Nearly every student at Meridian is familiar with the “personal project.” This “required” assignment for sophomores entails a long-term project, a tangible presentation display, a process journal and a 1500-3500 word essay. Although some claim it is an important part of the Middle Years Program (MYP) curriculum, the pressure the school puts on students to complete the project invokes mental distress and impedes the completion of important course work.
The MYP personal project is described by International Baccalaureate as “a culminating, independent, long-term project (approx. 25 hours) designed to showcase skills developed throughout the MYP.”
“It’s not required for students, but we do have to offer it as a school,” MYP Coordinator Dr. Denise Rodriguez explained. Nearly every student completes the assignment.
At Meridian, students complete a hybrid version of the IB MYP certificate. To earn the certificate, students must have completed their personal project, meet service requirements and achieve a total of at least 28 points across 8 assessed components through eAssessments. Because students complete SOLs for the state of Virginia, Meridian school does not administer eAssessments and instead issues a slightly different “Meridian MYP Certificate.”
While the majority of sophomores do not care about the personal project or the MYP certificate, there are plenty that do and plan carefully thought out projects.
Sophomore Millie Owens researched water stress around the world, focusing on the abundance of water in Iceland. Then she created a plan for subsea pipelines including a map that showed how pipelines could run from Iceland to water deprived countries. Capping it with a research paper and an email to the United Nations.
“This process did take a very long time,” sophomore Millie Owens explained, “I worked on it for about six months.”
Despite all of this work, not all students obtain the reward. According to Dr. Rodrigez, “Last year, about a third of the students who completed the project earned the certificate.”
The impact of the certificate on higher education is unclear. IB continues to view it as an addition to a transcript and a good segway into the DP program, but it is not mandatory whatsoever.
Stanford University’s first year application requirements, specifically mandate SAT or ACT scores and transcripts. For international IB students, they require predicted IB Diploma marks, which include TOK and the Extended Essay but they do not list the MYP Personal Project as a requirement or even a recommended submission.
Many students stress over this task because of the IB’s pressure, but if universities as prestigious as Stanford do not value the certificate, then why does it matter? It is time to look at changing the MYP program at Meridian to adapt its needs to better fit the requirements of US colleges. Right now, we force an unimportant and generic resume builder when we need to start supporting individuality of students. We need to push them towards avenues of success, even if it’s not what gets FCCPS the IB recognition it craves.
