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IBDP: Extended Essay

Resources to support students as they plan, write, edit, and revise their Extended Essays

What are the Pathways?

For your Extended Essay, you can choose one of two paths:

  • The Interdisciplinary Pathway: Explore a topic that connects two different IB subjects.
  • The Subject-Focused Pathway: Dive deep into a question within a single IB subject.

Your choice should be based on a topic you're genuinely curious about and how it connects to your other DP courses (ideally the ones you are taking at the Higher Level).

Some ideas will suit exploration through the subject-focused pathway, while others will suit the interdisciplinary pathway if the ideas may be better explored through the combined lenses of two DP subjects. Imaginative interdisciplinary collaboration can open such topics to rich research.