Planning the Research and Managing Time

The Extended Essay is as much a project-management challenge as an academic one. It runs across roughly a year alongside all your other courses, and the students who struggle are usually those who leave the work until deadlines loom. This lesson explains how to plan the research and manage time so that the project stays on track from start to submission.

Treat the EE as a long project with milestones

A 4000-word research essay cannot be produced in a single burst. It is better understood as a sequence of milestones: choosing a subject, settling a topic, formulating a question, gathering and reading sources or collecting data, drafting, redrafting, referencing, and completing the reflections. Breaking the whole into these stages turns an intimidating task into a series of achievable steps,