For other articles on the Extended Essay on Intense Cogitation, please see our helpful articles on The Extended Essay Outline and Sample sources for an Extended Essay – The American Civil War. Please also check out my extended essay exemplar about the American Civil War.
The 50 Excellent Extended Essays collection is, as the name suggests, 50 extended essays which rank as outstanding in the IB world for a multitude of reasons, like depth of research, originality, quality of analysis, academic perspective, etc.
Some IB coordinators do have access to this resource, so you should try asking them for printed copies whenever you do your EE.
I haven’t been able to find a resource with all 50 extended essays, but I have found this school website [link checked on 17 March 2012] that has some helpful extended essay rubrics and sample extended essays. This school website [link checked on 17 March 2012] also has some more extended essays.
When you read these exemplars, here are some things to keep in mind:
- Why did the IB choose this as an exemplar? What qualities make it distinct?
- How can I apply these qualities to my own extended essay?
- How would these essays score on the EE rubric?
- What are the strengths of these essays?
- What is (or will be) the strength of my own essay?
- What are the weaknesses of these essays?
- What is (or will be) the weaknesses of my own essay?
- How is the essay presented? Does it look professional? Does it follow academic standards in citations and works cited?
- How can I make my essay follow these standards better?
- How long are the exemplars? Did they manage to cover everything they needed to? Was their argument sound?
- If not, how can I fix that problem? How does this apply to my own essay?
Hopefully those questions will give you some assistance in analysing those essays.
If you need some EE assistance, just leave a comment and I’ll try to get back to you. 
I am doing my EE in chemistry and on electroplating but I have a hard time narrowing my topic and finding a research question. Do you have any advice or could you help me in any way? Thank you in advance.
Hey sagarika,
Perhaps try writing the body of the essay first. This way you’ll have a better idea of what specific background knowledge you need to include in your intro without being too general.
Hey Leonore,
Try reading through some of the other comments in this thread by pressing the “Older comments” link — there are a lot of suggestions that I’ve mentioned previously.
What about electroplating is interesting to you? Ask yourself what and why until you can focus down your topic.
heey!
Please tell me if you think my question is ok? i’m doing my EE on psychology.
” to what extent does social influence affect stress? ”
Hello Sonali: I’m not really familiar about psychology, but it does seem kind of vague. What kind of social influence are you referring to? What population groups are you researching? What do you mean by stress? What’s the full context?
Hi, how do you think this works for English A1 Lang/Lit:
-An Analysis of The Evolution of Pepsi’s print based advertising since the 1950′s
Hi! I was thinking of doing an EE on marketing but my business teacher keeps explicitly saying not to (not sure if because it’s inconclusive or because he’ll have a hard time with it) Also, he isn’t a very good teacher and he’ll likely be my supervisor. Thoughts?
As of now, my I’ve decided to do an Art EE instead because it won’t need as much quantitative data, which will be hard to get. If I go with it, I will be looking at the ethics behind artists making their assistants produce their works. My problem is that it’s more of a philosophy-type thing and most of the Art EE’s I’ve seen deal with an artist, a style or some piece of work. What do you think?
I plan to take up design management (and art-in-business type of) course so I’m also not so sure which subject would be better. Perhaps there are past EE’s that dealt with both subjects?
Thanks for all the help! They’re very very much appreciated!
KhunKhap: it looks like a fairly specific topic to me. As long as you find high quality sources from the 1950s to the present, you should be good to go.
Joanne: Have you asked him directly why he would does not want to supervise an EE on marketing? IB teachers have access to an internal IB forum where they can ask questions to other teachers around the world, so this could be a useful resource for both of you in regards to the feasibility of an EE in marketing. Your alternate EE proposal definitely seems more philosophy/TOK-y to me than art. I’m not sure about past EEs that dealt with both subjects, but try asking other supervisors if they have seen EEs involving both of those subjects or ask your supervisor to post on the internal IB teachers’ forum. Good luck!
Hi,I am lee krishna from The Aga Khan Academy presently in the IB DP1.I have chosen Politics for my EE though it is not one of my 6 subjects.So could i have your help in selecting the topic for the EE
hello im in dear need of help… i am first trying to decide if i should do my EE in english or art but i know i want my topic to be about comedy. could i do something like the art of stand up comedy? or how comedy has developed through time? any feedback would be helpful you really seem to know what your doing
I really want to do my EE about The World According to Garp by John Irving because I find it a very good book, I was just wondering if someone could help me find a Research question? I was thinking something along the lines of ‘gender-polarization’ or ‘the theme of feminism’ but I’m not sure if either of these will enable me to write an essay of 4,000 words. Anyone have an idea for an EE in Language & Literature? Anything would help really, I’m really stuck at the moment ! Thank you in advance
I am confused whether I should take up Hindi as an extended essay subject or not.
Although I have chosen it now, I am confused with the topic. What should I do?
I have a month to hand in my first draft of EE, I like Geography, but I cant find a question or a topic to do about, any suggestions?
hi i wanted to ask you if my research question is good enough ? my ee topic is based on business and management nd the question is “how do marketers use human psychology in order to boost up their sales? ” if my question is not good enough then plzz suggest me how should i make it better ,,,, reply me asap thnx
Hello Lee: I can’t really help you select a topic for the EE – you need to find something in politics that interests you. What motivated you to choose politics? Explore that topic further. Try reading about major political events, both modern and historical.
Dom — If you do comedy in English/Art, then I think it needs to reference pieces from those subjects. For example, use of comedy to develop a certain theme in Shakespearean plays. I’m not sure where stand up comedy would fall under – theatre/drama? For both of your suggested questions, they seem really broad, so you need to focus it to a certain type of comedy/comedic piece/era.
Jane – have you talked to your EE supervisor? Have you explored how those areas/themes are crucial to the book? How do they affect the plot, characters, etc?
Aditya – Have you talked to your supervisor? Is it too late to change subjects? What would you rather write about?
Ivan – have you looked at sample geography EEs or EEs from other subject areas?
Zeeniya – it still sounds a bit vague. Can you focus on a certain marketing technique or a certain company? (eg. Apple?)
Hello,
My EE question is on English B, category 2, it says “What kind of critic does Bob Marley give to the Jamaican society of the 1980′s through his lyrics?”
Is it precise, or it’s still a bit vague?
Hey Luis, I think it seems a good idea as long as you can quickly illustrate the different kinds of criticisms. Did you mean criticism, not critic? If you find that there’s a lot of material as you start writing it, you can focus your topic to just a certain kind of criticism, limit it to a smaller number of years, or choose a certain category of lyrics.