MYP Criteria Practice Questions

MYP Criteria Practice Questions: Practising by Criterion, Not Just by Topic

Last updated: September 2026 · Reviewed by the RevisionPrep IB teaching team

MYP criteria practice questions are the thing almost no resource gives you, and it's the reason so many MYP students plateau. Your report doesn't say "6 in maths". It says A: 6, B: 4, C: 7, D: 5. Revising "algebra" does nothing for a criterion B score. You have to practise the criterion.

What each MYP criterion actually rewards

All four criteria are marked 0–8 and then converted to the 1–7 grade. The names change by subject group, and so does the skill being tested — which is why a student can be genuinely strong at the content and still sit at a 4 in one column.

Criterion MYP Mathematics MYP Sciences

A Knowing and understanding Knowing and understanding

B Investigating patterns Inquiring and designing

C Communicating Processing and evaluating

D Applying mathematics in real-life contexts Reflecting on the impacts of science

Criterion A is the one that looks like a normal test. The other three are skills: finding and justifying a general rule, designing a fair method, processing data and judging it, connecting the science or the maths to a real situation.

The practical consequence: if your weak column is B, doing more A-style questions is wasted effort. You need tasks that hand you a pattern and ask you to generalise it, then ask you to prove why the rule holds.

Why practising by criterion beats revising by topic

A topic tells you what the question is about. A criterion tells you what you have to do. Two questions on quadratic sequences can sit in completely different criteria — one asking you to solve, one asking you to derive and justify a general term — and they need different preparation.

Look at how differently the same content behaves:

Criterion A (Maths): solve, calculate, apply a known procedure to a familiar situation. Marks come from correctness.

Criterion B (Maths): select and apply a method to find a pattern, describe it as a general rule, then justify it. Marks come from the reasoning, and the top band needs a proof or a justification — not just a spotted pattern.

Criterion C (Maths): notation, forms of representation, coherent lines of reasoning. Marks come from how it's written down.

Criterion D (Maths): identify the real-life elements, select a model, apply it, then comment on whether the answer is reasonable. That last sentence is where most students throw away a band.

That criterion D closing comment is the most reliable free mark in MYP maths. "A speed of 340 km h⁻¹ is not realistic for a cyclist, so the model has overestimated" — one line, and it moves you up a band. Nobody writes it because nobody practises criterion D as its own thing.

On RevisionPrep every MYP question is tagged to its criterion and to a difficulty band, across MYP Years 1 to 5, so you can filter to "Criterion B, Medium, sequences" and get exactly that. The MYP side of the bank holds roughly 80,000 questions, which is what makes filtering that narrow actually return something.

Difficulty bands: start where you'll finish the question

Difficulty filtering matters more in MYP than most students expect, because MYP questions vary far more in demand than DP ones do. Starting at the top band and failing repeatedly teaches you that you're bad at the topic. Starting low and climbing teaches you the topic.

The RevisionPrep bands work like scaffolding that gets removed:

Foundation — the question comes with an annotated hint diagram. Deliberately. The point here is comfort and method, not challenge.

Standard — no hints, full working expected, the demand of a normal classroom summative.

Higher — multi-step, less scaffolding in the wording, the level of an eAssessment or an Extended Maths task.

Two sessions at Foundation, then move. If you're above 80% at a band, staying there is procrastination with a worksheet.

Diagrams you can actually read

Every figure in the bank is drawn to one house standard — same line weights, same labelling, same conventions — rather than scanned from a textbook or screenshotted from somewhere else. Axes are labelled, circuits are legible, force diagrams look like the ones in a real paper.

This sounds like a small thing until you're revising on a phone at 10pm and the resistor could be anything. It matters more in MYP Sciences than anywhere else, because criterion C is partly about reading and processing data presentations — you can't learn to interpret a graph properly from a blurry one.

Common mistakes in MYP revision

Revising only criterion A. It's the comfortable one and it's usually already your best column. Check your last report and revise your worst letter.

Spotting a pattern and stopping. Criterion B's higher bands want the general rule and a justification of why it works. "The numbers go up by 3" is a band 2 answer.

Skipping the reasonableness comment in criterion D. One sentence, consistently worth a band.

Writing the answer without the reasoning in criterion C. C is marked on communication — correct notation, a coherent chain, appropriate representation. Right answer, poor presentation, low mark.

Assuming your teacher's rubric matches a generic one. Strand wording varies by subject, year and task. Use the task-specific clarification your teacher gives you; practise the skill with a bank.

FAQ

What are the four MYP criteria?

Every MYP subject is assessed on four criteria, A to D, each marked 0–8 and combined into a 1–7 grade. In Mathematics they are knowing and understanding, investigating patterns, communicating, and applying mathematics in real-life contexts. In Sciences they are knowing and understanding, inquiring and designing, processing and evaluating, and reflecting on the impacts of science.

How do I find MYP criteria practice questions for a specific criterion?

You need a bank tagged at criterion level, not just topic level. RevisionPrep tags every MYP question in Years 1–5 by criterion A–D and by difficulty band, so you can filter to a single criterion within a single subtopic and get a full practice set with mark schemes.

Which MYP criterion is hardest?

For most students it's B — investigating patterns in maths, or inquiring and designing in sciences — because the top bands need justification rather than a correct answer. Criterion D runs it close, mostly because students finish the calculation and forget to evaluate whether the result makes sense.

Does practising criteria help with MYP eAssessment?

Yes. The on-screen eAssessment in Year 5 is built around the same criteria, so criterion-tagged practice through Years 4 and 5 is direct preparation. Practising at Higher difficulty is the closest match to eAssessment demand.

Is there a question bank that covers MYP Years 1 to 3?

Most IB platforms start at DP, and the few that cover MYP organise it by subject rather than by year. RevisionPrep covers MYP 1–3 maths and sciences, and MYP 4–5 maths, physics, chemistry and biology, with year-specific question sets. MYP plans start at $39 for three months.

Filter to the column you're weakest in. Practise MYP criterion A–D questions by year and difficulty on RevisionPrep — 4,000+ questions and the full revision notes are free with a sign-up