Extended Essay (EE)
The Extended Essay (EE) is a 4000-word paper that every full IB student has to write between their junior and senior year. It can be on any subject and any topic you desire (within reason) and it is a major part of the IB diploma program. When I say it is written between your junior and senior year I mean the majority of the EE is written during summer break. So any hopes you had for a stress-free summer away from the clutches of IB can be thrown to the wayside, you can’t get away that easily. Granted, you could take the approach of some students; putting it aside the entire summer and then frantically writing the entire 20-page paper the weekend before it’s due, but I don’t recommend that. On top of the paper itself, there are three advisor meetings at different stages of the process and a reflection must be written for each. Every IB student writing the EE is assigned an advisor, they review your paper and help you along the way.
Selecting a topic
The EE allows IB students to choose from a wide array of subjects on a topic of their choice. If spun correctly, one’s EE can be written about basically anything they want. Therefore, I recommend you choose something you already know a lot about. This paper is long and annoying, but it can be made a lot easier if you find a way to write about something you are interested in or already understand deeply. I made the mistake of writing about something I had no knowledge of whatsoever: the effect of the Cuban Missile Crisis on nuclear disarmament. By doing so I greatly increased the amount of research I had to do and I never fully knew what I was talking about. So save yourself the trouble and just write about something you already know.
EE Structure
The structure of the EE, while mostly up to the student, has a few requirements that must be met. Every EE has to have:
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A title page (1 page)
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Your title, your question, your subject, your word count, your personal code
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Contents page (1 page)
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List of each section and subsection along with their corresponding page number (A table of contents)
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Introduction (1-2 pages)
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Background information, introduce your question and how you intend to explore it
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Body of the essay (10-15 pages)
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Should be divided up into subsections, explore your question, provide evidence and analysis
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Conclusion (1-2 pages)
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Summarize your findings and their implications
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Bibliography (1-3 pages)
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List all your sources
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While this is the general structure of the EE, I encourage you to look at some of the websites I have linked for further specifics. One of the most helpful things for me when I was writing was looking at the structure of an example EE that scored highly. It is much easier to model your paper around an example than a rubric.
EE Meetings and Reflections
There are three meetings and three reflections that must be completed by every student writing the EE:
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Meeting 1: This meeting is before you begin writing the paper. Present your topic and discuss it with your supervisor. If you both agree on an appropriate topic and question, you will be ready to start writing the paper. As soon as you are finished with this meeting, you should write your reflection. Essentially, write about what you discussed and what your thought process was.
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Meeting 2: This meeting is after you submit your rough draft. Your supervisor will point out all its flaws and it will probably hurt a little. Make sure to take notes because you are going to want to improve everything they point out. After the meeting, you should write a reflection about it. Once again, reference what you talked about and what your thought process was.
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Meeting 3: This meeting is after you submit your final draft. Your supervisor will ask you a couple questions about the writing process and you will answer them. This one is more of a victory lap. In the final reflection, write about the EE writing experience as a whole; what challenges you faced, what you learned, what skills you gained, that type of junk.