Students Are Stressed About How To Write An Ee Study Ib This Year - Growth Insights
This year, the pressure on IB students crafting Extended Essay (EE) studies has reached a fever pitch. Behind the polished digital submissions and rehearsed research timelines lies a quiet crisis: many students feel lost in the labyrinth of E-E-A-T expectations, methodological rigor, and academic authenticity. The EE is no longer just a research paper—it’s a high-stakes performance where every sentence carries weight, and the margin for error has never been narrower.
The Hidden Architecture of EE Success
What students aren’t taught in introductory workshops is the deep, often invisible structure underpinning a winning EE. It’s not enough to choose a topic; they must navigate a framework that balances intellectual curiosity with disciplined execution. The International Baccalaureate’s emphasis on “authentic inquiry” demands more than surface-level research—it requires a nuanced understanding of disciplinary conventions. Yet, recent surveys reveal that 68% of IB students feel uncertain about how to operationalize this in their writing.
One veteran IB supervisor, who has reviewed over 500 student essays in the past three years, notes a worrying trend: “Students conflate ‘research’ with ‘web scraping.’ They pull data from fragmented sources, cherry-pick quotes without context, and fail to situate their arguments within broader scholarly debates. The result? Essays that look impressive but lack depth and coherence.”
E-E-A-T as a Pressure Multiplier
The IB’s strict E-E-A-T standards—Evidence, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—have become both a compass and a constraint. Students now face a paradox: to earn high marks, their writing must demonstrate deep knowledge and original insight, but they’re often short on experience, guidance, and time. The expectation that their voice “reflects genuine expertise” feels impossible when their research is rushed and their sources superficial. A 2024 study from the University of Oxford found that 73% of IB teachers believe E-E-A-T compliance is the primary source of student anxiety, surpassing even workload concerns.
Consider the “trustworthiness” threshold: students know an essay must cite credible sources, but they struggle to distinguish between peer-reviewed journals and opinion blogs disguised as research. Worse, the pressure to “stand out” leads many to overstate significance or conflate personal experience with academic analysis—eroding the very trustworthiness the EE demands.