The Results of My Life's Last Two Years are Out

As some of you readers may know, I was an IB student for the last two years and got my diploma a couple weeks ago, on July 6th. I'm dedicating this post to discussing my results, talking about each subject, discussing how I studied those subjects, and where I'll be attending university. Let's start with my HL subjects.

Mathematics AA HL

For maths, I achieved a 7 by getting a 95/100, which is a near perfect score. Considering that I really fumbled the second question on paper 3, I must have gotten perfect scores for both papers one and two, as well as my IA. After paper three, I was devastated, since I wasn't sure how paper one and my IA would score, and also because the second question of paper three was just probability, which was never asked as a paper three question, even though papers one and two had enough questions on that topic, so I was stressed and couldn't think straight. This goes to show that you never know what might be asked. In hindsight, I shouldn't have been that stressed over maths because I did really well in paper two and not badly in paper one. Also, the grade boundary for a seven was 74/100, but I am nonetheless happy that I got a near-perfect score.

For each of the subjects, I want to compare how I performed on the real thing and the mocks that I did in school as well as the mocks I did myself. For mathematics, I did a lot better than my mocks:

Specimen: p1, p2, p3 N/A
2021 may tz1: p1 (85/110), p2 (91/110), p3 (55/55) - 85/100
2021 may tz2: p1 (99/110), p2 (102/110), p3 (48/55) - 89/100
2021 nov: p1 (100/110), p2 (93/110), p3 (54/55) - 89/100
2022 may tz1: p1 (100/110), p2 (108/110), p3 (48/55) - 91/100
2022 may tz2: p1 (105/110), p2 (96/110), p3 (52/55) - 91/100
2022 nov: p1 (110/110), p2 (110/110), p3 (53/55) - 96/100
2023 may tz1: p1 (102/110), p2 (105/110), p3 (50/55) - 92/100
(mock) 2023 may tz2: p1 (103/110), p2 (96/110), p3 (55/55) - 91/100
(mock) 2023 nov: p1 (110/110), p2 (103/110), p3 (55/55) - 95/100

I only had two mocks that were 95/100 or above. Also, my paper threes were near perfect in most of my mocks, which is why I was terrified after the real test—paper three was the easy one; that was the collect the maximum amount of points exam. Overall, though, I did really well in the exam and I am satisfied with it.

You might ask how on earth I studied for maths to get such a great score. Honestly, the shocking answer is that I didn't studied that hard for maths (read my other post on why this is shocking). I was natural at maths and only listened classes and did my homework. Before doing any past papers I watched a couple of videos on PDFs and did vector exercises by Christos Nikolaidis, because I had little to zero clue how to solve these types of questions. After solving past papers I looked at my wrong answers and learned why they were wrong and how I could avoid the same mistake again. On my first mock's paper two, I couldn't solve a differential equation problem because I just forgot the trick $v = \frac{y}{x}$ or $y = vx$ , and then I solved tonnes of differential equation exercises.

Physics HL

For physics, I got a 7 by achieving 89/100, where the grade boundary was 68/100 for this year. Honestly, I was expecting a 7 for physics because I had studied countless hours for it. Even though everyone said that paper one was really hard, I did not feel like it while in the test. I had plenty of time to go over my answers and check them. Papers two and three were on the easy side compared to past years. Therefore, I probably did:

I did a lot of past papers for physics because I was not trusting myself, but in the end, I did mostly well compared with the past papers I did:

2016 may: p1 (37/40), p2 (77/95), p3 (37/45) - 84/100
2016 nov: p1 (35/40), p2 (85/95), p3 (41/45) - 88/100
2017 may tz2: p1 (37/40), p2 (80/95), p3 (41/45) - 87/100
2019 may tz1: p1 (n/a) p2 (86/90) p3 (n/a)
2019 may tz2: p1 (29/40), p2 (82/90), p3 (41/45) - 86/100
2019 nov: p1 (n/a) p2 (80/90) p3 (n/a)
2020 nov: p1 (33/40), p2 (68/90), p3 (40/45) - 82/100
2021 may tz1: p1 (32/40), p2 (76/90) - 83/100
2021 may tz2: p1 (36/40), p2 (72/90) - 84/100
2021 nov: p1 (34/40), p2 (73/90) - 83/100
(mock) 2022 may tz1: p1 (31/40), p2 (79/90) - 84/100
2022 may tz2: p1 (37/40), p2 (84/90) - 89/100
2022 nov: p1 (34/40), p2 (79/90) - 86/100
2023 may tz1: p1 (36/40), p2 (82/90), p3 (41/45) - 89/100
(mock) 2023 may tz2: p1 (35/40), p2 (86/90), p3 (42/45) - 91/100
2023 nov: p1 (38/40), p2 (85/90), p3 (37/45) - 89/100

As you can see, I did most of the past papers that I could've solved. I didn't do 2018 and most of 2017 papers, and I didn't do some papers, ones and threes, for 2019. However, I did everything from 2020 until 2023. After spending 60 whole hours on only solving the past papers—not checking them or learning from my mistakes—I still regretted that I should've solved more papers when I finished the exams because I was not confident in myself. In any case, an 89/100 is a great score, which means I confidently got a 7.

About how I studied physics, and in addition to listening to my teacher in class and taking notes, I also literally read the entire Oxford IB Physics textbook, which is 540 pages, including option B, before anything else during my winter break around the end of January (which is also when Cambridge results were out). After that, similar to maths, I started solving past papers, but I would write down every question that I did wrong with the answer from the markscheme. This way, I learned the concepts and memorised the exact answers that the IB wants from us. I did this for all three papers, and honestly, a secret I can give you is that IB asks the same question over and over again in different years. I honestly wrote this answer a dozen times, and in most of them, the question was 3 marks: 1. flux in coil is changed; 2. induced emf depends on the rate of change of flux linked; 3. process produces a sinusoidal emf.

And for my internal assessment, while the experiment was really simple, I wrote the IA quite nicely, with different perspectives on how I could have done the experiment or the data collection better and a lot of data analysis.

English B HL

Ugh! I was so close to getting a 7, if it weren't for that writing. I got a 6 by scoring an 83/100, where the grade boundary for a 7 was 88/100. My listening and my writing went really, really well, but I bombed my writing exam—I actually misunderstood what the prompt was asking for, and I even wrote a blog post, which is something that I am really good at, you know—so I presume that my individual grades are:

In the third week of the exams, every student was disappointed and frustrated due to the time-zone cheating happening, and English B took place in that week. After I had my writing test, I found out that the prompts were leaked. Like, people could have used ChatGPT to write their writings, and they could have just memorised most of it. Ridiculous. If I had done as well as I did on my mock paper, I would have gotten a 7. Just sad.

That's all with my HL's, now on to SL classes I took.

Chemistry SL

For chemistry, I got a 7 with a score of 84/100, where the grade boundary for a 7 was 72/100. Honestly, I don't have much to say about chemistry. I worked hard (I did most of the same things that I did for physics) and got a 7. I probably cannot accurately predict what I got on each part, so I won't. Even though I got a 7, my result on the real exam was on the really low end of the past papers I did:

2018 may tz1: p1 (28/30), p2 (43/50), p3 (33/35) - 89/100
2018 may tz2: p1 (28/30), p2 (43/50), p3 (32/34) - 88/100
2018 nov: p1 (27/30), p2 (43/50), p3 (32/35) - 87/100
2019 may tz2: p1 (29/30), p2 (35/50), p3 (33/35) - 89/100
2019 may tz1: p1 (30/30), p2 (40/50), p3 (29/35) - 86/100
2020 nov: p1 (25/30), p2 (41/50), p3 (29/35) - 83/100
2021 may tz1: p1 (26/30), p2 (44/50) - 86/100
2021 may tz2: p1 (29/30), p2 (43/50) - 88/100
2021 nov: p1 (27/30), p2 (43/50) - 86/100
2022 may tz1: p1 (26/30), p2 (46/50) - 88/100
(mock) 2022 may tz2: p1 (22/30), p2 (44/50) - 84/100
2022 nov: p1 (27/30), p2 (42/50) - 85/100
2023 may tz1: p1 (29/30), p2 (47/50), p3 (31/35) - 91/100
(mock) 2023 may tz2: p1 (26/30), p2 (48/50), p3 (33/35) - 91/100
2023 nov: p1 (25/30), p2 (46/50), p3 (29/35) - 87/100

Turkey in the 20th Century SL

Now for the best thing that happened about the results: I got a 7 by getting a 78/100, where the grade boundary for a 7 was ACTUALLY 78/100. Yeah, I was on the line between life and death, but thankfully, which was very surprising, considering that TITC examiners don't give points too easily and the exams are article writing. You can't probably believe it, but I worked my arse off for this subject, and I am really happy that it paid off. I am happy that breaking my hand during the exam was worth it—I wrote 7 pages for paper two and 4.5 pages for paper one.

Turkish A: Literature SL

Even though my second mock papers were a lot better and I hoped to get a 6, I got a 5 with a score of 70/100, where the higher grade boundary was a 71/100. I was bummed when I saw my result for Language A, because although my paper one was not great (I wrote about 3 pages), my paper two went amazing. I wrote around five full pages and mentioned everything about the two literary books I wrote on, which were "Hakkari'de Bir Mevsim - Ferit Edgü" and "Huzursuzluk - Zülfü Livaneli." What can I say? I hoped for a 6, but got a 5. It's whatever.

Extended Essay in Mathematics

Oh, boy! I spent at least 125 hours only writing my extended essay, and I spent even more researching and coming up with the proofs and ideas. I was really proud to have found something, even if it was something niche. I really thought that I would get an A, since I put myself into the essay, since I changed the whole essay after I wrote it into passive language from we language just because extended essay examiners don't like we language even though it is the correct way of writing a mathematical article, since I drew every image I used myself in a vector design program. I mean, I was sure that this extended essay was perfect and that I would get a great grade, but no. I got a C with a 17/34 score. I also don't know where they removed the marks from. So, yeah, a couple of weaks are now removed from my life—unable to get them back—without any compensation. I brought my iPad into cafés, and I went just so I could write a couple more paragraphs. I spent my new year's with this extended essay.

While I am really sad that I couldn't even get a B, I'm not angry at myself, because I learned so, so much stuff by writing that extended essay: creating vector graphics, writing proofs, explaining stuff in great depth with simple words, writing a mathematical paper from scratch, multivariable calculus, $\LaTeX$ , and the list goes on.

Theory of Knowledge

Not much to say other than I was expecting a better score. I got a B with 18/30. I invested a lot of time in my TOK essay too, I rewrote the entire thing three times and I changed my prompt once. It was brutal.

Overall, with a BC in core, I got 2 extra points out of 3. I also need two grades higher to achieve a 3/3, so, while I could have been better, I'm also not complaining since BB is also a 2/3.

University Admissions

With a total score of 41/45 and 776s at HL, I will be reading Computer Science at King's College London for the next three years, hopefully.