The two freshmen at Brandywine's Mount Pleasant High School are preparing to spend their junior and senior years in the school's newly accredited International Baccalaureate diploma program.

"I'd heard that it was good and that colleges liked it," said Grubb, who wants to become an architect. "And I thought I should challenge myself so that I could do something big."

Mount Pleasant is the only public high school in Delaware to offer the International Baccalaureate curriculum, which many educators consider the most rigorous academic program in the world and the perfect vehicle for turning around low-achieving high schools.

"I decided I wanted to do it because it would help me get into the college I wanted," said Pierce, who wants to be a scientist.

For Rebecca Snyder, another freshman in the physical science lab, the attraction to International Baccalaureate was more visceral. "I like adventure," she said.

The only other school in Delaware offering an International Baccalaureate diploma recognized in countries and colleges around the world is private high school Wilmington Friends, which will hand out its first diplomas in the program in the spring of 2005.

Mount Pleasant won't hand out any until the spring of 2006. Its first class of International Baccalaureate diploma-seekers are still sophomores undergoing pre-IB training. To get into the diploma program, students must go through the two-year preparation program, which Grubb, Pierce and Snyder began last fall.

"Students would not have as high a chance of success if they didn't go to pre-IB ninth and 10th grade," said Lynn E. Wright, a former Mount Pleasant guidance counselor who is coordinating the IB program.

As seniors, IB students must conduct an extensive research project and write a 4,000-word paper. By the time they graduate, they must be able to speak a foreign language.

More comprehensive, and some say more difficult, than advanced placement classes, International Baccalaureate is one of the fastest-growing educational programs in a nation obsessed with competitive college applications and casting about for ways to upgrade urban high schools.

As with advanced placement classes, IB students can earn college credits by scoring high on final exams. But advanced placement classes, offered by the College Board, which administers the SAT college entrance exams, are in particular subjects that highlight a student's strengths.

The International Baccalaureate diploma program, on the other hand, is an entire curriculum based on a liberal arts approach to learning, which considers the various academic disciplines equally important and interrelated.

"I don't know when I've been so captivated by a curriculum," Wright said.

Operated by the International Baccalaureate Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, the program was founded in the 1960s by a group of educators affiliated with an international school there.

"The kids will get exposure to different points of view, and both of them can be right," said Paul Campbell, director of outreach in the organization's New York offices. "That's a hard concept for all of us to grasp, but important."

One of the central classes each student must take is the theory of knowledge, which exposes youngsters to those various points of view.

Its internationalism is one reason why International Baccalaureate curricula are gaining popularity in urban high schools striving to implement reform and upgrade academics, he said. Diversity is at the heart of both the IB program and the urban high schools, Campbell said, adding that roughly half the IB high schools in the United States are in urban areas.

There are more than 1,200 IB-certified schools worldwide, with 355 schools in the United States.

"This program has a history of turning schools around," Wright said.

Wright began recruiting students for the program two years ago. This year there are already 90 applications for the fewer than 80 spots that will be available in next fall's freshman International Baccalaureate preparation class.

Eventually, the school would like a third of its students to be in the International Baccalaureate program, she said, about what officials at Wilmington Friends said they also hope to sustain each year.

To enter the International Baccalaureate program, students go through an application process based on such criteria as standardized test scores, grades, teacher recommendations and interviews.

International Baccalaureate programs also are available for middle and elementary schools, and Brandywine plans to implement both. At Talley Middle School, the first seventh-grade pre-IB training class is already under way, although Talley is still working toward accreditation by the International Baccalaureate Organization. Eventually, Wright said, Brandywine also will set up an IB program at Harlan Elementary School.

Reach Michele Fuetsch at 324-2386 or mfuetsch@delawareonline.com.