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AP Seminar

It’s that time of the year when students are meeting with their counselors and planning which classes to take for the next school year. This process can feel overwhelming and stressful and if you are a rising 10th grader struggling to choose which English course to take next, this article is here to help.

Going into the new school year, I was most scared about taking AP Seminar. I knew that the class would involve a lot of writing and research, but since this year marked the first year 10th graders were allowed to take it, I didn’t have any students’ perspectives to rely on. Because of this, I wasn’t sure what I was really signing myself up for or if I’d even enjoy the class. Now that I have taken the class, I wanted to share my perspective to help rising sophomores get a clear picture of what to expect, making it easier to decide if this class is the right fit for them.

In AP Seminar, you get to explore themes that are related to the real world, interesting to you, local issues, concepts from separate AP courses, and global or international topics. You do this through different perspectives and lenses and learn how to determine if the sources are credible or not and once you finish, you take the information and format your own conclusion or argument in essays and presentations, some being individual and some being group projects.

Some big projects you do include: The IRR (individual research report), the TMP (team multimedia presentation), the IWA (individual written argument), and the IMP (individual multimedia presentation. Along with this, there is an end of course exam where you develop an evidence-based argumentative essay. 

For the IRR, you essentially find a topic that interests your group (as this project is in preparation for the presentation) and choose a lens that you specifically study. Then you write a report about your research findings and what argument you’ve formed based on said findings. Then, you have your TMP, which I found to be the easiest, as you have two or three people helping you work on it, and you really just take the information you wrote in your IRR and condense it into an 8-10 minute presentation where you address a real-world issue and suggest a solution.

After these two assignments are finished, you have to write your IWA. To prepare for this, you read six sources and form a research question connected to at least two of these, creating the framework for your paper. Then, you write a maximum of 2,200 words to address the issue, why it matters, and then your proposed solution and the limitations and implications of it.

After you complete these, the final performance task you need to complete is your IMP.  Ultimately, it is the individual version of the group presentation, so you take what you found when researching the topic for your IMP and present your argument. All these assignments get submitted to the College Board for you to obtain your AP score, which comes out in July.

It is notable, however, that this class requires you to spend a substantial amount of work outside the class when completing the performance tasks that get submitted to the College Board. This is because the deadline for these submissions is crucial to meet and you need to ensure you’re keeping up. With that said, this class is mostly graded on completion, so as long as you turn in your assignments and follow the rubric, you should get an A. I feel like I learned a lot about various real-world topics, and I found that researching these topics engaging. So, if you are someone who enjoys writing and researching about real-world topics, this class is the perfect fit for you and I definitely recommend this class.