DD is a junior, and wants to work on her extended essay this summer along with college apps.
What advice would you give a student that has not begun? She is interested in art and biology, and is thinking about writing on something combining those two interests.
Thanks for the advice!
The extended essay must be within the subject area of one of DP subjects. So Bio or Art, but not both. Start there. I recommend choosing a subject in an IB class she is taking. Science area EE’s will involve original research so you must have access to a lab or other place to do that research.
My daughter did chemistry. She spent about 40 hours in the lab in the summer and did the first draft between Jr and Sr. year then did two more rewrites in fall of Sr. year with her Chemistry teacher editing and returning each rewrite to her. She was done by December.
I highly recommend reading some of the EE’s out on the web.
EE is a BEAST. Be aware that many kids will narrow and re-define their topic as they start writing–and multiple re-writes are often part of the game. Ds was a literature based EE.
I have two BS degrees and a graduate degree. Honestly, I don’t recall ever writing at that level for that deep of a topic until graduate school.
At Ds school the whole EE was turned in by early to mid fall–late September/October maybe? She had a rough draft in May of jr year, worked on it during the summer (I would say a good 2 weeks of 6-8 hrs per day writing??). She seemed to write better and with more clarity and focus as the deadline loomed closer. I think her topic and the whole idea of the EE was so ambiguous she just couldn’t settle in until it was more defined. It’s hard to explain.
At Ds school, the IB program puts on a 1 week “research academy” in August that is mainly to assist them in writing their EE. Additionally, they had a massive summer IB HL English assignment that was separate from her EE. That assignment alone was a good 40-60 hrs of work.
Help your daughter protect her summer. Build in some time for her to relax and do nothing–don’t have it so overcrowded with camps and research and all that jazz.
The one piece of advice I would give is to make sure your daughter is digging in to that IB topic now to define her topic while she is IN school and can bounce ideas off of her mentor person for her paper. Because once school is out that communication is gone and harder to find.
Yes the 3 IA’s for HL classes will be big projects in and of themselves! it was a busy summer
Wow… thanks. They haven’t even discussed it at DD’s school yet!
@shoot4moon – that’s crazy. She should’ve had a meeting or two with her EE faculty advisor and some sort of rough draft should be in the works.
Has she spoken to current seniors to see what the timeline was for them?