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How to get A* in aqa EPQ

Esp for secondary research. I'm doing it on something related to famous leaders from history and their tactics. Starting it in 2 weeks and want to do well!
Also how does the presentation work?

Reply 1

username6127998

Not sure how the presentation works here as still doing my EPQ. In the same position as you, but I've received quite a few tips from my teacher(s).

First, don't get lazy. Make sure that you plan everything out, down to a tee. Times for exams, times you'll spend looking at research papers, historical documents, articles, news, etc., and make sure you look at as much as possible so you get a real sense for what you're writing about. It's not hard to see the difference between someone who's just copied their sources verbatim and are offering very little of their own actual opinions and logic compared to someone who knows their sources inside and out, knows about the general events, and can make logical conclusions based on what they've learnt during their EPQ.

Second, make mistakes. I know this sounds stupid, but our teachers begged us to make mistakes. Read inaccurate sources. Mess up your time plan. This goes against everything I just said, I know, but it's heavily advised because the examiners love it. They want to see that you can amend your project time plan to be able to fit things in, and change times around when you inevitably realise you've not been doing enough or missed something out or messed something up, and they also want to see that you can figure out the difference between an unreliable, not factually correct or rich article or research paper and a more historically accurate document. Doing these two things will ensure that the examiners give you the marks for these things, because it shows that you're smart enough and have worked hard enough to be able to fix your dissertation when it all goes wrong. Because it will. It happens to everyone who does well. And those who don't do well have it go perfectly, all sunshines and rainbows. You'll be fine if you do this.

Whilst writing this, I've thought about the presentation a bit, and I'm going to assume it's probably a short presentation, no more than like 10 or 20 slides about your topic. I'm pretty sure it's just to test how well you know your topics and how well you can summarise it and I'm also going to assume it's either teacher-marked or you send it in. I'm not really sure though, and it might be variable depending on where you go for college or sixth form, so please please please ask a teacher or tutor about this because they'll know way more than I do.