Recently, my high school introduced the AP capstone program to the incoming sophmore and junior classes. The brochure that was given to us claimed that the program is regarded well by prestigious universities. Thus, I decided to sign up for AP Seminar, which is the first year of the two year capstone program. However, I’m extremely skeptical in its significance in college admissions in regards to elite schools including the ivy league. My original choice was AP computer science in addition to Honors Precalculus, AP European History, AP Chemistry, Honors English 2, and Water Polo. My second choice was AP statistics but I decided to leave this for senior year since I’m taking calculus BC junior year. Therefore, should I change AP seminar to AP computer science for sophmore year?
AP Capstone is very new; however, College Board claims many colleges & universities are supporting it. See https://lp.collegeboard.org/ap-capstone/higher-education-support
Does this signify that it is significant in admission to ivy league schools? Enough to take the space of a class I would potentially enjoy taking more?
Try making a schedule for your remaining years of high school with the AP seminar/capstone and without AP seminar/capstone. Consider which additional courses you would take if you did not take AP seminar/capstone and compare how valuable you see them, rather than just looking at next year’s courses (since you could take AP CS or whatever some other year even if you did take AP seminar).
Whether AP seminar/capstone is viewed more or less favorably by colleges than the courses you would take instead depends on the college and the other courses, and may not be easily knowable from outside the colleges’ admissions offices.
I’m not actually sure how much AP Capstone helps. One of my friends took AP Capstone, top 20 in our class of 750, had stellar SAT/AP scores, was national merit commended, and a state speech champion and got rejected from Northwestern. None of the students at my school had much luck with AP Capstone improving their chances with selective schools, however it is an interesting block to take.
AP Capstone is as good as the student makes it out to be – most projects are group or self-based. If anything, the finished product and research portfolio that comes out of Capstone is what’ll be impressive to colleges, assuming that the student took up some extraordinary subject matter.
Right now I have a 4.5 GPA and I’m ranked 5 th in my high school. I am completing my high school schedule for next year which will be my junior year. I original was going to take AP Calculus, AP Physics, AP Statistics, AP language, and an AP US History class for my junior year, now I’m considering replacing AP statistics with the AP Capstone research class and if I enroll in Capstone research class I would also change AP physics to honor physics because my teacher said the Capstone program requires dedication and hard work. I need your opinion should I keep the first schedule or change it and enroll in the Capstone class my junior and senior year.