IB Maths AA vs AI: How UAE Students Should Actually Choose Between the Four Routes

Of all the decisions a UAE family makes in the two months between the end of Year 11 and the start of the IB Diploma Programme, the maths choice is the one most often made on the worst information. It gets decided in a corridor conversation, on the strength of a sentence from an older sibling, and the sentence is almost always a version of "AI is the easier one".

That sentence is not quite false, which is what makes it dangerous. IB Maths AA vs AI is not a difficulty ranking at all: the real position is that Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches (AA) and Mathematics: Applications and Interpretation (AI) are two different courses with different content emphases, different assessment instruments and different university consequences — and that the Standard Level versus Higher Level decision inside each of them usually matters more to a student's workload and results than which of the two names they pick.

This guide is for students and parents in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and the rest of the UAE who are choosing between the four maths routes, or who are two months into one and wondering whether they chose wrong. It covers what the two courses actually test differently, how each is assessed, what to look for on a university prerequisite page before you commit, what Middle Years Programme (MYP) maths does and does not tell you, why the exploration is a different kind of task in AI than in AA, and what switching costs if it comes to that.

One structural note up front. Subject guides are revised, and the authoritative description of either course is the IB's own guide for the cohort your school is teaching, available through ibo.org and through your Diploma Programme coordinator. We name the source for every structural claim below so you can check it there. We do not publish IB exam dates on this page — your coordinator holds your school's session calendar, and an exam date is something you act on, so it should come from the awarding body rather than from us.

IB Maths AA vs AI: what the two courses actually test differently

The honest one-sentence version: AA is the course built around algebraic method, proof and analytic technique, and AI is the course built around modelling, data and the use of technology to answer questions about real situations. Both are serious mathematics. They are serious about different things.

Both courses share a common core of content organised across the same five topic areas — number and algebra, functions, geometry and trigonometry, statistics and probability, and calculus — as set out in the IB's mathematics subject guides. What differs is the depth and the weight each course gives to those areas, and more importantly the kind of question each course asks about them.

That final row is the one nobody warns UAE students about, so we will say it loudly. The characteristic AA failure is procedural: you did not secure the algebra, and no amount of understanding rescues you in a paper where the first mark depends on a correct manipulation. The characteristic AI failure is interpretive: you produced the regression, you quoted the coefficient, and you wrote a sentence that did not answer the question. AI punishes students who treat it as a calculating course. A great many students pick AI precisely because they want a calculating course.

The takeaway: neither failure is about ability. Each course breaks the student who arrived expecting the other one, which is why aptitude — not difficulty ranking — is the only useful basis for this choice.

There are four routes, not two

Here is the restructuring that makes the decision tractable. Stop thinking of it as AA versus AI. Think of it as four distinct courses, and notice that the Higher Level versus Standard Level axis is where the workload actually lives.

The IB's subject guides set out Standard Level courses at 150 recommended teaching hours and Higher Level at 240. That is a difference of 90 hours of taught content inside a two-year programme that also contains five other subjects, the Extended Essay, Theory of Knowledge and Creativity, Activity, Service — and if those two core pieces are still unplanned, our Extended Essay topic guide for UAE students and TOK guide for UAE students are the places to start. In lived terms it is the difference between a subject that fits and a subject that colonises your evenings.

So the four routes, described as a student experiences them:

• AA HL. The most technically demanding of the four and the one most frequently named on maths-heavy university prerequisite pages. Deep analytic content, an extra paper, and the route that leaves the least room for a student who is not genuinely comfortable with algebra. Our IB DP Mathematics AA HL tutoring page sets out how support on this route is usually structured.
• AA SL. The analytic approach at a manageable volume. Often the right answer for a strong mathematician whose degree plans sit outside engineering and the physical sciences, and for a student who wants proper algebraic grounding without 240 hours. See AA SL tutoring.
• AI HL. Frequently misread as "AA HL but easier". It is a full Higher Level course with its own substantial statistical content, and the modelling and interpretation demands at HL are real. See AI HL tutoring.
• AI SL. The lightest of the four in volume, and the right answer for a large number of students — particularly those heading into fields where statistical literacy matters more than analytic technique. See AI SL tutoring, or AI SL online and AA SL online if timetabling is the constraint.

The most common genuinely bad choice we see is not AI over AA. It is HL over SL, taken by a student who wanted the prestige of a Higher Level maths and then spent two years losing marks in four other subjects to pay for it. The Diploma is scored across the whole programme. A maths route that costs you two points elsewhere has not helped.

The takeaway: the level decision is the one that moves 90 hours of your week, so take it first — the course decision is about fit, and fit is not a workload. If the curriculum itself is still open, IB, IGCSE and A-Levels compared for UAE students is the earlier decision.

How each route is assessed, paper by paper

Assessment structure is where the four routes separate most cleanly, and it is the part of the decision that is public, checkable and almost never looked at.

That structure is as set out in the IB's mathematics subject guides at ibo.org. We have deliberately not published component weightings, because they are revised between guides and a percentage a student plans their revision around should come from the guide their own school is teaching. Ask your Diploma Programme coordinator for the current figures; it is a one-email question.

Three consequences follow from that table, and each of them should change how a student revises.

AA's no-technology paper is a separate skill, not a harder version of the same skill. A student who has done every past question with a calculator in hand has not practised AA Paper 1. They have practised AA Paper 2. The habit of working exactly — surds, exact trigonometric values, algebraic simplification without a numerical check — has to be built deliberately, and it is the single most common gap we find in a student who is "good at maths" and underperforming in AA.

That is why exact working is not a stylistic preference. A student who reaches the right number by a route the mark scheme cannot follow has collected the last mark and skipped the ones before it, and on Paper 1 there is no calculator to reconstruct the steps for them.

The Higher Level third paper changes what revision means. At HL, both courses add a third paper, and it is an extended problem-solving instrument rather than a longer version of Papers 1 and 2. You cannot prepare for it by doing more short questions. You prepare for it by doing fewer, longer problems and tolerating being stuck, which is a study habit most students have never been taught.

The takeaway: the extra 90 hours are not a harder version of the first 150, they are additional content with a third paper attached — which is why a level change is a content decision and a course change is a technique decision.

The exploration is the one component every route shares. Whatever the four letters on your timetable, every student writes a mathematical exploration, and it is the only component where a student controls the question. We give it its own section below because it is also the component where AI students are most often caught out.

Which route does your target degree need?

This is the section where we are going to decline to give you the answer you want, and then explain why that is more useful.

We are not going to publish a list of UAE university programmes with their maths prerequisites, because admissions requirements are set by each university, are revised, and vary by programme within the same institution. A list on a tutoring blog read eighteen months after it was written is exactly how a student ends up with the wrong Higher Level. What we can give you is the method, and the specific things to look for that students miss.

The practical checklist is short:

1. 1Name the universities. For UAE-based study, that typically means checking the published requirements of institutions such as Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates University, the American University of Sharjah, the University of Sharjah, Zayed University and the American University in Dubai — each on its own admissions pages, for the specific programme. Add whichever overseas systems are in play, because a student applying to the UAE, the UK and North America is satisfying three different sets of conventions at once.
2. 2Read the programme page, not the university page. Engineering and business inside the same university can differ.
3. 3Write the requirement down with the date you read it, and check it again in Year 12. This is the single highest-value piece of admin in the whole process and it takes ten minutes.
4. 4Where AA is named and AI is not, treat that as a real signal rather than assuming equivalence, and get the answer in writing from the admissions office.
5. 5If the student's plans are genuinely open, optimise for total Diploma points and for the student's own aptitude, not for the most defensive maths choice available.

For a broader view of how the Diploma is read by universities in this region, our piece on how UAE universities recognise the IB Diploma covers the recognition question in more detail, and the comparison of IB, IGCSE and A-Levels in the UAE is the right place to start if the curriculum itself is still open.

What your MYP maths actually tells you

MYP maths is a better predictor than most families use it as, and a worse one than schools sometimes imply.

Where it is genuinely informative: a student who has been in extended mathematics in the MYP has met more abstraction and more algebraic technique than a student in standard mathematics, and that difference shows up quickly in AA. If the plan is AA HL from a standard MYP pathway, that is not impossible, but it is a gap to close deliberately in the summer rather than discover in October. MYP mathematics tutoring and MYP extended mathematics tutoring are the two pages that cover that transition work.

Where it is misleading: MYP assessment is criterion-based and the four criteria reward different things. A student can do well overall on the strength of investigating patterns and communicating mathematically while remaining shaky on knowing and understanding — and it is knowing and understanding, the procedural fluency criterion, that AA Paper 1 interrogates most directly.

So the question to ask is not "what was the MYP grade". It is sharper than that:

• Under timed conditions, with no calculator, could the student reliably manipulate an algebraic expression correctly? That is the AA question.
• Given a messy real context and some data, could the student produce a defensible written interpretation rather than a number? That is the AI question.
• Which of those two tasks did the student avoid when given a choice? Avoidance is more diagnostic than preference.

The takeaway: the MYP grade answers neither question. Set the two tasks yourself over a weekend and you will learn more than a report card can tell you. Our guide to the MYP for Dubai parents explains why the criterion structure hides this, and MYP standard mathematics tutoring is where a standard-pathway student closing an AA gap usually starts.

Students transferring in from outside the MYP — from Cambridge IGCSE, from Pearson Edexcel International GCSE, from a CBSE or American middle school — should run the same two questions against whatever they did instead, and our guide to switching from CBSE to the IB in Dubai covers the rest of that transition. A student arriving from an IGCSE with strong algebra is often better prepared for AA than a student arriving from a modelling-heavy course with a higher grade.

The mathematical exploration: why AI's brief is often the harder one

Every one of the four routes includes the mathematical exploration, an individual piece of written mathematics the student chooses. It is the only component where the student sets the question, and it is the component where the AA/AI distinction produces the most counter-intuitive result: the AI exploration is frequently the harder brief to execute well.

The reason is structural. An AA student exploring, say, a result in series or a geometric construction has a well-defined mathematical object and a clear sense of what "doing some mathematics" looks like. An AI student exploring a real situation has to find a situation, obtain or justify data about it, select a model, apply it, and then — the part that goes wrong — evaluate it honestly. The evaluation is where marks live and where students, having spent three weeks producing a beautiful regression, write two sentences saying the model "fits quite well".

The takeaway: the AI exploration asks a sixteen-year-old to be sceptical about their own work, which is a harder instruction than "prove this".

What that means practically for an AI student:

• Choose a context you can get real data about. A brilliant question with no obtainable data becomes a fortnight of wasted effort and a rushed substitute.
• Plan the evaluation before you do the modelling. If you cannot say in advance how you would know whether the model was any good, you do not have an exploration yet.
• Mathematics has to be visible, not just performed by software. An exploration where every calculation was produced by a spreadsheet and nothing was reasoned about is a thin piece of work regardless of how sophisticated the output looks.

The takeaway: the evaluation is written last and planned first. Reverse that order and the component collapses, whichever route you are on.

And the boundary that applies on every route, which we hold firmly and which you should test with any provider: a tutor teaches, questions, reviews and gives feedback on an exploration. A tutor does not write it, does not restructure it into finished prose, and does not supply a topic as a deliverable. The exploration is assessed as the student's own work, and IB academic-honesty rules make a breach here a serious matter for the student — far more serious than for whoever sold the help. What legitimate support looks like is set out on our IB internal assessment support page, and the same principle governs Extended Essay support.

When switching is still possible, and what it costs

Switch windows are set by schools, not by the IB, and they are shorter than families expect. The general shape in UAE schools is that movement between courses and levels is easiest in the opening weeks of DP1, becomes a managed exception after that, and becomes genuinely difficult once the second year begins.

The takeaway: the choice is made in the two lit months before anyone has evidence, and the cheap window to revise it closes about six weeks after the evidence starts arriving.

The four moves, ranked by how expensive they are:

1. 1HL to SL within the same course, early. The least disruptive and the most common. The student drops taught content rather than acquiring different content, and the five other subjects immediately benefit.
2. 2AA SL to AI SL, early. Manageable. The statistical content is the catch-up, and it is a defined body of work rather than a different way of thinking.
3. 3AI to AA at the same level. Harder, because the gap is technique rather than content. A student moving into AA acquires the no-technology discipline from a standing start.
4. 4Any change in the second year. Expensive in every direction, and sometimes still the right call — a student heading for a very poor result in AA HL is better served by a sound result at SL than by loyalty to a decision made eighteen months earlier.

Two things to do if you are inside the window and unsure. Ask the teacher a precise question: not "is my child coping" but "which specific skill is missing, and is it a volume problem or a technique problem". A volume problem argues for a level change; a technique problem may be fixable with six weeks of targeted work. And get the school's actual deadline in writing, because it is the hard constraint on everything else.

The calculator question, and what each course assumes

Technology is not an administrative footnote in this decision; it is part of what each course is.

AI assumes technology throughout. The course is built on the premise that a student has computational tools and the interesting question is what to do with the output. AA removes technology from one paper deliberately, because part of what AA is assessing is exact analytic work.

This produces a practical asymmetry that students discover late:

• An AI student must be genuinely fluent with their technology, not merely in possession of it. Knowing which regression to run, how to read what comes back, and what the tool is quietly assuming is examinable competence.
• An AA student must be able to put the technology down. This is a trained habit. The most effective single change we make with AA students is a weekly block of exact work with no calculator on the desk, started early rather than in the final term.
• Both must use what the school and the IB permit, with the specification confirmed through the school. Calculator rules are centre-administered and we do not restate them here; your DP coordinator and exams officer hold the current requirements.

The tactical mistake worth naming: buying the most capable permitted calculator and treating the purchase as the preparation. The device does not know your course. A student who cannot reproduce an exact value without it has bought a crutch for a paper where crutches are not allowed.

The takeaway: the device does not know your course. On one route fluency with it is examinable competence; on the other, putting it down is.

Why "AI is the easy one" is the most expensive assumption in the Diploma

Let us take the sentence apart properly, because it is the reason most wrong choices get made in this subject.

Partly true, in one narrow sense. AI SL is the lightest of the four routes in taught volume, and for a student whose strengths are interpretive rather than technical it will feel more tractable than AA SL. That is a legitimate reason to choose it.

False in three expensive ways.

First, AI HL is not an easy course. It is a 240-hour Higher Level course with a substantial statistical and modelling core and its own third paper. A student who chooses AI HL expecting a soft HL has chosen one of the heavier workloads in the Diploma on a misunderstanding.

Second, "easier" measured in effort is not "easier" measured in marks. AI rewards written interpretation, and a student who is strong at calculation and weak at explanation will find AI harder to score well in than the arithmetic of the course suggests. The students we see most frustrated in AI are frequently the ones who were told it would be simple.

Third, and most costly: the choice can close doors the student has not looked through yet. Where a programme names a specific maths course, having the other one is a problem discovered at application, when nothing can be done. This is not an argument for defensive over-choosing — a student forced into AA HL who then underperforms across the Diploma has paid a higher price. It is an argument for reading the prerequisite pages in the week of the decision rather than two years later.

The takeaway: the sentence survives because its one true part is said loudly and its three false parts are only discovered later, one of them too late to act on.

The replacement heuristic is unglamorous and reliable. Choose the level your week can carry. Choose the course your aptitude actually fits. Check that the prerequisites you can identify today permit it. Revisit in Year 12 once there is real evidence. That is the whole method.

How much support does each route realistically need?

Honest answer: it depends far more on the gap than on the route, and any provider quoting a fixed number of hours per course is quoting a sales figure.

What is reliably true is the shape of the need:

• A technique gap in AA responds to short, frequent, early work. Thirty to forty minutes of exact algebra twice a week from the start of DP1 does more than a block of intensive sessions in the final term, because the thing being built is a habit.
• An interpretation gap in AI responds to work on written responses — practising the sentence that answers the question, not the calculation that precedes it. It needs fewer sessions and more written feedback between them.
• A Higher Level third-paper gap needs long problems and few of them. This is the opposite of exam-drill revision and it is the hardest sell to a student who wants to feel productive.
• An exploration needs a small number of well-timed conversations — at topic choice, at the point the mathematics is selected, and before the evaluation is written — not weekly supervision.

The takeaway: the frequency matters more than the total. Two short sessions a week from September beat a holiday intensive in the final term, and our note on the best time to start IB tutoring in Dubai sets out why.

On cost, here is what the UAE market publishes. These are other companies' figures, read in October 2026, not ours. Market rates in the UAE run roughly AED 45-150 per hour at the budget or university-student end, AED 150-300 for a qualified subject tutor online, AED 180-500 for an in-home visit including travel, AED 200-450 and upwards for an IB, IGCSE or A-Level specialist, and AED 500-650 or more at the premium examiner-led end. Priced by the month rather than the hour, the market advertises figures like AED 799 for eight online sessions, or AED 1,599-1,799 for four two-hour visits to the home. For wider context on household costs, KHDA confirmed on 22 May 2026 that there would be no increase in private school fees in Dubai for the 2026-27 academic year, under Dubai's second economic incentives package valued at AED 1.5 billion.

The takeaway: the in-home band sits above the online specialist band because it is buying a drive rather than a better mathematician — which on a route as thinly staffed as AA HL is exactly the wrong thing to pay for. For the full fee picture see IB home tutor fees in Dubai.

That last figure matters for a practical reason. A growing IB cohort competing for a thin pool of specialist DP maths teachers is precisely the market condition in which "find someone local who teaches AA HL" becomes a hard search — which brings us to how we actually work.

How IB Gram delivers in the UAE, said plainly. Every UAE lesson we teach is one-to-one and runs over live video. We do not send tutors to homes anywhere in the UAE — home visiting is an India-only service, and we would rather you read that here than find out after a phone call. For a route as specialised as AA HL or AI HL that is a genuine advantage rather than a concession: the pool of people who can teach the no-technology discipline of AA Paper 1 properly, or the modelling-and-evaluation craft of an AI exploration, is small, and online delivery means a student in Abu Dhabi or Sharjah can work with the right specialist rather than the nearest one — AI HL in Abu Dhabi and IB Diploma tutoring in Sharjah run on exactly the same footing as Dubai. It also removes the row in the market rate table that includes somebody's commute. Subject starting points: AA HL, AA SL, AI HL, AI SL, AI HL online and AA HL in Abu Dhabi.

Where maths interacts with other subjects — and in the Diploma it always does — the pairings that most often need joint attention are IB DP Physics HL, IB DP Chemistry HL and IB DP Economics HL, all of which lean on the maths route in ways the subject guides do not advertise. Our general IB Diploma tutoring page for Dubai covers how a multi-subject plan is put together, and how to approach a 7 in IB maths goes into the mark-level detail this page deliberately stays above.

Two limits, stated because they are the questions worth asking any provider. We make no grade promises of any kind — no guaranteed 7, no guaranteed improvement — and we do not publish satisfaction or score statistics we cannot produce the underlying data for. And we hold no IB, KHDA, ADEK, SPEA, Ministry of Education, Cambridge or Pearson approval, accreditation or partnership, and we will not imply otherwise.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between IB Maths AA and AI?

Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches is built around algebraic method, proof and analytic technique; Mathematics: Applications and Interpretation is built around modelling real situations, statistics and the use of technology to interpret results. Both cover the same five topic areas — number and algebra, functions, geometry and trigonometry, statistics and probability, and calculus — with different depth and emphasis, as the IB's mathematics subject guides set out. The difference is not difficulty. It is what kind of question each course asks you to answer.

Is IB Maths AI easier than AA?

AI SL is the lightest of the four routes in taught volume, so in that narrow sense yes. In three other senses no. AI HL is a full 240-hour Higher Level course with substantial statistical content and its own third paper. AI rewards written interpretation, so a student strong at calculation and weak at explanation often scores less well than the course's reputation suggests. And where a university programme names AA specifically, choosing AI can close a door that is discovered at application. Check prerequisites in the week you decide.

Which maths route do UAE universities require for engineering?

Requirements are set programme by programme and are revised, so the only reliable answer is the one on the programme's own admissions page. Check the institutions you are actually applying to — Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates University, the American University of Sharjah, the University of Sharjah, Zayed University and the American University in Dubai each publish their own requirements — and read the engineering programme page rather than the university page, because faculties inside one university differ. Where AA is named and AI is not, get the answer in writing from admissions.

How many teaching hours does each IB maths course have?

The IB's mathematics subject guides set Standard Level courses at 150 recommended teaching hours and Higher Level at 240. That 90-hour difference sits inside a two-year programme that also holds five other subjects, the Extended Essay, Theory of Knowledge and CAS, which is why the Higher Level versus Standard Level decision usually affects a student's week more than the AA versus AI decision does. Confirm the figures against the subject guide your school is teaching, since guides are revised.

How is IB maths assessed at Standard and Higher Level?

Standard Level routes have two written papers; Higher Level routes have three, with the third an extended problem-solving instrument rather than a longer version of the first two. Every route also includes the mathematical exploration, an individual piece of written mathematics the student chooses. Technology is permitted throughout both AI courses, and is not permitted on AA Paper 1. Component weightings are revised between subject guides, so confirm the current figures for your cohort with your school's Diploma Programme coordinator.

Can my child switch from AA to AI after the Diploma has started?

Usually yes in the first term, with the school's agreement, and the window is set by the school rather than the IB. Movement is easiest in the opening weeks of the first DP year, becomes a managed exception after that, and becomes genuinely difficult in the second year. Ranked by cost: dropping from Higher to Standard Level in the same course is the least disruptive, AA SL to AI SL is manageable, AI to AA at the same level is harder because the gap is technique rather than content. Get your school's actual deadline in writing.

Does MYP maths predict which route is right?

Partly. A student from MYP extended mathematics has met more abstraction and algebraic technique than one from standard mathematics, and that shows up fast in AA. But MYP assessment is criterion-based, and a student can do well overall through investigating patterns and communicating mathematically while remaining shaky on the procedural fluency that AA Paper 1 interrogates. Better questions than the grade: under timed conditions with no calculator, could the student manipulate algebra reliably? And which task did they avoid when given a choice?

Why is the AI exploration often harder than the AA exploration?

Because an AI exploration requires the student to find a real situation, obtain or justify data about it, select a model, apply it and then evaluate it honestly — and the evaluation is where the marks are and where students run out of road. An AA student exploring a defined mathematical object has a clearer sense of what doing mathematics looks like. Practical advice for AI: choose a context where real data is obtainable, plan how you will judge the model before you build it, and make sure mathematics is visible rather than only performed by software.

Can a tutor help write my child's mathematical exploration?

No, and no legitimate provider should offer it. A tutor teaches, questions, reviews and gives feedback. A tutor does not write the exploration, does not restructure it into finished prose, and does not supply a topic as a deliverable. The exploration is assessed as the student's own work, and under IB academic-honesty rules a breach is a serious matter for the student. Useful support is a small number of well-timed conversations: at topic choice, when the mathematics is selected, and before the evaluation is written.

What calculator does each IB maths course assume?

AI assumes technology throughout, so fluency with the tool — knowing which regression to run, how to read the output, what the tool is quietly assuming — is examinable competence rather than convenience. AA removes technology from Paper 1 deliberately, because exact analytic work is part of what it assesses, so AA students need a trained habit of working without it. Permitted models and calculator rules are centre-administered: confirm the current specification with your school's DP coordinator and examinations officer rather than from any blog.

Does IB Gram send a maths tutor to our home in Dubai?

No, and not anywhere else in the UAE either: we teach UAE students one-to-one over live video, and home visiting is a service we run in India only. For a route as specialised as AA HL or AI HL this is an advantage rather than a limitation: the pool of people who teach the no-technology discipline of AA Paper 1 or the evaluation craft of an AI exploration properly is small, and online delivery means a student in Abu Dhabi or Sharjah works with the right specialist rather than the nearest one, without paying for anyone's commute.

How much does IB maths tutoring cost in the UAE?

Market rates published by UAE providers and read in October 2026 run roughly AED 45-150 per hour at the budget or university-student end, AED 150-300 for a qualified subject tutor online, AED 180-500 for an in-home visit including travel, AED 200-450 and upwards for an IB, IGCSE or A-Level specialist, and AED 500-650 or more at the premium examiner-led end. Monthly packages in the market include around AED 799 for eight online sessions. Those are the market's figures, not ours — ask us for a current quote and a trial rather than relying on a band.

How many hours of tutoring does an AA HL student need?

Any provider quoting a fixed number is quoting a sales figure, because the answer depends on the gap rather than the route. What is reliable is the shape: a technique gap in AA responds to short, frequent, early work — thirty to forty minutes of exact algebra twice a week from the start of the first DP year beats an intensive block in the final term, because the thing being built is a habit. A Higher Level third-paper gap needs long problems and few of them, which is the opposite of exam drilling.

The short version. Decide Standard or Higher Level first, because that is the decision your whole week pays for. Then choose between Analysis and Approaches and Applications and Interpretation on the student's actual aptitude — exact algebraic work on one side, defensible interpretation of messy situations on the other — having first read the prerequisite pages of the programmes you are genuinely considering and written down what they said and when you read it. Revisit in Year 12 when there is real evidence. And if the gap is a technique rather than a choice, that is the part we teach: start at AA HL or AI HL.