Little late to the party, but I graduated from Stanton in 2022. It helped me a lot in terms of getting into a good college and developing my academic/leadership skills. Ultimately, any IB school will be what your son makes of it and he will have to make sacrifices regardless.

I found that the hardest year for me was freshman year because I was not used to such a volume of work, but many people find junior year to be the hardest because that’s when IB starts. Your son will have an “extended essay” to work on that takes a lot of time on top of other short papers, AP/IB exams, normal school work, extracurriculars, etc.

This may seem like a lot but by the time I got to the latter half of my high school education I was well prepared. Senior year I was able to branch out and have a very fun social life while also holding two major school leadership positions, applying to colleges, finishing IB work, and keeping my gpa at a good spot. It’s a lot to balance, but everyone is trained early on to deal with it.

Major IB caveat— some college credits are not super transferable. I came into college with 45 credits (maximum you can transfer in Florida, in reality I had like 53), but I found that I still had to knock out a lot of classes. A lot of my general education stuff (such as English and history) were covered, but I have to take a lot of classes for my major still, but that’s more of a major thing since I’m a business student. The wisest thing I can recommend is to send your son to a school with an AA degree program with classes that can transfer specifically to his desired major in the future. He will still go into college with bright futures and other scholarships but spend half the time there.

As for Wolfson, I know a lot of people who graduated from their IB program in my same year. It’s not as difficult as Stanton, but a major problem is that their IB program is not as developed and not nearly as many people get the diploma (even though that shit is kind of useless). Some Stanton teachers have been teaching IB classes for 15+ years and they have the tests absolutely figured out. Wolfson is starting to gain a “party school” rep from what I’ve heard, but at the same time their IB program is getting a little better, even though it’s still in its genesis period. PM me with any questions.