IB Year 2: What to Focus on From September

Starting IB Year 2 in September means you have roughly nine months to your final May exams. That sounds comfortable until you map out what needs to happen first: the Extended Essay, Internal Assessments across multiple subjects, the Theory of Knowledge essay, school mock exams, and then the actual revision window from January. Every one of those runs at the same time.

The students who find Year 2 manageable are not usually more talented than the ones who struggle. They planned the year in September instead of letting it plan them.

IB Year 2 in brief: from September to January, your priority is completing coursework (EE, IAs, TOK) without letting new subject content pile up; from January to May, full focus moves to structured exam revision. Students who map these two phases in September are the ones who reach May with their grades intact.

What makes Year 2 different

Year 1 is mostly building: learning content, starting Internal Assessments, beginning EE research, and getting used to IB assessment styles.

Year 2 is finishing. Every deadline that was somewhere in the future lands now, often in the same window. Your school collects EE final drafts. Subject teachers submit IAs. You write the TOK essay. Internal school mocks arrive in October or November.

And class carries on. New content is still being taught. You are not in a revision year; you are in a delivery year with a revision phase built into the back half.

This matters because the biggest Year 2 mistake is treating January as a clean slate. Students who leave EE or IA work half-finished until December find that the weeks they needed for revision are spent on coursework. The time to prevent that is September, when the year still feels manageable.

The Year 2 calendar worth mapping now

Exact dates vary by school and IB session, but the typical structure for a May-session student looks like this:

The International Baccalaureate Organisation publishes the formal deadlines for each session at ibo.org. Ask your IB coordinator in September for every school-level deadline and put them in one place, because the IB does not send personal reminders.

Three immediate priorities in September

1. Get the Extended Essay to a near-final state

The Extended Essay is a 4,000-word piece of independent research. If Year 1 went well, you have a research question, a structure and most of your sources. September is for completing the final draft or getting close to it. Most schools want the final copy between October and December.

Students who leave EE writing until November find it colliding with mock exams and the start of their revision window. Every week of EE work completed in September is a week of revision freed up in February.

If you are behind on the EE, September's job is to reach a submittable draft before October, even if it still needs polish. A decent EE submitted on time is worth more than a slightly better one finished late under pressure.

2. Know exactly where every IA stands

Internal Assessments vary by subject: a Chemistry IA is a lab report, a History HL IA is a 2,200-word historical investigation, a Maths IA is an exploration. The workload and timeline differ, but they all need to be done.

In September, list every IA you have outstanding and its school deadline. For subjects where data collection is still needed (sciences, Maths), confirm it is done or book it now. For written IAs, set a personal completion date a few weeks before the school deadline so teacher feedback has time to land.

One administrative check worth doing: confirm with your IB coordinator when your school submits each subject's IAs to the IB. If you miss the school deadline, you may miss the IB window.

3. Keep Year 1 content active

You will be examined on everything from both years. Year 1 content fades without regular retrieval, and by the time Year 2 starts you have been away from some of it for months.

A low-effort habit that stops this from becoming a problem: once a fortnight per subject, spend ten minutes actively recalling a Year 1 topic before opening your notes. The research on retrieval practice is consistent: Roediger and Karpicke (2006), publishing in Psychological Science, showed that testing yourself on material improves long-term retention far more than an equivalent time spent re-reading. You do not need to re-learn Year 1 content; you need to prevent it from fading.

When to start serious exam revision

For most students, January is the right moment.

The logic: if you are still completing IAs and polishing the TOK essay in November and December, layering deep subject revision on top of that adds load without meaningful return. You have limited daily energy. Front-load it on what has a hard deadline first.

From January, when most coursework is done, structured revision becomes the clear priority: spaced repetition across topics, timed past papers, and gap-filling based on what practice tests reveal. Dunlosky et al. (2013), reviewing learning techniques in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, rated practice testing the highest-utility method of all the strategies they studied.

If your school runs November mocks, treat them as a diagnostic, not a revision trigger. Sit them under proper conditions, mark them carefully against the mark scheme, and use the gaps they reveal to build your topic list for January. Students who panic after November mocks and pivot straight into intense revision often run out of energy by February, exactly when they need it most.

Building a weekly rhythm that holds

You need a structure that runs two things simultaneously from September to January: finishing components, and keeping subject content from going stale.

A rough pattern that works:

• Each weekday after school: keep up with what was taught that day while it is still fresh. Brief notes in your own words, not transcribed, help you consolidate the material because the act of paraphrasing forces you to process it.
• Two or three evenings each week: dedicated time on whichever component needs work this week (EE, a specific IA, TOK).
• Weekend: one or two subject review sessions, prioritising your weaker subjects and any Year 1 topics that have not been touched recently.

The rule that matters: do not let any subject go untouched for more than two weeks. Longer than that and it starts to feel like new material when you return.

This is genuinely hard to sustain without a system. Deciding what to study each day, tracking seven subjects' worth of content across both years, and scheduling when to revisit each topic is a real administrative job on top of the actual learning.

If you find yourself spending meaningful time each week just working out what to do, that is worth fixing. Root is an adaptive tutor that learns how your brain thinks and an AI manager of your whole study life: it builds the plan, decides when each topic needs to come back up using spaced repetition, and runs you through exam-style practice with examiner-style marking so you can see exactly where marks go. On the free plan you get 60 tutor messages a week, two practice tests with per-question marking, and a revision mode that revisits your own past sessions targeting exactly what you struggled with. You do not have to work out what to study each day; it does that part. See exactly what Root does or set up a free account in two minutes.

Year 2 mistakes worth avoiding

Treating November mocks like the real exams. Some students burn through past papers and motivation in October and November as if the mocks are what counts. They are useful data. Save the intensive revision push for January.

Letting the EE and TOK drift as background tasks. They are not background tasks. The EE requires concentrated writing time. Block it explicitly in the calendar each week.

Revising only your favourite subjects. Your total IB Diploma score is the sum of all six subjects. A grade 4 in one subject costs you as much as a grade 6 in another earns. The subjects you find harder deserve at least equal weekly time, especially while there is space in September to build real understanding.

Waiting for teachers to direct everything. IB teachers will give guidance, but the IB is designed around independent learning. Subject guides are published by the IB, mark schemes are available through your school's MyIB access, and the Extended Essay supervisor is a support, not a project manager. Students who take ownership of their own deadlines and study plans consistently do better than those who wait to be told.

One practical step this week

Write down every deadline you have between now and January: EE, each IA, TOK, school assessments and mocks. Then assign a personal "done by" date for each that falls two to three weeks before the school deadline. That buffer is where problems get noticed and fixed before they become crises.

Students who do this in September almost always say Year 2 was demanding but manageable. Students who improvise tend to describe it as the worst few months of their lives.

The good news is that this year, handled well, actually builds something real. The IB prepares you for university-level independent work better than most alternative qualifications. The workload is genuine, but so are the skills it develops.

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For related reading: Extended Essay guide, IB Internal Assessment tips, how to build an IB revision timetable, how to manage the IB workload, IB predicted grades explained, full IB exam prep guide.