Around this time last year, I had just finished the first
draft of my EPQ essay.
The Extended Project Qualification is offered by AQA and
Edexcel exam boards and involves choosing a question to investigate and then
writing a 5,000 word report on said question.
August to December 2015 was probably the most stressful time
of my life so far. Beginning with EPQ research in the summer and leading
through to the essay deadlines, the presentation, personal statement writing,
university applications, Cambridge interview preparation, the interview,
coursework deadlines… on top of all my normal school work. It was a really
intense time.
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| Taking selfies with my books instead of reading them... As you do. |
The title of my EPQ was “To What Extent Was Political Change
The Most Important Factor In Influencing The Creation Of Realism In The 1800s?”
I investigated political change as a key factor, and then argued that other
factors such as the role of individuals, technological and scientific
advancements, and social change were equally, if not more, crucial in the
creation of the artistic movement. You can read more details about my EPQ and
an excerpt here.
In the end I got an A* in the project so it was all worth it
but I really empathise with people going through the process right now. So I
thought I’d write down a few pointers I’d give to those undertaking the EPQ
this year.
1. Pick something you
are genuinely interested in. Honestly, one of the main things that helped
me not have a complete mental breakdown was the fact I am obsessed (in case you
didn’t notice) with history of art, the subject of my EPQ.
So that would be my first piece of advice to anyone
undertaking an EPQ: pick something you are passionate about. You are going to
have to spend hours sitting at home
or in a library reading and reading and writing and writing about this subject.
If you don’t love it I really don’t think you’ll be able to finish it or pick
up another book again. My teacher said to me “write about something you’ve
always had a burning desire to find
out.” Now, I wouldn’t go that far because it’s a bit unrealistic. I don’t wake
up every day wanting to know about the creators of realism, but I knew I love
talking and reading all about art so it was a safe bet I wouldn’t get bored.
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| No, I didn't do doodles for my EPQ... |
2. Once you know the
general topic, do thorough research to find a good title. So, great, you
know you love zoology so it makes sense to write about animals. But you
obviously can’t write about the entirety of the animal kingdom in 5000 words,
giving enough detail where necessary. So next you’ll be asked to narrow down
your topic. I’d say make sure you do enough research about different options in
order to be able to pick the best one. I sort of fell into doing realism, but
if I’d researched more art movements beforehand, I would have better understood
which one to focus on and would have narrowed down my research far earlier.
3. Find a topic with
a good debate. This one’s tricky, but it’s another one I’d have improved
about my essay. The historians I researched all pretty much agreed with each other.
I think it would have made a far more interesting angle if there was a bit of
disagreement. For instance, instead of looking at what caused the creation of
Realism, if I had looked at its impact and whether or not it was a relevant art
movement, there would be far more discussion to analyse.
4. Give up on your
summer. Ok, not quite, but yeah, I didn’t go away after AS exams. I planned
small things in London and went to Reading Festival but nothing huge. You’re
going to need days of sitting at home researching where to even find research. Once you’ve located books
you need, there’ll probably only be one copy in the whole of your city and
it’ll be on the complete other side and you’ll need to take three trains and a
bus to get to the library. Once there, something will happen like they won’t
have posted online that they close at midday on a Friday so the whole trip was
a waste. Or you’ll have forgotten to order the book with 48 hours notice (yeah,
make sure you do that). Then you’ll need time to collate all the notes you’ve
made and write it into a cohesive essay. So all in all, you’ll need time.
There’ll be moments when you’ll think to yourself the deadline is in October, I’m sure I’ll have time between July and
then… But you’ll soon figure out that when you get back to school at the
beginning of September, none of your other teachers really care that you’re
doing an EPQ and will pile on the homework. So it’s a good idea to have the
bulk done before you go back to school.
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| Example of my schedule. Scheduling is ev.ery.thing. |
5. Be aware of
deadlines. Not just the EPQ ones, which kind of goes without saying, but
also other ones in your academic life. Coursework deadlines are often around
Christmas time too or maybe earlier so you’ll often be doing EPQ at the same
time as this. A lot of people who do the EPQ often apply for Oxbridge of
Medicine, as their application deadline is also mid-October. My EPQ
presentation was on the 14th and so was the Cambridge personal
statement deadline. Intense. Stay on top of it all!
6. Write your
bibliography/ production log/ resource log as you go along. It’s tempting
to just write the essay and deal with all the admin-stuff later. But I’d advise
against this. Firstly, your will lose track of which resources you’ve used, how
useful they were, what pages you used for which quote… It becomes a lot to deal
with all together. So just add the footnotes as you’re doing it. Secondly, you
will be finishing your EPQ right in the middle of your first term in year 13
and you don’t want to be panicking about a page number you can’t find. Another
thing is that most referencing styles want the date you accessed a web-page to
prove it was really there when you saw it (just in case it is taken offline at
a later date) so make sure you keep track of webpages too.
7. Research how to
reference. Insanely boring but necessary. Each academic subject has
different conventions so find out which ones you need to use before you do all
your footnotes and the bibliography, or you’ll just have to go back and change
it all. Bear in mind there are conventions for literally every time of
information.
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| Me looking like a Cool Kid outside the V&A's National Art Library |
8. Be careful not to
plagiarise. It can be really tempting to read a great phrase and slip it in
to your work, passing it off as your own… Tempting, but highly stupid. Exam
boards now have technology which finds if phrases are too similar to other
works they have on their system. More and more people (like me) post their work
online (mainly to show off about how damn hard they’ve worked on something) but
there’s not point plagiarising other students. Chances are you’ll be caught,
and their stuff probably won’t be worth it. It’s even more stupid to plagiarise
from published academic works as you can just include it in your bibliography
and get points for that anyway.
9. Basically, do it. History
of Art wasn’t offered as an A-level in my school, so I had never actually written
an essay in this field. It was intimidating because I didn’t really know where
to start. But as I spent hours in the National Art Library, I realised I really
wasn’t getting bored, in fact, I loved it. It helped secure the idea in my mind
that this was really what I wanted to do for a degree. The EPQ will really help
prepare you for University and higher academia because of the reliance on your
own time management and research which you don’t really get from secondary school.
I’d really recommend it as it will (hopefully!) give you confidence in your
abilities and a deeper understanding of your chosen subject.
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