Emma Kristensen on the IB Advantage

As Emma Schmidt Kristensen prepared to graduate from high school in Germany, several options weighed in the balance. She could take a gap year, as so many students from her native Denmark do. Her parents hadn’t attended a university, so the idea of pursuing non-academic projects was also enticing. But when Emma’s school counselor told her about The American University of Paris, something clicked. 

As an International Baccalaureate (IB) student, Emma had spent the last two years taking courses with an international outlook. She adored the IB teaching style, the small class sizes, and that, as a student at a United World College boarding school, her school put her in touch with academically competitive students from over 90 countries. Hearing her classmates recount their lives abroad, along with their first-hand accounts of major world events, ignited in her a passion for politics and its effect on people.  

Majoring in International and Comparative Politics at AUP proved to be the perfect next step. Now on campus, Emma has discovered just how much AUP reflects her IB experience. With Paris as her classroom, Emma divides her time practicing French, studying politics in small classrooms, exploring museums, and walking among historic architecture, which is both evocative of the past and alive with the city’s diverse inhabitants. As her studies take her deeper into Paris, Emma’s passion for politics and people has only grown.  

If romanticized ideas of Paris continue to captivate the world’s imagination, Emma has found that studying the Parisian banlieues, the suburbs, reveals a side of France beset with inequality, and demonstrates how politics stand to shape a city and its inhabitants. In her favorite class this semester, a French Topics class with Professor Caroline Laurent, Emma and her classmates examine multimedia materials—film, music, among others—to access nuanced representations of the local and national culture.  

Thanks to AUP’s flexibility in course selection and class schedules, Emma also finds time for volunteering and campus engagement. Keen to pursue a career in diplomacy—within the UN, the EU, or an NGO—Emma has gained experience working with various French societies like Les Enfants de la Goutte d’Or, and interacting with young people exiled in France. It’s the personal element, she says, that makes the experience so rewarding. She’s also found AUP’s student club Voices of the Global Majority as the ideal place to discuss politics in an open forum with her peers. Balancing the expansiveness of Paris with the comfort and support of AUP’s small community, she says, has been the perfect way to feel at home in a big city. 

Perhaps the most surprising part of Emma’s undergraduate experience is that earning her degree will only take three years. Depending on their final scores, IB candidates stand to win significant scholarships from AUP, in addition to course credits applicable toward a four-year undergraduate program. Not only did the IB program prepare Emma for university coursework, but thanks to her stellar exam results, Emma joined AUP with an automatic 100% tuition scholarship and one year of course credits under her belt.  

The value of scholarships, she says, is enormous. “It brings competitive students to universities who can’t normally go." Thinking back to her boarding school days, where many students relied on financial aid, she sees the difference between a world that learns together and a world that learns in silos. In her view, supporting higher education is even more critical in our current climate. With democracy under threat around the world, combined with the addictive effects of social media algorithms, Emma feels that access to higher education empowers the next generation to see the world, not through a screen, but through the eyes of the people around them.  

With diverse, welcoming learning environments like AUP and the scholarships that make that higher education possible, Emma feels confident that we may unite around one table and have conversations about what our shared future can hold.  

Learn more about the IB advantage at AUP.