I can claim to be a bit of an expert in this field (alum of an IB school, interned at a career counselling company, interacted with lots of IB school alumni). Take it from me — here are the career preferences of IB kids after school:

1. US Ivy Leagues or comparable (Stanford, MIT, Caltech, UCB, Duke etc)

2. Next tier top US colleges (eg UCLA, Northwestern, USC, Purdue, Carnegie Mellon etc) OR top US liberal arts colleges (Amherst etc) OR top Russell Group UK universities (Oxbridge, LSE, KCL, UCL, Warwick, Edinburgh etc, but not maybe Nottingham or York or Newcastle)

3. Other good US/UK universities not in the tiers above (eg Fordham, Rutgers, SOAS, Nottingham, York) OR G8 Australian universities OR premier universities elsewhere (Singapore, Europe, Canada)

4. Other universities abroad not mentioned above, and some niche places (eg University of the Arts London or Raffles School of Design in Singapore)

5. Stay in India: Ashoka or law at Jindal. For the smarter ones, engineering at BITS or Manipal, or medicine at a good private university like Manipal or Sri Ramchandra.

6. More options in India: KREA, Flame, non-law at Jindal, any course at Symbiosis, maybe a tier 2 private medical or engineering college. Amity or Bennett as a last resort

Re top Indian government universities like IIT or NLUs or AIIMS, it’s rare for IB kids to even try —- they get scared by the high levels of competition and the low number of merit list seats (IB students are usually in the general, non-reserved category). But there have been cases of a few students cracking top NLUs and even IITs. These would definitely be a top 3 career choice for them, but maybe not the top choice. I know of cases where kids have turned down IITs for MIT and one old case where someone turned down NLSIU for a non-law course at NUS Singapore. Plus a very old case where someone chose KCL law with full fees over NLSIU (child of a senior lawyer, who subsequently qualified as a barrister and returned to India).

But, if someone is already rich, why would he work for lakhs ? Know a friend whose father earns a decent four to five crores a year. He persuaded his son not to join a law firm on the basis of a mere prospect/likelihood of earning 50 lacs and above after 8 years. He joined his father's business and is extremely happy about his decision.

There can be exceptions of course and they can be handful.

Did my schooling from Cambridge International, and the fees was almost as modest as a decent ICSE/CBSE school. Moreover many people were awarded scholarships on the basis of financial background. Plus personally know many IB/Cambridge people studying in elite colleges in India. But a good number of wealthy kids prefer to go to ivy league or Russell group unis though, even I tried to get into a PPLE course but had to fall back on clat due to finances and all. Many parents from middle class and upper middle class background opt for IB nowadays.

Here's what most people do:

1. For those with decent grades : LLB from LSE, KCL UCL

2. For those with low grades: LLB from Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool etc

3. For those who cannot afford to go abroad or would like to stay in India: LLB from Jindal, then LLM from abroad

But beware of dissing IB kids: most have excellent communications skills and fantastic connections, so they end up in good jobs in London law firms or consulting companies, leaving NLU kids behind.

IDIA did this survey some years back (it may have done it recently too but I'm lazy) about the NLU students' backgrounds. The largest percentage (33%) had family income above 15 lakh. 50% had family income above 10 lakh. Really puts things in perspective.

Other fascinating info too: https://www.idialaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/diversity-survey-2018-19.pdf