IB Predicted Grades: What They Are, Who Sets Them, and What Parents Should Ask

Between October and February, most Diploma Programme families hear the same phrase in a newly serious tone: predicted grades. A counsellor mentions them in a meeting, a university application asks for them, and suddenly a number that is not an exam result seems to decide a great deal. The reassuring part is that a predicted grade is not a verdict issued by the IB. It is your child's school's evidence-based estimate, and it exists because university deadlines fall months before IB results day. Once you know who sets it, how it is built, and what it can and cannot decide, the conversation becomes much easier to steer.

A predicted grade comes from the school, not the IB

A predicted grade is the subject teacher's estimate of the grade a student is expected to achieve, built from the evidence of the student's work so far and the teacher's knowledge of IB standards. The IB itself does not send predicted grades to families or universities. What the IB publishes are results, on fixed dates: for the May exam session, DP results are released on the candidate website from 12:00 GMT on 6 July, and for the November session results are issued to schools from 16 December. So every grade you see before those dates - on a report, in an application, in an offer letter - is a school-issued prediction, however official it looks. The IB leaves it to each school whether to release predicted grades to candidates at all, so if your school shares them only on request, or only onward to universities, that is within its discretion.

Why universities are willing to decide on a prediction

Application deadlines arrive while the final written examinations are still months away, so universities have to decide on the best evidence available. In the UK, UCAS explains that a conditional offer means you still need to meet the requirements, usually exam results, and the offer lists the exact conditions. For IB applicants those conditions are expressed in total points and subject grades. The IB's own university-admission pages note that many universities use a score of 4 or 5 in a course as the minimum for admission or advanced placement, and that the full diploma requires at least 24 points with the other awarding conditions met. The predicted grade's job is therefore narrow and practical: it tells the university what your child is likely to achieve, and the university's answer stays provisional until results day confirms it.

There are actually two predicted grades

The prediction your family sees is the school's number, shared on applications and reports. There is a second layer most parents never see: teachers also submit predicted grades to the IB itself, for every subject including Theory of Knowledge and the extended essay. The IB's assessment procedures describe how it uses them: predicted grades come up in grade-award meetings when a subject's grade distributions and individual candidates' performance are considered, awarded grades are checked against predicted grades with further review where discrepancies are significant, and the IB can ask a school for supporting evidence behind its predictions. So the same number is evidence in two directions at once - outward to universities, and inward to the IB's own checks. That is one reason good schools predict honestly rather than generously: an inflated prediction helps nobody for long, because the final result is the number the offer letter ultimately points to.

How a school usually builds the number

The IB does not publish a single formula, so each school sets its own method. In practice, predictions commonly draw on year-one results in the Diploma Programme, mock or trial examinations, progress on internal assessments, and the teacher's judgement of the student's trajectory into the final exams. Because methods differ, two schools can arrive at different numbers for similar students. This is not a flaw to worry about; it is a reason to ask. A school's method is knowable, and coordinators answer questions about it every admission season.

What to ask the coordinator this term

• When will predicted grades be finalised, and how and when will they be shared with us?
• What evidence feeds the prediction in each subject - year-one results, mocks, internal assessments - and how is a borderline call made?
• If a prediction looks out of line with recent evidence, what is the review process, and who is part of it?
• For each university on our list, which offers are conditional on final IB results, and what exactly are the conditions?
• If a final result misses a condition in July, what are the options - re-mark, retake, or an insurance choice?

If July brings a surprise

Final results sometimes land above or below the prediction, and there is an official route for the worrying case. The IB's assessment FAQ explains that a re-mark, called an enquiry upon results, is placed by the school's DP coordinator rather than by the family, that the service carries a fee, that written consent from the candidate or legal guardian is required, and that the grade can go down as well as up, with a lowered grade standing once the re-mark is done. UCAS adds the other half of the picture from the university side: a conditional place is confirmed only once the conditions are met. So the first call after a disappointing result is to the coordinator, quickly, while re-mark windows are open.

None of this makes predicted grades something to fear. They are a working estimate with a known purpose: getting universities to a fair provisional decision before the evidence is complete. Treat them as a conversation with the school, not a sentence from it.

Sources and what they establish