more time. You have time outside of class to write the IA. So use it!

• One key mistake is not referring to your theme. Make sure you refer to the theme throughout your piece and the links are clear.

• Article choice – you want some facts about the news topic to refer to later. But you don’t want the article to spell out the economic analysis for you.

Other common issues are with labelling diagrams and evaluation.

7. Learn from model answers

What does a high level answer look like?

Most students don’t know. So how can we expect them to do well?

Model answers help students learn the best exam technique.

For some model answers in IB Economics HL style, check out the links below:

8. Collect and learn real world examples

I recommend building a document of real world examples for the 15 mark questions in paper 1.

Do this as you go along the syllabus. This will make it much easier when coming up to the exam.

It also makes the economic theory more interesting, when applied to the real world.

I recommend using Trading Economics for key macro stats.

9. Build up a collection of evaluation points

For micro, key evaluation points include:

• Price elasticity of demand.

• Possibility of government failure.

• What happens with firm’s profits? Are they allocated to reinvestment or enriching shareholders?

For macro, key evaluation points include:

• Degree of spare capacity in the economy.

• Consumer or business confidence.

• Proportion of consumers / firms affected by a particular policy.

There are lots of specific evaluation points to learn for each topic.

Start building a list of points and practising writing evaluation paragraphs.

10. Correcting all mistakes

Students should expect excellence from themselves.

So there’s a concept you don’t understand. What should you do?

Well it’s only one concept, so what does it matter?

That’s the wrong approach.

It sets the expectation that not knowing something is ok.

Also, that concept can be critical to understand other topics.

Instead, try to understand the concept. Ask people, like your teachers or fellow students, for help. Look at others’ notes. Ask questions.

Caveats

In the end, no tips can guarantee a grade 7.

Achieving a 7 in IB Economics HL requires a lot of effort and persistence.

But you can do it!

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For more IB Economics HL tips, check out the link below:

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