Search “EPQ ideas economics” and you’ll find the same thing you find when you search for supercurriculars: enormous lists of titles, no guidance on choosing between them, and nothing at all on what happens a year later — when you’re sitting in front of your UCAS application trying to turn “I did an EPQ” into a sentence that actually helps you.

We read economics personal statements for a living, and the EPQ shows up in a lot of them. Done well, it’s one of the strongest cards an applicant can hold: a genuinely independent, extended piece of research, which is closer to what a degree actually feels like than anything else in the sixth-form curriculum. Done badly, it produces the flattest sentence in the whole statement: “I completed an EPQ on inequality, which improved my research skills.” That sentence is a receipt, not a thought — the same disease we diagnosed in our supercurriculars post, just with a bigger price tag in hours.

So this isn’t just a list of titles. It’s how to choose one that will still be earning its keep when you apply.

What the EPQ is, briefly

For anyone earlier in the process: the Extended Project Qualification is a standalone qualification, offered by the main exam boards (AQA runs the largest share), usually taken alongside A-levels in Year 12 and 13. You produce either a dissertation-style extended essay or an artefact with a shorter written report, on a title of your own choosing. It’s graded like half an A-level and carries UCAS points — up to 28 for the top grade — and some universities will name it in alternative offers. Check any specific university’s policy on their own admissions pages rather than taking a blog’s word for it, ours included.

But here’s our honest view, as the people reading the statements afterwards: the points are the least valuable thing the EPQ gives an economics applicant. The valuable thing is that it hands you, roughly a year in advance, the raw material for the strongest paragraph in your application — if you choose the title with that in mind.

The test for a good title: question, not topic

The single most common EPQ mistake we see reflected in statements is a title that names a topic instead of asking a question. “Inequality in the UK” is a topic. “The 2008 financial crisis” is a topic. You can write a competent survey of a topic and learn almost nothing you couldn’t have got from a textbook — and it shows on the page later, because a survey gives you nothing to disagree with, no moment where your own reasoning collided with the evidence.

A question, by contrast, forces you to take a position and defend it. The quick test: could two intelligent people read your finished EPQ and reach different verdicts? If not, it’s a topic wearing a question mark.

Weak title: “Behavioural economics and its impact on society.”

Stronger title: “Do ‘sin taxes’ on sugar actually change behaviour, or mostly raise revenue from the people least able to switch?”

The second one has a built-in tension — effectiveness versus regressiveness — which means the conclusion has to be argued, not summarised. That argument is exactly what survives into a personal statement.

Title ideas, by theme

With that test in hand, some directions worth exploring. Treat these as shapes to adapt, not titles to copy — the whole point of an EPQ is that the question is yours.

Behavioural and micro. Does the endowment effect survive outside the lab — for instance, in how people price second-hand goods they own versus identical ones they don’t? Do loyalty schemes change what people buy, or just record what they’d have bought anyway? Why do cinemas charge wildly different prices for tickets but identical prices for every film?

Local and data-driven. Often the strongest category, because the evidence is yours rather than downloaded. Why has your town’s high street emptied while the retail park a mile away thrives — is it rents, parking, footfall, or something else? Does your local housing market track the national headlines, or tell a different story? What actually happened to prices and queues when a new supermarket opened nearby? A composite example we like: a student who tracked prices at three local barbers over several months and turned it into a question about why haircut prices vary so much for a near-identical service — which is really a question about local market power and product differentiation, arrived at through a door most textbooks never open.

Policy. Has the UK minimum wage cost jobs in your region, or not — and how would you even tell? Would a universal basic income reduce the incentive to work, and for whom? Should university be free, and who really pays under each system? Policy questions are well-trodden, so the bar for an interesting answer is higher — the way to clear it is to go narrower and more local than the national debate does.

Macro and money. Why did inflation hit some households so much harder than the headline rate suggested? Should central banks be independent of elected governments at all? Is a cashless economy good for everyone, or mainly for banks? Big questions like these work best when you anchor them in one specific episode or dataset rather than surveying the whole literature.

The part most guides skip: cashing it in

A year from now, the EPQ has to become sentences. This is where we watch strong projects go to waste.

Weak: “For my EPQ I investigated the effects of the sugar tax, which developed my research and analytical skills and deepened my passion for economics.”

Every phrase in that sentence could be written by someone who never did the project. Skills are asserted, not shown; the conclusion is missing entirely. Compare:

Stronger: “My EPQ on the UK sugar levy started as a question about whether it worked, but the data pushed me somewhere more interesting: manufacturers reformulated drinks rather than passing the cost on, so consumption of sugar fell even where behaviour didn’t change. I’d assumed a tax works through prices; watching it work through supply instead is what convinced me I wanted three more years of this.”

Same project. The difference is that the second version contains a finding, a revised assumption, and a reason the experience points at a degree — which is precisely the “desire and fit” test an admissions tutor is applying. Material like this usually belongs in your answer about preparation beyond the classroom, and because the statement gives you limited room, one EPQ argued properly beats an EPQ plus four books all mentioned in passing.

One practical note on timing: statements tend to be written in the autumn of Year 13, and some students won’t have fully finished the EPQ by then. That’s fine — an honest interim finding (“the data so far suggests…”) reads better than a vague completed one. What you can’t do is retrofit an interesting question onto a topic-shaped project, which is why the choice you make in Year 12 matters so much.

Should you do an EPQ at all?

A fair question, since it competes for time with A-levels — which universities care about more. Our view: if your title passes the question-not-topic test and genuinely interests you, yes, it’s among the best preparation available, and it pairs naturally with the reading and projects we cover in the supercurriculars post. If you’d be doing it purely to collect UCAS points, the hours are usually better spent elsewhere — including on the kind of informal experience that counts more than applicants think.

Where to go from here

If you’re in Year 12, the job is to choose a real question and let it argue with you. If you’re in Year 13 with a finished EPQ and a draft statement, the job is to check the project actually landed on the page as thinking, not as a receipt. Our free scorecard will tell you in a few minutes whether your draft is showing findings or just listing activities, and our full guide (£7.99) walks through building each answer from material like this. And if you want a Cambridge Economist’s eyes on whether your EPQ paragraph is the strongest thing in your statement or the flattest, that’s exactly what a review from EconCoaching is for.

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