Tips for the Extended Essay
From the Extended Essay Coordinator and Supervisors
- Stick to your internal deadlines – we set them to make your life easier.
- You won’t be registered for IB exams unless you have a substantive draft written by late September/early October
- You must do research in order to refine your research question. Choose an area of interest, do some reading, keep annotated bibliographies and then narrow your research question. This should be done by June of Y11.
From IB Alumni
- Read a lot of books/sources and do a great outline
- Start early, follow the deadlines.
- I found external sources for my research, and revised over and over for many months.
- Cite all sources as you make notes so it will be easy when you write the essay.
- I did a lot of research on my topic and I tried to find examples of essays that were under my subject.
- Do a lot of research so the essay part would be easier
- I began writing in early August, and only focused on writing 1 paragraph at a time, every 1-2 nights. This way, I was not overwhelmed at writing a 4000 word essay, and instead was only focused on 300 words at a time. This relieved a lot of stress and ensure that I was 3/4 finished by the start of year 12 and was one of 3 people to pass it in on the due date.
- not stress about it
- Start it earlier
- I would have liked to have started even earlier; doing a science experiment and getting revisions done with my supervisor took much longer than I expected.
- Start earlier and finish earlier, like in the summer.
- Start the process earlier
- I would have written about two works instead of just one to provide a compare/contrast, and I would have begun discussions with my supervisor sooner (English EE).
- Be organized and do not procrastinate