IB Grading Explained: From 7s to 45 Points
How the IB builds a score out of six subject grades and three core points, the passing conditions that fail candidates who cleared 24, and what "a good score" actually means when nobody will tell you the number.
Where the 45 comes from
The IB Diploma score is built from two separate pieces, and almost every misunderstanding about IB grading comes from blurring them together.
The first piece is your six subjects. Each one is graded from 1 to 7, so six subjects give you a maximum of 42. That is the bulk of your score and the part you spend two years working on.
The second piece is the core. Theory of Knowledge and the Extended Essay are each graded on a letter scale from A to E, and those two letters are combined to award up to 3 additional points. Add the two pieces together — 42 plus 3 — and you get the famous maximum of 45.
Creativity, Activity, Service is the third element of the core, and it carries no points whatsoever. It is a requirement rather than a contribution: you must complete it, and completing it adds nothing to your total. Students who assume a strong CAS portfolio will pull their score up are working from a model of the diploma that does not exist.
The 1–7 subject scale
Every subject in the diploma uses the same seven-point scale, and grade boundaries are set against the demands of that subject rather than against the performance of other candidates in your school.
The detail people find genuinely surprising is that Higher Level and Standard Level grades are worth exactly the same in your total. A 6 at Higher Level and a 6 at Standard Level both contribute 6 points. There is no weighting, no multiplier, no bonus for taking the harder route.
This has a real strategic consequence. Higher Level courses cover more material and are assessed more demandingly, but a point earned there counts no more than a point earned at Standard Level. If your school offers you a genuine choice about where a subject sits, the question is not which placement scores better — it is which placement you will actually perform in, and which one the courses you eventually apply to will expect.
That said, the distinction reappears the moment you leave the IB's own system. UK universities do not convert your diploma total into Tariff points; they convert each component individually, and there Higher Level grades are worth roughly double their Standard Level equivalents. A profile that looks unremarkable as a diploma total can look considerably stronger once it is run through an IB to UCAS points conversion, and the reverse is also true. Two candidates on the same total can convert quite differently depending on where their strongest grades sit.
The core matrix
TOK and the Extended Essay are not scored independently. Their two letter grades are read together against a fixed matrix, and that matrix awards between 0 and 3 points.
| TOK grade (rows) / EE grade (columns) | A | B | C | D | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Diploma not awarded |
| B | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Diploma not awarded |
| C | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Diploma not awarded |
| D | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Diploma not awarded |
| E | Diploma not awarded | Diploma not awarded | Diploma not awarded | Diploma not awarded | Diploma not awarded |
The matrix is symmetric, so it does not matter which of the two carried the higher letter — an A in TOK with a C in the Extended Essay and a C in TOK with an A in the Extended Essay both award 2 points.
Three features of this table are worth reading carefully.
The top is flat. A and A awards 3 points; A and B also awards 3. There is a band of combinations at the top where an improvement changes nothing in your total, which is worth knowing before you spend a fortnight polishing an essay that is already comfortably in the band.
The bottom bottoms out early. C with D, D with C, and D with D all award 0. Once you are in that corner, further slippage costs you no points — but it moves you closer to the edge of the next column, which is where the real risk lives.
That edge is absolute. An E in either TOK or the Extended Essay means the diploma is not awarded. Not zero points from the core: no diploma. This is the single highest-leverage fact in IB grading, because it is the one place where a component most students treat as peripheral can undo two years of subject work. A student with excellent subject grades and an E in the Extended Essay does not get a lower diploma. They do not get one at all.
The passing conditions people miss
"You need 24 points" is the version of the rule that circulates, and it is true as far as it goes. It is also incomplete in a way that catches people out every year, because 24 points is a threshold you must clear in addition to a list of conditions — not instead of them.
To be awarded the diploma you need at least 24 points, and all of the following:
- CAS completed
- No grade E in Theory of Knowledge or the Extended Essay
- No grade 1 in any subject
- No more than two grade 2s
- No more than three grades of 3 or below
- At least 12 points across your Higher Level subjects
- At least 9 points across your Standard Level subjects
Read that list again with a specific candidate in mind, because the interaction is the point. It is entirely possible to score comfortably above 24 and still not be awarded the diploma. A candidate with three 7s and three 1s has 24 points and fails on the grade 1 condition. A candidate with 28 points concentrated in Standard Level subjects can fall short of the 12-point Higher Level minimum. A candidate who clears every numerical condition and has not completed CAS is not awarded the diploma either.
What the conditions are collectively enforcing is breadth. The IB is explicitly designed to prevent you from trading away entire subjects to protect the ones you like, and every clause on that list closes a different route to doing exactly that. If you are the kind of student who has quietly written off one subject, the conditions — not the total — are the thing you should be checking against.
Because the conditions interact, it is worth checking a full profile rather than eyeballing the total. An IB points calculator will apply the core matrix and the pass conditions together, which is more reliable than adding six numbers and assuming the rest looks after itself.
What "a good score" actually means
This is the question every IB student asks, and most answers to it are unhelpful because they quote a number with no reference point.
The honest answer is that "good" is defined by the courses you intend to apply to and nothing else. Offers name a total, and frequently name required grades in specific Higher Level subjects alongside it. A profile that comfortably satisfies one course can miss another by a mile at the same total, because the second one wanted a 6 in a subject you took at Standard Level.
So the useful move is to invert the question. Instead of asking whether your score is good, find the two or three courses you are seriously considering, write down exactly what they ask for — the total, the Higher Level requirements, any subject conditions — and compare your predicted profile against that. You will usually find that the gap is not spread evenly across six subjects. It is one Higher Level grade, in one subject, and that is a far more actionable piece of information than a general sense of whether 34 is respectable.
It is also worth knowing where the marginal points are cheapest. Moving one subject from a 5 to a 6 is worth exactly as much as moving another from a 3 to a 4, and moving your core from 1 point to 2 is worth the same again. Students routinely pour effort into pushing a strong subject from 6 to 7 — the hardest point on the board to win — while a weaker subject sits one achievable grade below where it could be.
Predicted grades and final grades
Predicted grades are your school's forecast, submitted before you sit the final examinations. Universities make conditional offers against them. They are not your result, and the gap between prediction and result is the part of this process you actually control.
Two things follow. The first is that a disappointing prediction is a forecast to be beaten rather than a verdict, and the second is that a flattering prediction is a condition you now have to meet. Both situations point at the same work.
Treat the prediction as a diagnostic. It tells you, subject by subject, where your teachers think you currently sit — and the subject furthest below where you need it is where your revision time is worth the most, regardless of which subject you find most enjoyable to revise.
Closing the gap
The specific difficulty of the IB is that six subjects plus an Extended Essay plus TOK plus CAS do not compete for your attention fairly. The things with deadlines win, and the things without them — the subjects you will not be examined on for another five months — quietly lose, right up until they suddenly do not.
The fix is unglamorous: give every subject scheduled time rather than leftover time. A revision timetable maker turns your examination dates and subject list into concrete blocks, which matters more in the IB than in most systems precisely because there are so many things to keep in the air at once. A subject that gets a slot gets revised. A subject that relies on you feeling like it does not.
Weight those blocks towards the components that carry structural risk rather than the ones that carry the most marks. An Extended Essay drifting towards an E is worth more of your attention than a subject drifting from 6 to 5, because one of those costs you a point and the other costs you the diploma.
And check your profile against the conditions, not just the total. The students who are caught out on results day are rarely the ones who miscounted their points. They are the ones who counted their points correctly and never looked at the rest of the list.
