What are the current MYP Personal Project criteria?

The current Personal Project uses three equally weighted criteria: Criterion A: Planning, Criterion B: Applying skills, and Criterion C: Reflecting. Each criterion has a maximum achievement level of 8, giving a total of 24 points. Planning covers your learning goal, personal interest, intended product, success criteria, and detailed plan. Applying skills assesses how you used ATL skills to pursue both your learning goal and your product. Reflecting assesses the impact on you or your learning and your evidence-based evaluation of the product.

How long should an MYP Personal Project report be?

Many current school handbooks allow a written report of up to 15 pages, with reduced page allowances if a recording is included. Formatting rules commonly address minimum font size, margins, readable evidence, and separate submission of the bibliography. However, your school controls the exact submission instructions applying to your cohort. Ask your coordinator for the current handbook before deciding how much evidence or text to include. Staying within the permitted limit matters because material outside it may not be considered during assessment.

Should I organize the report chronologically or by criterion?

Organize the report into identifiable sections for Planning, Applying skills, and Reflecting. You can discuss events chronologically within a section when that helps explain development, but the overall structure should follow the criteria. This makes it easier for the assessor to locate evidence for every strand. A purely chronological diary often repeats minor events while leaving important explanations difficult to find. Use clear subheadings for the learning goal, product and success criteria, ATL application, impact, and product evaluation.

How many ATL skills should I discuss in the report?

The published criteria do not require one universal number of ATL skills for every project. Select the skills that genuinely influenced your learning goal or product rather than naming as many as possible. For each selected skill, explain the strategy you used, when you applied it, and what changed as a result. Research, self-management, communication, social, and thinking skills can all be relevant depending on the project. Two well-supported explanations are usually more useful than a long list of skills with no evidence.

Can I include screenshots and process journal extracts?

Yes, selected screenshots, photographs, drafts, records, or journal extracts can support your explanations when permitted by your school's submission rules. Choose evidence that directly demonstrates planning, ATL application, testing, revision, or evaluation. Give each item a readable caption and refer to it in the relevant paragraph. Do not expect an image to explain itself, because the assessor needs to understand what it proves and why it matters. Check your handbook for current limits and technical requirements governing process evidence and product evidence.

Can I use AI to help write my Personal Project report?

AI may help you identify unclear wording, test whether success criteria are measurable, or compare a draft with rubric language if your school's policy permits it. It should not invent experiences, write reflections you did not develop, or replace your personal authorship. Keep records of your own research, decisions, drafts, and revisions so that every claim can be verified. Follow your school's academic integrity rules and acknowledge AI use when required. Jojo AI or the RevisionDojo Personal Project Grader should therefore be used as feedback tools, not as substitutes for your judgment and writing.

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How to Write an MYP Personal Project Report

MYP Personal Project Study Guides

• 11 Sept 2026•12

How to Write an MYP Personal Project Report

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How to Write an MYP Personal Project Report | RevisionDojo

Back to all posts

How to Write an MYP Personal Project Report

MYP Personal Project Study Guides

• 11 Sept 2026•12

To write an MYP Personal Project report, organize your evidence around the current three assessment criteria: Criterion A: Planning, Criterion B: Applying skills, and Criterion C: Reflecting. Explain what you intended to learn, what you created, how you applied approaches to learning skills, and how successfully the final product met your success criteria.

The report is not a diary of everything you did. It is a selective, evidence-based explanation of your decisions, actions, and learning. This guide explains the current criteria, a reliable structure, practical examples, common mistakes, and a final submission checklist.

What is the MYP Personal Project report?

The IB presents the Personal Project as three connected elements: a process, a product or outcome, and a report. The process includes research, planning, decisions, challenges, and revisions. The product is what you create or achieve, while the report explains the project and its impact on you or your learning.

Your school assesses the report using published criteria, and the assessment is externally moderated by the IB. You therefore need to make relevant evidence easy to locate rather than assuming your supervisor already understands what happened.

Criterion	Maximum	What you must demonstrate
A: Planning	8	A learning goal linked to personal interest, an intended product, success criteria, and a detailed plan
B: Applying skills	8	How particular ATL skills helped you achieve the learning goal and create the product
C: Reflecting	8	The project's impact on you or your learning and an evaluation against the success criteria

Each criterion is worth 8 points, giving a maximum total of 24. Older websites may describe four criteria called Investigating, Planning, Taking Action, and Reflecting. That is an earlier framework, so follow your school's current rubric and the three-criterion structure.

Confirm your school's requirements first

School handbooks commonly permit a written report of up to 15 pages, with shorter allowances when writing is combined with a recording. Exact formatting and submission procedures can vary, however, so your coordinator's current handbook is the controlling document.

Confirm the following before drafting:

the permitted written, recorded, or multimedia format
the applicable page or recording-time limit
required font size, margins, and file type
how process and product evidence must be submitted
the required citation style and academic honesty documents
the final deadline

Do not treat an old online template as your final authority. The official IB Personal Project overview explains the overall model, while your school provides the detailed rules for your cohort.

How to structure an MYP Personal Project report

Use headings that match the current criteria. Within each criterion, follow the order of the strands so the assessor can find evidence without searching through a chronological narrative.

Criterion A: Planning

Explain your learning goal and personal interest

The learning goal identifies the knowledge or skill you intended to develop. It is different from the product.

Weak: “I wanted to make a cookbook.”
Stronger: “I wanted to learn how nutritional requirements, recipe testing, and instructional design can be combined to create accessible meals for teenage athletes.”

Explain how a personal interest led to this goal. Use a concrete connection, such as an experience, cultural background, longstanding curiosity, problem you noticed, or skill you wanted to acquire. Merely stating that you have “always been interested” provides little evidence of the connection.

Define the product and success criteria

The product goal describes what you intended to create. For the example above, it could be: “A digital cookbook containing 12 affordable recipes for teenage athletes, including nutritional information, instructions, and photographs.”

Success criteria must be specific enough to test. They might address accuracy, content, function, appearance, audience needs, cost, dimensions, durability, or performance.

Success criterion	Measurement method
The cookbook contains 12 complete recipes	Count the finished recipe pages
Each recipe stays below an agreed cost	Calculate costs using dated ingredient prices
Instructions suit the target audience	Ask representative users to test recipes and provide feedback
Nutritional information is accurate	Compare calculations with a credible database

Avoid criteria such as “looks professional” unless you define observable features. These criteria matter because Criterion C requires you to evaluate the completed product against them.

Present a detailed plan

Show major tasks, deadlines, resources, dependencies, and links to your success criteria. The plan should trace the project from research through design, production, testing, revision, and evaluation.

Explain significant changes rather than hiding them. A justified adjustment can demonstrate realistic self-management more effectively than pretending the original plan worked perfectly. Students still choosing a direction can consult realistic MYP Personal Project ideas to distinguish a broad interest from a feasible goal.

Criterion B: Applying skills

Criterion B assesses how you applied approaches to learning, or ATL, skills to achieve two outcomes:

your learning goal
your product

The explanations can overlap, but they should not be identical. Research skills may help you understand nutritional needs, while communication and thinking skills help you test and revise the cookbook.

For each example:

identify the ATL skill or skill cluster
describe the strategy you used
give a specific project example
explain how it contributed to the goal or product
refer to supporting process evidence

For example: “I applied information-literacy skills by comparing advice from government health services, academic publications, and commercial fitness websites. I checked authorship, dates, references, and possible commercial motives before selecting information. This helped me avoid unsupported claims and design recipes based on credible guidance.”

This is stronger than saying, “I used research skills,” because it explains the action and its effect. Evidence could include dated research notes, source evaluations, interview questions, revised schedules, prototype photographs, testing records, feedback, or annotated drafts.

Use only evidence that supports your explanation. The process journal does not replace the report. For additional models, review the RevisionDojo Personal Project overview and MYP Personal Project exemplars.

Criterion C: Reflecting

Explain the impact on you or your learning

Impact means more than whether you enjoyed the project. Explain what changed in your knowledge, skills, perspective, habits, or understanding of yourself as a learner.

Consider what you can now understand or do, which assumptions changed, how you responded when a method failed, and what you would approach differently next time. Support each reflection with a specific example. Instead of claiming that your time management improved, explain how missing an early deadline led you to divide later tasks into shorter sessions, add buffer time, and complete the final revision as scheduled.

Evaluate every success criterion

Work through each original success criterion and judge it as met, partly met, or not met. Base the judgment on evidence rather than memory.

Success criterion	Evidence and judgment
Twelve complete recipes	Met because the final product contains all 12 pages
Instructions understandable to users	Partly met because one of five testers misunderstood the units
Accurate nutritional data	Met within the limitations of estimated serving sizes

Balanced evaluation is more convincing than claiming complete success. Identify limitations, explain their causes, and propose precise improvements, such as adding both metric and imperial measurements instead of saying you would “make it better.”

Turn process evidence into strong writing

Use a claim, evidence, explanation sequence. State what happened or which skill you applied, identify a dated journal extract, result, draft, photograph, or feedback record, and then explain why it mattered.

For example: “Three of five users could not locate the settings menu in my first prototype. I replaced the icon-only navigation with labelled buttons, after which all five users completed the task independently.” Caption every visual and discuss it directly. Evidence that is never interpreted may use space without demonstrating a criterion.

Common mistakes to avoid

Writing a diary: Select decisions that demonstrate the criteria.
Confusing the goals: Separate what you intended to learn from what you intended to create.
Listing ATL skills: Explain the strategy, context, evidence, and result.
Using vague success criteria: Replace “good” with observable standards.
Evaluating from memory: Use tests, calculations, feedback, or direct comparison.
Ignoring unsuccessful work: Challenges can provide strong evidence of thinking and self-management.
Leaving research uncited: Cite borrowed facts, methods, images, and ideas.
Following an outdated rubric: Use Planning, Applying skills, and Reflecting.

The RevisionDojo guide to common Personal Project mistakes can help identify vague explanations before submission.

Final report checklist

Conclusion

A strong MYP Personal Project report makes your thinking visible. Structure it around Planning, Applying skills, and Reflecting, distinguish the learning goal from the product, explain ATL skills through concrete actions, and evaluate every success criterion using evidence.

Before submitting, compare each section with your school's current rubric rather than an old template. RevisionDojo's MYP Personal Project Grader can provide a final criteria-based check, while exemplars can help you judge whether your explanations are sufficiently specific.

Sources and referenced URLs

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