EPQ

I got an A* and my advice is work smarter not harder.
You need a copy of the mark scheme and to be able to tick everything off by the end of it. The way in which you use your words to communicate your progress throughout the project is very significant.
For each section of the mark scheme, plan to do certain thing. Eg. planning is a very significant part of the EPQ. Make sure you plan in more than one way. Do a long term plan as well as a weekly plan. You could also make another plan using a graph.
Every time you do anything, change anything, make any decision, write it down.

Basically, make sure that you have a strict plan and detail everything as you go along. This will save you time and energy and will get you an A, at least.

Thank you, can you remember roughly how many hours you spend a week on it or did it vary a lot?

We had a double lesson (2 hours) every week designated to EPQ, so I would spend that time, although half of the time I spent the 2 hours talking to my friends!
Sometimes I would work for an hour after school on it. So I would say on average about 2 hours a week, but it definitely fluctuated a lot. Luckily, I had the whole of lockdown to complete my EPQ so I would spend quite a lot of time doing that.

Oh okay thank you! We don’t have lessons in school dedicated to it and they only gave us the option to start an EPQ in year 13 so I just wanted to know how much to spend on it roughly

Oh that's so annoying that you don't have lessons for it and you have to do it in Year 13 You might have to be more disciplined than I was then and make sure to dedicate a certain number of hours to it per week.

Yeah it’s annoying thanks for the advice anyway though, I’ll probably dedicate 3 hours a week at home to it as well as some free periods.

Good luck I'm sure you'll enjoy it

Thank you congrats on getting an A* in yours as well btw haha

Does anyone who’s done an EPQ/ or is currently doing one have any advice on roughly how much time to spend on it to get an A or A*?

Hey, so I'm currently working on my EPQ and I actively spent at least 2 hours a week during the lockdown researching and reading a lot of articles related to my topic(Artificial Intelligence). And, I also did a course on Futurelearn. I'm definitely not doing enough yet, but I can suggest a few stuff.

Year 13 is going to be pretty busy, so if you start getting an idea of how to do it and look at topics and a few examples, you'll be able to allocate your time really well in year 13. But for the sake of a figure, I'd recommend around 2-3 hours a week. You're expected to spend 120 hours overall. I've probably crossed that by now and I'm only halfway through the research...

Does anyone who’s done an EPQ/ or is currently doing one have any advice on roughly how much time to spend on it to get an A or A*?

I finished mine last year, currently don't have a grade but am predicted an A*. Honestly I spent the one lesson we had per week working on my production log, one or two private study periods working on top of this and wrote the majority of my 5000 words in one afternoon. I definitely did not spend much time on it at all - but had planned it out in regards to deadlines so I knew I could dedicate far less time to it than other subjects. As long as you have a valid plan that you will stick to, how much time you spend on it per week will definitely change so don't stress too much about 'not doing enough'.

hi, may I ask what your question is?