Every IB Marker user has unlimited access to all practice questions. The only soft limit is the rolling daily AI marking allowance — you can practice as much as you need.

Practice Mode is untimed and provides instant feedback after each question. It's perfect for learning and understanding concepts at your own pace.

Exam Mode simulates real IB exam conditions with time limits. You complete all questions first, then receive feedback for the entire exam. This helps you prepare for the pressure of actual exams.

Yes! When starting a practice session, you can choose to practice questions from specific topics within a subject, or let the system select questions from across the entire syllabus. This flexibility helps you focus on areas that need more work.

Questions are rated using a 4-component difficulty scoring system that considers: conceptual depth, mathematical complexity, multi-step reasoning required, and domain expertise needed. The system adapts to your performance level over time, presenting appropriately challenging questions.

The difficulty percentage represents a question's percentile ranking compared to all questions in that subject. A 75% difficulty means the question is harder than 75% of questions in the database. Use the filter slider in Practice Mode to select questions within your comfort zone - start around 30-50% and gradually increase as you improve.

IB Marker uses adaptive difficulty to personalise your exams. Based on your recent exam scores (last 2-5 exams), the system places you in a performance tier and selects questions accordingly:

• Advanced (85%+): Questions from 60th-100th percentile
• Proficient (70-84%): Questions from 40th-85th percentile
• Intermediate (55-69%): Questions from 25th-65th percentile
• Foundation (<55%): Questions from 0-50th percentile

This keeps you in your optimal learning zone - challenging enough to grow, but not so hard that you get discouraged.

We recommend 1-2 simulated exams per week per subject. This frequency allows the adaptive system to accurately track your progress while giving you time to review feedback and practice weak areas between exams. Closer to your actual IB exams, you might increase to 2-3 per week to build stamina under timed conditions.

Your profile is your public identity on IB Marker. You can customize your display name, showcase up to 3 university badges you're proud of, and track your statistics. Other students can view your profile to see your achievements, total XP, and leaderboard rankings. Your profile also shows your study streak and subject preferences.

Yes! You can send friend requests to other students you know. Once connected, you can see each other's progress, compare stats, and view when friends are online. Friends appear on a dedicated friends leaderboard, making it easy to have friendly competition with classmates or study partners.

Leaderboards rank students by XP earned. There are three timeframes: Daily (resets at midnight), Weekly (resets every Monday), and All-Time. You can filter to compete globally, within your school, or just among your friends. Your position updates in real-time as you earn XP from practice, exams, and multiplayer.

Multiplayer mode lets you compete against other students in real-time. Select a subject and join the matchmaking queue. Once 2 or more players are matched (usually within 10 minutes), everyone votes on which question to answer. Then you all answer the same question under time pressure, and scores are compared at the end. It's a great way to test yourself under competitive conditions!

Time is calculated based on the question's mark value: (Total Marks x 75 seconds) + 10 seconds. For example, a 4-mark question gives you about 5 minutes and 20 seconds. The voting phase lasts 20 seconds plus additional time for longer questions. Everyone gets the same time, so it's a fair test of speed and accuracy.

Your dashboard notification bell shows 8 types of alerts: friend requests, messages, game invitations, class invitations, milestone completions, new assignments, exam results, and assignment due reminders. To manage these:

• Click the bell icon to view all notifications
• Click individual notifications to act on them or mark as read
• Go to Settings > Notifications to enable/disable specific notification types

You can customise which notifications you receive without affecting your account functionality.

University badges are achievements modeled after real universities from around the world. We feature over 20 universities across different continents and prestige levels - from internationally renowned institutions like Oxford, MIT, and the Sorbonne to excellent national and regional universities. Each university has milestones aligned with subjects and skills those institutions are known for, making it a fun way to explore different academic paths!

Universities are organized into 4 prestige tiers representing different levels of challenge:

• Elite Tier: World-renowned institutions (Harvard, Oxford, MIT, Cambridge) - the most challenging milestones
• National Tier: Leading national universities with global recognition
• State Tier: Strong regional institutions known for specific programs
• Regional Tier: Excellent local universities - a great starting point for beginners

Start with Regional tier badges to build confidence, then work your way up to Elite as your skills improve!

Each university badge has specific milestones that act as structured learning goals. Rather than practicing randomly, you can work toward unlocking badges by completing targeted challenges - like answering a certain number of questions in specific subjects, achieving minimum score thresholds, or mastering particular topics. The milestones are designed to encourage well-rounded preparation across your IB subjects.

Each university badge has 6 progression levels: Basic, Gold, Elite, Master, Platinum, and Legendary. As you complete more milestones, you advance through levels. Each level unlocks a passive XP multiplier that boosts all future XP gains: Basic (1.0x), Gold (1.2x), Elite (1.4x), Master (1.6x), Platinum (1.8x), Legendary (2.0x). Higher levels mean faster progression!

Badge combos reward students who earn badges from multiple related universities. For example, reaching Yellow level at both Oxford and Cambridge unlocks the "UK Elite" combo, while progressing at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford might unlock an "Ivy+ Pioneer" combo. Combos grant permanent XP bonuses (5-25%) that stack with your badge multipliers, rewarding diverse achievement.

Once you reach Legendary level (the highest) on a university badge, you can "prestige" to reset and climb again with a prestige tier. Prestige tiers progress through Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, and Transcendent, each providing additional XP bonuses. This creates infinite progression for dedicated students who want to keep challenging themselves and maximizing their XP multipliers.

Yes! You can select up to 3 badges to showcase on your public profile. Choose badges from universities you're particularly proud of or that represent your academic interests. Other students can see these when they view your profile or encounter you on leaderboards - it's a great way to show off your achievements and academic focus.

Our AI marking system achieves 88-93% agreement with human IB examiners (Cohen's kappa 0.8-0.9, indicating "excellent agreement"). The system is fine-tuned on thousands of real IB examples with official marking rubrics. For most questions, AI marks fall within +/-1 mark of what a human examiner would award, making it highly reliable for practice and revision.

Our AI provides significantly more detailed feedback than typical human marking - studies show AI feedback averages 166 words compared to 23 words from human graders. For each answer, you receive: a criterion-by-criterion breakdown tied to the rubric, specific strengths with mark allocations, targeted improvement suggestions, and a model answer demonstrating full-mark responses. The feedback explicitly explains why marks were awarded or deducted.

We use subject-specific AI configurations optimized for each discipline:

• Mathematics: Step-by-step reasoning with working shown, matching IB's requirement to demonstrate methodology
• Sciences: Self-verifying models that catch calculation errors and explain experimental analysis
• Computer Science: Code-specialized models that understand algorithms, time complexity, and design patterns
• Humanities: Strong reading comprehension with extended context for essays
• Languages: Multilingual reasoning (not just translation) across 29+ languages

AI marks are for learning purposes and aren't final grades. The real value is in the detailed feedback explaining the marking decisions. If you still believe the feedback given is incorrect, you can flag the response, but there are no opportunities for remarks. For edge cases, our system is continuously improved through teacher feedback and human review of sample assessments.

Currently, our system primarily evaluates text-based responses. For questions requiring diagrams, focus on your written explanations. We recommend practicing diagram-based questions with your teachers for visual components while using IB Marker for written response practice.

Unlike human examiners who may vary in strictness, our AI delivers deterministic, consistent marking. The same answer will always receive the same mark and feedback. The system uses pinned model versions (no auto-updates that could change behavior), fixed rubric integration, and reproducible inference settings. This consistency helps you accurately track your progress over time.

IB Marker is completely free for every student and teacher. There are no paid plans — unlimited practice questions, the Insights page, badges, leaderboards, friends, multiplayer, and exam simulations are all included.

The only soft limit is the daily AI marking allowance: a small budget that recharges over a rolling 24-hour window so that one user can't drain the shared AI capacity. If you hit it mid-session your answers are saved and a banner tells you when more capacity returns.

Ask your IB coordinator or IT administrator if your school uses IB Marker. If your school has a code, enter it on the Join School page — you'll be linked to your school's classes, assignments, and teacher feedback. A school code is not required to sign up; you can register independently.

You can link a school code at signup, or any time afterwards from Settings > School Access. To switch schools, use the same Settings page to leave your current one and join a new one. School codes come from your IB coordinator or IT administrator; if they don't have one, point them at the School Admin Guide.

AI feedback typically takes 5-15 seconds depending on answer length. During peak usage times, it may take slightly longer. If feedback takes more than 30 seconds, try refreshing the page. For exam mode, batch marking may take a few minutes for the complete set.

Click "Forgot Password" on the login page and enter your email address. You'll receive a one-time reset link within a few minutes — check your spam folder if you don't see it. The link is valid for 30 minutes and can only be used once; request a new one if it expires. If your account was created with Google or Microsoft sign-in and you've never set a password, the same flow will let you set one for the first time.

First, try refreshing the page or logging out and back in. Progress updates may take a few seconds to sync. If the issue persists, clear your browser cache. Your data is saved on our servers, so it won't be lost - it's likely a display sync issue.

IB Marker works best on modern browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge (latest versions). We recommend keeping your browser updated for the best experience. Internet Explorer is not supported.

Yes, you have full control over your data. To delete your account:

• Go to Settings > Account > Delete Account
• Confirm your password and the deletion request
• Your account and all associated data will be permanently removed within 30 days

This action is irreversible - all your progress, badges, XP, and practice history will be deleted. If you're part of a school subscription, this won't affect other users or the school's subscription.