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.

Lying? Oh for goodness sake.

The EPQ is a complete waste of time in educational terms.

It's a cheap hit for an extra A which looks like a real A on a CV.

So, if your school insists on you doing it, you might as well make a virtue of necessity.

No lie or even internal contradiction I don't think, Walkaround.

Oh, for goodness sake. The EPQ is what you make of it. More fool your children and their schools for treating it as a hoop to jump through. Either make something of it if you have to do it, or refuse it as pointless - have the courage of your convictions.

So rude. My kids can take the approach to the EPQ that they choose. There's something to be said for pragmatism Walkaround.

Also, I have not said that their school adopts my DCs' approach to the EPQ either. Simply that one of their HTs agrees that it can be knocked up for a high grade with minimum effort. That doesn't mean that his approach has been to encourage all students to knock up an EPQ with minimum effort. Slightly different.

@Walkaround ignore her she likes to see a reaction don’t give her the pleasure.

Fruitygal it would be odd not to reply to rude posts directed at me. There's no reason why I shouldn't reply even if you don't care for the fact that I can clearly answer very adequately.

And I might add that I have absolutely zero interest in anyone's 'reaction'! Extraordinary.

@goodbyestranger - there is nothing to be said for the kind of pragmatism that tries to discourage other people’s children from doing what your children have done to make their CVs look good. The fact is, the EPQ can provide huge educational benefits if you are not just treating it as another exercise in which you just follow the letter of the marking scheme. It had zero educational benefit for your children because they chose to treat it that way. No wonder their universities were not interested in asking them about their unimaginative contributions, if that was the approach to the EPQ they chose to take. For children clearly bright enough to really make something interesting of it, they wasted their time. That doesn’t mean the EPQ is a waste of time per se, just that their EPQs were.

It is really good experience to do as it is like a mini thesis which many will go on to do at university. It is a much better taste of university than A'levels are. If kids don't like doing an EPQ they may not love university either as similar skills used.

Walkaround I have no idea what is prompting your lack of manners. It's not for you to dictate how DC should approach tasks set by their school on a compulsory basis. I think trying to infer that my DC are dull is probably pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable even on MN. I don't expect that my DC mentioned their EPQs in their personal statements so it would have been very unlikely that Oxford would have picked up on them anyway. Imperial did, it's fair to say, with the DC who applied for Medicine but even then, it was only an ice breaker and one despatched very quickly I think. Oxford had their own questions to ask. For most of their interviews my DC were required to answer questions about cases (Law) source papers (History) graphs (Medicine) etc etc. Since they had no particular problems in being offered places, I doubt that Oxford found them especially unimaginative or dull, unless Oxford has introduced a quota for dull and my DC have tapped successfully into that. I think that's unlikely. They all seem to have quite creative minds to be honest.

To be fair, Cambridge didn't mention dds epq either. I don't think it was important for her university place.

And give me a break, I'm hardly on a mission to deter other people's DC from doing what my DC did 'to make their CVs look good'. To be clear, my DC did the EPQ because that was the curriculum at school at the time. They didn't choose to. They'd have preferred not to. But they did what they needed to do to get an A*. They found the tick box nature of the EPQ very....dull.

The OP asked if an EPQ is worth doing. I answered no, simple as that. But if you have to do it because your school insists, might as well go through the motions as efficiently as possible and get an A* on the grounds that it does no harm and can even look superficially good. On the other hand, if you're super keen on exploring a particular area, use the EPQ as the vehicle, but beware that its format has the capacity to be stultifying for certain types of DC.

Are you saying that an EPQ is quite formulaic then?

Also, is it more useful for students who don't choose subjects that include an NEA (Non Exam Assessment usually between 4,000 and 6,000 words) as part of their A level?

@goodbyestranger - your posts have prompted mine. Right from your flat out claim that the EPQ is a waste of time onwards, your posts have come across as exceptionally condescending. It is clearly a matter of choice how much educational benefit you get from your project, as you choose the project, so if you deem the EPQ to have no educational value, it is only logical to conclude it was your children’s choice for it to be so. Also, pragmatism is seldom imaginative. If you wish to provoke better manners in others, you could consider changing the tone of your own posts.

In conclusion, the EPQ is not a waste of time for your CV, not a waste of time for universities which lower their standard offers if you do well in it, and not a waste of time from an educational perspective if you choose your project in the right spirit. It is clearly possible, however, to get the first two benefits from the EPQ without bothering with the last bit if you have no actual interest in your project.

I would be very surprised if the mark scheme for the EPQ was not formulaic, given the free rein given over the subject of the project - they aren’t going to be giving you that many marks for the interesting and original part of the project, as the person marking it is unlikely to be a specialist in the subject chosen. On that I suspect I agree with @goodbyestranger, just not with the dismissal of the educational benefit of doing your own research on something of interest.

I would have thought some of the NEA for some subjects is relatively similar to an EPQ or at least teaches similar skills. But even then I think it might depend on schools. DD did History and her coursework was entirely self-chosen, was recommended to be nothing related to what they had learned at school and required huge amounts of research (and a fair bit of stress writing it). I just met a girl last week who's school gives the same title to every student doing history A level, they have lessons in that historical area and really barely need to do any research.
I feel that DD put more effort into her coursework (she also did English lit but that was much lower workload) than her friends did into their EPQs (and they all got A*) but I don't think the same can be said of the girl I met last week - I had no idea that the "free choice" thing for NEA didn't happen at every school.

Whose school.

We don't have EPQs in Scotland, but advanced highers (A level equivalents) have a large proportion of coursework. It can be from around 25-40% of the final mark and comprise up to a 5.5k word report/investigation/dissertation worked on independently. This is a good preparation for university.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/higher_education/4389912-supporting-undergrad-son - he should have done an EPQ!

I read that thread as well. To be fair, if no expectations or guidelines at all are given to new students I can see why they are floundering. In her first year DD got very little constructive feedback on her essays until she changed tutors (because her first one was useless).

I remember DD attending a lecture about plagiarism very early in her first year though.

V late night dressed as a pumpkin drinking v nice wine so missed all the fun 🥴.
An EPQ does mean they have to learn how to research independently and also ask opinions of others. All useful skills for Uni.
Obviously some students managed to get A stars on here by doing v little, although how they got full marks on the reflective diary by doing this I'm not sure. Weekly entries of what you've researched, what you've learned from it and how it's changed or reinforced your theory. Maybe they made it all up ? Or award winning teachers helped them (not having awards I let students do their own work 😇).
EPQs should not be compulsory in my opinion as then only motivated students will do them.
Unis obviously do like them and think they are useful as more each year giving lower offers for having one. But no harm in not having on either. Students choice.

Walkaround, to answer very briefly.

My posts are not rude, and there's the difference. There are polite ways of disagreeing with other posters.

Time not spent on the EPQ (whether by not doing it or by giving it short shrift) can be far better deployed on other more productive things. I obviously agree that looking at depth at something which interests a student is good, but the time taken on the tedious box ticking exercise which is the EPQ negates that benefit to a great extent. The reading around/ research element can easily be done without all the admin stuff.

Schools like it a lot because it has brought a big funding bonus, although I think schools with high achieving kids are already slightly moving away from it because of its constraints. Certainly several schools in the independent sector have opted for in house research projects which don't involve all the faff, even though these aren't graded publicly. They're aimed at Oxbridge applicants.

Of course it's open to you to say that you don't consider the EPQ a waste of time. I do and we've both explained what informs those views. All good,

mumsneedwine the awards are very obviously for this guy's classroom teaching. He is phenomenal and has taught seven of my own DC who share the universal view of his students that he's one of the few teachers who they will never forget. Unfortunately teachers like him are too rare.

Haha that turned out to be not so brief :)

@goodbyestranger - it is a matter of personal opinion as to whether or not your posts are rude. I consider your posts to be rude and condescending and mine blunt and to the point. You are free to disagree, but not to dictate to others how they should perceive your posts.

Rudeness is objective, to quite a large degree.

Your comments are not relevant to the original post and are personal, so possibly leave it now.

@Walkaround I think you are lovely 😊. Some posters just like to have the last word and they are always right. About everything. All the time.
I'm wrong about lots of things - makes life much more fun 🥳