1. Requesting a remark (EUR)

Approximately one week after the final grades are issued the schools receive the component marks and grades so that teachers can see how their students performed on each of the three Papers and how their IA marks were moderated. Ask your teacher or the school's IB coordinator to give you the breakdown of your results and also the grade boundaries so you can see how close your marks are to being awarded the next higher grade. If the marks are close then it is definitely worth you considering whether to request the school to apply for an Enquiry upon Results on your behalf.

You, yourself or your parents,  cannot request an Enquiry upon Results. All requests must be made through your IB coordinator and must be received by the IB before the official end of the examination session, that is, by 15 September (15 March for the November session).

Your school will have full information about how they submit EURs to the IB and the costs involved. There are several different types of EUR (Categories 1,2 and 3) and your school will advise you as to the best way to proceed if they support your request.

Be aware that a candidate’s grade may be raised or lowered as a result of an EUR. In the past the grade either stayed the same or increased but could not be lowered. Some schools took advantage of this and paid for all their students’ work to be remarked in the hope that some would go up. Now that the mark can also be lowered this practice has stopped. Most EURs do in fact result in the final grade remaining unchanged. This is because examiners are told to remark using exactly the same criteria and standard that they used before and should not look to give extra marks just because it is an EUR. Very rarely an error, such as one whole question or part question being missed by the first examiner, is found but this is very unusual.  Just occasionally if there is a serious problem and five candidates’ work is remarked and found to be different by an average of 4% the IB will remark all the students work in that subject from your school at no extra cost.

2. Retaking the exam

Hopefully this should not be necessary but there are always a few students each session who are retaking the chemistry exam. If you performed badly first time round (or simply did not get the grade you expected) then it is definitely worth first exploring the EUR option before deciding to retake. However an EUR may not result in a higher grade or there may be other reasons why you might retake. These could include:              

• Adverse circumstances first time round such as illness or a death in the family.
   
• Getting a Grade 1 or 2 in HL Chemistry which automatically means no Diploma is awarded.
   
• Getting 23 overall points (or lower) and needing one (or more) extra marks in any subject to be awarded the Diploma.
   
• Not making a university offer and needing to improve the Grade to make acceptance at university more likely (as stated above this is particularly true for those wishing to study medicine who do not achieve at least a Grade 6 – sometimes Grade 7- at HL).

This last point is particularly relevant in the U.K. or for those applying to British Universities. In Scandinavia students need all three sciences to study medicine so many Scandinavian students need to return to school to study the third science in their own national system. It is definitely worth considering whether it might be better to take the national examination of the student’s own country rather than re-sit the IB. Some of my British students who wanted to study medicine and who only got a 5 in Chemistry actually found it easier to take Chemistry A level and get an A or A* rather than gain a 6 or 7 at IB HL Chemistry.

Be warned that you will generally find it hard to work on your own in isolation and it is difficult to improve your standard without some sort of outside help. If you can return to your original school or another school this can be enormously beneficial otherwise it might be worth paying for some sort of private tuition. Make sure you have copies of the syllabus, past papers and questions and other resources, such as continued access to this website through your old school.