AP, or Advanced Placement, is a set of courses designed to allow high school students to prepare for success in college. Many of these courses include AP Statistics, AP Literature, and AP Psychology. 

Besides an advanced education, AP courses can be accepted for college credit classes at many universities, like the University of Florida and Florida State University. This can reduce the amount of classes that a student will have to take, and pay, in order to earn their college degree. 

College Board also finds that 85% of selective universities “report that a student’s AP experience favorably impacts admission decisions.”

But, here at West Boca High there is an even better program called the AP Capstone program! AP Capstone focuses on developing students’ skills in critical thinking, research, writing, presenting, and peer collaboration, rather than a test-objective curriculum. 

Over the course of high school, students will take the required AP Seminar and AP Research classes, in addition to four other AP classes of the student’s choosing. 

AP Seminar is a full-year course, consisting of individual and group research. Students will be encouraged to choose topics prevalent in today’s society and research a set of potential solutions, creating a research paper and academic presentation to showcase their results. AP Seminar is a great introduction to the world of research, equipping students with skills needed in AP Research and other higher-level college courses. 

AP Research is also a full-year course, taken the year following the completion of AP Seminar. AP Research, while stemming from skills learned in AP Seminar, allows students to choose their year long research projects with full freedom. Over the course of the school year, students will propose, plan, and execute a research project of their choice, including participant data collection. Many of the research projects students are seeing right now come from AP Research students! 

Ms. Rademaker, West Boca’s AP Research teacher, says “West Boca is one of only FOUR schools in the entire district with an AP Capstone program.  This gives students a unique opportunity to develop critical research skills necessary for success in many fields prior to heading off to college.  The AP Capstone program is highly respected and revered by college admissions and many past AP Capstone graduates have gone on to secure positions in research at top universities throughout Florida and the United States.” 

If you are interested in learning more about the AP Capstone program at West Boca, you can join the Google Classroom; code: uoza5vw