May blog: Thinking about EE's and University applications
Tuesday 21 May 2024
Well done to all DP History students who are graduating in June!
Preparing for university applications: Essay competitions
Many first year history students will now be thinking about applying to university.
Students planning to study history might want to consider entering an essay competition from a prestigious university or organisation. This gives them the opportunity to hone their research and essay skills with the added bonus that if they get short listed (or even win!) they can add this achievement to their university application forms.
Here are two History essay competitions with deadlines in next couple of months:
Julia Wood History Essay Competition (St Hugh's College)
The Principal and Fellows of St Hugh’s College, Oxford offer a prize, worth up to £500, for the best historical essay submitted by a pupil who, at the closing date, has been in the Sixth Form of any school or college for a period of not more than two years.
2024 Essay Competition | John Locke Institute (John Locke Institute)
The John Locke Institute encourages young people to cultivate the characteristics that turn good students into great writers: independent thought, depth of knowledge, clear reasoning, critical analysis and persuasive style. Our Essay Competition invites students to explore a wide range of challenging and interesting questions beyond the confines of the school curriculum.
Extended Essays
Many first year students at this time of year are also deciding on their topics for their Extended Essays. We have some suggestions of how to guide students through the process of choosing a topic and a question on this page: 1. Extended Essay: Choosing topics and questions
Students choosing their Extended Essay topics - as well as those applying to do History at university - might find it worthwhile to look through the previous monthly blogs on this site; we aim to highlight interesting and recently published books and new areas of research or controversy on the blogs (see below for two books published this month). These publications might spark some ideas for research topics and also provide ideas for extra reading for university applications.
Site update
We have now completed Paper 3 Asia, Topic 9 - Early modernisation and imperial decline in East Asia:
And we have added a page on the impact of the Cold War on Canada to Paper 3 The Americas, Topic 10
New books for May
Published this month is a timely book examining the context of the conflict over Taiwan which has lasted from 1949 to the present day and is currently a dangerous flash point in global politics:
How, the observer wonders, did we come to this? There are a dozen reasons, which Sulmaan Wasif Khan, a historian at Tufts University, lays out in his deeply researched and fascinating history of the island. But the nutshell answer is that a mixture of poisonous nationalism and fudged diplomacy over many years, combined with the premierships of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, has turned the Sino-American relationship into a tinderbox. Taiwan could be the spark that ignites it. (The Guardian review below)
The Struggle for Taiwan by Sulmaan Wasif Khan review - dire straits (the Guardian)
How superpower rivalry and diplomatic failures have turned the island into the worldâs riskiest flashpoint
Another book published this month is:
American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873 by Alan Taylor which according to the Wall Street Journal 'offers compelling new insights'.
See also this very postiive review:
AMERICAN CIVIL WARS | Kirkus Reviews (Kirkus Reviews)
An authoritative, comprehensive history of two key decades in the history of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.