For guidance counsellors

The coverage is uneven, on purpose

Three different depths of information sit on this site, and they look more alike than they are. Knowing which one you are reading is the single most useful thing on this page.

What exists, and what it will actually answer
Depth	Where	What you can rely on it for
Programme level	2 countries — Denmark, Netherlands	73 programmes with entry requirements recorded subject by subject, each against the page it came from. This is the only depth at which the subject checker can answer "does this student qualify".
National level	All 36 destinations on the site	How the IB is recognised, the deadlines, the fees, the application system and how the post-secondary sector is structured — including the non-university routes. Enough to advise a student on whether a country is worth pursuing, not enough to tell them whether they qualify for a given degree.
Orientation	The remaining 42 countries, under "Basics only" on Countries	Its universities, where they are and their IB statements. A starting point for a conversation, not an answer.

Using it in a conversation

From what cannot be changed to what can.

SubjectsLevels close doors years early. Subject checker
CountryRecognition, deadlines, cost. Most decisions settle here.
ProgrammeThe requirements, in the official wording.
InstitutionIts own page, always, before anything is submitted.

Why this order

The order matters more than it looks, because it goes from what cannot be changed to what can.

Subjects first, at the subject checker. Almost every gap this site can show a student is a subject level, not a grade, and levels are decided years before the application. A student in their first year can still act on it; a student in their last year is looking at a supplementary course.
Then the country, for recognition, deadlines and cost. This is where most decisions are actually settled — usually by language of instruction or by money.
Then the programme page, for the requirements and the official wording.
Then the institution's own page, always, before anything is submitted. Every programme here links to it. That link is the point of the site, not a courtesy.

The four things students reliably get wrong

Drawn from what the research actually turned up rather than from general advice.

They think grades are the obstacle.
Far more often it is a subject level: Mathematics HL, not a better grade.

An example

Mathematics at A level in Danish terms is HL in IB terms. A student with excellent grades and Mathematics SL is shut out of engineering everywhere in Denmark, and nothing about their grades fixes it.
They think CAS and the Extended Essay count.
No admissions office in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany or the Netherlands will read either.

What that means

They are worth doing and they are not admissions instruments, and a student spending anxious months optimising them for university is spending them for nothing.
They think the deadline is the end of the day.
The Danish deadline is 15 March at twelve noon, not midnight. The Dutch numerus fixus deadline is 15 January.
They forget results arrive after the deadlines.
IB results come out on 6 July; most European deadlines fall months earlier.

How each system handles it

Every system has a different answer to that — Denmark has the IB results service, the Netherlands decides it per institution. It is administrative rather than academic, and it is the most common way a good application fails.

What to check before repeating something from here

Three things, all on the page itself: the check date, whether a date is marked provisional, and the source link.

Why each one

The check date. Every page carries one. Admission rules change annually and several on this site are already scheduled to change before autumn 2027.
Whether a date is marked provisional. That means it is carried from a previous cycle because the authority has not published the new one. It is a good estimate and it is not a commitment.
The source link. Every consequential claim has one. If a student is about to act on something, open it.

How much of this has a person checked

0 of 1047 evidence records signed off by a person; 771 re-read automatically against their source.

What the two numbers mean

The honest answer, which the site publishes on every build rather than on request.

Signed off by a person: None of the 1047 evidence records yet. Every claim links to its source, so you can check any of them yourself.
Source re-read automatically: 771 records. The cited page was fetched again and searched for the claim: the exact wording was found on 197, most of it on 554 (usually a paraphrase), and it was not found on 20, which wait for a person.
What that means for you: A machine confirming that a phrase is still printed on a page is not the same as a person agreeing it means what we say. Both numbers are published so you can weigh them yourself, and neither is presented as the other.

How claims get onto the site, and how to report one that is wrong

What it will not do, by design

No chances, no rankings, no submissions, and no guesses: a figure nobody could verify is left blank.

Each one

It will not tell a student their chances. There is no score, no probability and no "likely". Past cut-offs appear as history, labelled as history.
It will not rank institutions, and has no view on which is best.
It will not submit anything, and ticking something off here has no relationship to whether a portal received it.
It will not guess. A figure nobody could verify is left blank and recorded as missing, which is why some fields are empty. That is a finding, not an oversight.

If something here is wrong

A wrong deadline costs a student a year. Open an issue: a claim that could cause harm is pulled within one working day, a deadline or entry requirement checked within three.