Is an EPQ worth doing?

[Barwell76]

My ds is in year 12 and is unsure whether to do an EPQ. I know his 6th form do offer them but they havent mentioned them yet. I dont know much about them.
He wants to do Computer Science at Uni and from looking at uni websites, some but not all seem to give one grade lower on their offer if you achieve an A.
My ds seems to think that he should concentrate on his A levels subjects to try to get the highest possible grades rather than spread himself too thinly by doing the EPQ, but is unsure what to do.

The school does get mostly A mumsneedwine, so it's doing something right on the grade front.*

Hardly surprising as it is a selective school though, isn't it?

I said equivalent at the outset. He's pretty senior in any event. It's just that you seemed to think he doesn't know how to mentor staff to mark correctly. He does, and that's evident in the grades achieved which you appear to think are unusually good.

RampantIvy I would argue that since the EPQ is not marked on intellectual merit, the selectivity of the school is irrelevant.

My DS got a lot out of his. He did something relevant to the course he is going to do so it helped cement the decision for him. It was also the main topic of discussion in interviews with prospective work experience companies for this year (he's taking a gap year). Pretty much everyone who applies to them will have the same A levels but the EPQ was something different and demonstrated a real interest and increased understanding of the topic and its real life applications.
It did make a difference to my DS's University offer, but I think the skills learned were far more important than the UCAS points gained.

That said, it was compulsory at his school unless you were doing 4 A levels so he didn't get any choice really. But I do think it was a very valuable learning experience.

Since the EPQ can be on pretty much anything, it seems to me it has a much value as the effort you put into it and the interest you have in the subject you choose. If you deem it to be valueless, then it is - and you’re a bit of a twat for going ahead and doing it if you have that attitude to it, so more fool you.

From personal experience (well, a sample of two!), it can be worth it for a stem type of subject, or maybe geography if it is done well . For arts subjects, nope.

There is huge emphasis on procedure, so for English, say, I saw top marks awarded to well-presented and “following the rules” type of EPQs, but where the content was actually quite poor and very unimaginative.

Walkaround the thing is it's not a huge more fool you if you can bang it out with little effort and add an extra A* to your grades. It's kind of more fool you of you do more than the minimum, tbh.

*if you do more than the minimum

They are a replacement for the old General Studies, which in itself was useless, only worse.

In a major study of factors predicting early performance at medical school, the student's grade for general studies A-Level was one of the factors that did predict future performance (grade for A-Level chemistry wasn't) [McManus et al., 2013]. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to work out whether it was the general studies A-Level itself or attending a school that entered students for general studies A-Level and encouraged them to engage with it that was the predictor.

In the days when general studies existed, you could get a fairly good feel in interviews for which students either were taking at least one non-science A-Level or else took general studies seriously, as they were much more impressive. An EPQ might give an edge like this, but much more significant is the experience it gives students of studying at least semi-independently and writing a report: things that, in my experience, students who have done three science/maths A-Levels are otherwise quite poor at. For students doing a mix of A-Levels or specialising in humanities/social sciences, this might not be such an issue.

McManus IC, Dewberry C, Nicholson S & Dowel JS (2013). The UKCAT-12 study: educational attainment, aptitude test performance, demographic and socio-economic contextual factors as predictors of first year outcome in a cross-sectional collaborative study of 12 UK medical schools. BMC Medicine 11, 244. doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-11-244

Blimey, that escalated quickly!

@mumsneedwine the chief examiner @goodbyestranger refers to does not set any exams. There are no exams for EPQ.

I will say again what I stated on the 1st page of this thread. It is a valuable qualification for students whose interests or university aspirations do not fit neatly into specific courses. They can frame their question/title to suit either of these. They learn skills such as researching, referencing, cross-checking and extended writing which might not be covered in their A level subjects.

Last year I had 21 students actually submit work out of a group of 29. 20 of those were very good (A/A*). The students had put in a lot of work and produced high quality essays or artefacts. One had done little work and made a Horlicks of the whole thing. This year, from 32 starters, I still have 29 going forward.

Both my DDs did the EPQ. One produced an artefact which came up in her interview at Cambridge. It didn't seem to do her much harm as she was offered a place. The other used it to tie together her passions of science and politics. The older DD found literature reviews, a part of the Cambridge NatSci course, a natural progression from EPQ and, as a result, she had an academic paper to her name before she graduated. She told me that the EPQ was excellent preparation for this.

At the end of the day, it is personal choice whether or not to do it. All I will say is that it provides an excellent opportunity to utilise skills that will be needed at undergraduate level and beyond, but in a way that enables guidance and support to be given. If you don't want to do it, fine.

It was absolutely true historically that year on year at our school the students who got top marks (by which I mean top nineties to full marks) in General Studies AS and A2 were the ones who also were the 'dead certs' for Oxbridge and went on to bag places there. General Studies had a very bad press but that's interesting NoNotHimTheOtherOne. I don't think any students put any real effort into General Studies so I guess not surprising in a sense that the top scorers were the naturals/ most impressive.

Cross post with Malbecfan.

Quite Malbec, he isn't going to be struck off anytime soon.

(mumsneedwine Malbec and I are associated with the same school).

@goodbyestranger

Walkaround the thing is it's not a huge more fool you if you can bang it out with little effort and add an extra A* to your grades. It's kind of more fool you of you do more than the minimum, tbh.

Well, it is a more fool you, for wasting time on something you don’t need, because if you can bang it out easily with little interest or effort, you are highly unlikely to need the extra A* for anything and you’ve just wasted time on something you don’t value, because you concentrated on banging something meaningless out rather than doing something interesting (which you could actually have done, given that you choose what to do your EPQ on).

@Malbecfan what's he a chief examiner of then ? Because if he's not setting exams he's just an examiner.
EPQ does not have exams but it has grade boundaries which change annually and are set by chief examiners. So if he's involved with those and is marking within a school for same exam board he's in serious breach of conflict of interest. Which you must know we all sign when marking.

DS didn't do one - musician, auditioning for conservatoires, other fish to fry in terms of getting his instrumental work to the required standard fro auditions on top of his weekly music commitments.

DD did one related to her non-A-level-related university course of choice. She was interviewed for her chosen course by 2 people who had an interest in her EPQ topic - which may have been a coincidence - and got an offer. I would not necessarily recommend 4 A-levels plus an EPQ, despite the slightly startling results slip at the end of the process. As a way of occupying a student who normally has an extraordinarily full extra-curricular life during lockdowns when none of that was possible, I'd say it wasn't bad.

Ds is aiming for CompSci but was still thinking possibly NatSci or chemistry when choosing options, and I didn't encourage EPQ as offers for CompSci are always so high - thought he should concentrate on A-levels.

I think it has worked brilliantly for a child I know who is a relatively late developer. He's very shy, very young in his year and took a long time to find his feet academically. The school tend to ignore him and his predicted grades are meh. Apparently without them noticing, he has grown up enormously in the past year, and has developed a passion for a particular humanities subject that was only there in outline before (I predicted it 6 years ago [preens self]). His EPQ is excellent and has given him a whole area of expertise to talk about and a huge confidence boost.

mumsneedwine stop getting in a twist. No-one is breaching anything. The person in question has won the sorts of award you'll probably only ever dream of.

Just noticed that you failed to read my previous post closely enough mumsneedwine. The thing about the same exam board.

So yes, maybe read more carefully then you wouldn't get in a twitter :)

DS did the EPQ. He did it pretty much on his own as understandably I think his school were more focussed on getting them through A levels, although the teacher related to his EPQ subject did bring him text books in the middle of the 1st covid lockdown, which was lovely of her. In other years I think the school would have given more guidance with the EPQ.
DS ended up with 2x A* & A with a C in EPQ. It made no difference as his 1st choice uni didn't consider it as part of the offer (don't know whether it boosted him receiving offers though?) His back up uni would have lowered by a grade with an A in the EPQ.
Overall I think it a worthwhile experience for him in terms of essay writing, but if I'd thought DS was over stretching himself I'd rather he'd have concentrated on his 3 A levels, if that makes sense

Walkaround if you can get an easy peasy A for almost zero effort I have to say it does beef up CVs etc going forward, even if employers haven't got a clue what the EPQ actually is. On a CV, it sort of looks like another A level tbh :) My DC have a ludicrous number of As when you cumulate the EPQs/ General Studies etc. Very easy on the eye on a CV.

Nope. Waste of time. Best concentrating on their proper subjects and hobbies. They have enough pressures on them.

@goodbyestranger

No, complete waste of time.

So, you lied, then @goodbyestranger. Clearly you do not think it is a waste of time, if it is so useful for beefing up a CV and your children did it. 😂