The benefits of doing an Extended Project Qualification (EPQ)

Personally (and I’m sure a fair few of you will agree despite what you may tell your friends), I love college. And even if you can’t bring yourself to say ‘love’, you’ll agree that it’s better than school by at least a mile – and I’d say that the main reason for this isn’t the fact that tedious detentions and poorly fitting school uniforms become extinct; I’d say it’s the freedom and the independence that college is so renowned for.

So how would you like it if I told you that you could get a qualification – one that potentially carries more UCAS points than an AS-level – in creating a project based around absolutely anything of your choice?

This is where I introduce you to the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ for short): a research-based qualification offered to second year college students, where you come up with an essay-style question, research it, and create a project based upon the conclusion you have come to. The project often takes the form of a 5000-word essay, but when I say you can present it any way, on any topic, I mean it! I have a friend who is researching gender roles within musical theatre and is writing a musical for his! The only restriction is that you can’t research something you’ve already studied – for example, if you were studying Macbeth you couldn’t also do your EPQ on Macbeth – but why pick something you already know copious amounts about when you could do anything?!

I first found out about the EPQ from my cousin, who’s a year older and did one concerning the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence (fancy A-level maths terminology in case you were wondering) and since then I have been passionate about the concept and eager to start my own.

The key starting point to the EPQ is to pick a topic you find interesting and that you’re passionate about, to ensure that you see it through to the end; you’re going to be researching and writing about this topic for a year, so you need to pick something that’s not too restricting and that you’re not going to get bored of. Hopefully if you’re considering taking up the EPQ, you’ll already have a vague idea of what you might want to study, but if you’re anything like me and can barely decide whether to buy a sandwich or a pasta salad for your lunch, this may seem more than a little daunting. So I came up with a few ideas and then evaluated the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities and the threats that came with each. You’ll get a lot of guidance from your college too, and once you’ve chosen your question and enrolled onto the EPQ, you’ll be assigned a supervisor who will guide you (not tell or spoon-feed you the way teachers can) throughout your project.

Another important aspect to bear in mind: 60% of your grade is determined by the marks you get for your research and the process you undertook to get to the final product, so it’s important that once you’re completely sure about your question you really hit the ground running when it comes to the research. You can never start too early or do too much, and remember that research can consist of anything from reading online news articles to conducting interviews; my EPQ has allowed me the rare opportunity to consult with a world leading expert of the topic I’m studying – he even filled out my questionnaire!

You’ll be keeping a blog throughout the project so that you and your supervisor can keep track of where you are and whether you’re falling behind, and you’ll be required to draw up a planning table for the time you’re off college for the summer, so you can know exactly what you need to do every week. Also, with every task you set yourself, you’ll consider any possible problem you may be faced with and ways to overcome it (honestly, I’d never been so organised!) so you’re thoroughly prepared. Then, once you’ve got all the information you’ll need, you’re ready to start creating your final piece! And once you’ve finished that... well, then you’ll just have to wait until results day to find out your final grade – the grade you got virtually all by yourself! to students in their second year of college, where you come up with a own as the EPQ. as hopefully begin to

As I hope you can see, there really aren’t any negative aspects to doing an EPQ. And I know it sounds like a lot of work, and a lot of time commitment and a lot to ask of a seventeen or eighteen year old student... but you’d have chosen to do this because you love what you’re researching! And I guarantee you, when you hand in that final product you created from scratch, it’ll all have been worth it.

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