What we will and will not do with your coursework

This page exists so you can send it to your coordinator without being asked for it. If anything here is unclear, ask before you buy rather than after.

The rule we work to

We may not do more for you than your own IB teacher is allowed to do.

Your supervisor may read one draft and advise on how the work could be improved but, in the IB's own words, must not edit the draft. A paid outsider cannot coherently claim more latitude than the teacher who is accountable for authenticating your work. So that is our ceiling too.

What we do

• Comment in the margins of a copy of your draft, as questions and observations.
• Map the draft against the published criteria and say where it sits.
• Explain what a criterion is asking for, using examples that are not your work.
• Teach the underlying skill, such as designing an investigation, building a TOK claim and counterclaim or narrowing a research question, on material you are not submitting.
• Answer your follow-up questions about the feedback.

What we refuse, at any price

• Editing, proofreading or correcting the text of assessed work.
• Returning your file with tracked changes or rewritten passages.
• Supplying sentences, phrasing, titles, research questions, hypotheses or structure templates.
• Writing any part of the reflection: the EE reflection form and the TK/PPF are assessed, and they are the audit trail. (For the May 2027 session onwards the EE's three RPPF reflections become a single statement of up to 500 words on the RPF, written after the viva voce. November 2026 candidates still sit the RPPF. Either way, it is yours to write.)
• Round after round on one document until it is effectively ours.
• Anything at all on work you have already submitted.
• Guaranteeing a grade.

The request we turn down most often arrives three days before a deadline with a finished essay attached. What is wanted at that point is an editor, and that is the one thing we cannot be.

Why we are this strict

Because the downside is entirely yours. The IB's Academic integrity policy lists "private tutors" and "essay writing or copy-editing services" among sources of non-permitted assistance, covering "the completion or editing" of work. Its penalty matrix has a row for work "commissioned, edited by, or obtained from a third party". Work heavily edited by a third party carries zero for the component. Work entirely produced or edited by one carries no grade for the subject. For the Extended Essay the IB states the outcome is non-award of the diploma. Investigations can be opened after results are issued.

Your work is also authenticated twice: you declare it is yours, and your teacher declares it too. One of the checks the IB names is comparing the style of the work against writing already known to be yours. A suspiciously polished draft is not a neutral act.

Tell your school

We would rather you did, and we will put it in writing if that helps. Comment-only external feedback is permitted; a coordinator who learns about it from you is fine with it, and one who learns some other way may not be.

Independence

LimeAdmissions is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the International Baccalaureate Organization. We do not reproduce IB rubrics, past papers or other IB publications; where we refer to criteria we describe them in our own words and point you at your own subject guide.