Yo what's poppin! 🍿 You're signed up for Seminar and happened to stumble on this post, wondering how you can score the coveted 5️⃣! Well, you're definitely in the right place.

As you probably know, AP Seminar is a course with just about zero content. Instead, the class focuses on skills like writing, presenting, and research to build arguments and analyze information in ways that other high school classes, even your English classes, may not. Because there is no real "content," and because AP Capstone is two classes, AP Seminar can be a super intimidating course.

However, the course is incredibly doable, and the vast majority of students pass. In 2020, approximately 81% of AP Seminar students passed with a three or higher! So how do you get a 5?

A great piece of advice for anyone in any AP class, but 

 those in AP Seminar, is to get a hold onto a time management system. I'm not saying you have to live in planner-land and start time blocking every minute of your day (though for those people, props, y'all are incredible), but setting up a time management plan will make your life 

Please don’t procrastinate. The last thing you want to be doing the week before the paper is due is...trying to figure out where to start with your paper. Start early so that you still have time to do edits, reread your paper, and have enough time to put your best work forward. —Charly Castillo

In AP Seminar, you're going to have deadline after deadline after deadline. Whether these are research deadlines in which you need to find sources, annotate them, and write annotated bibliographies, or outline deadlines (we'll get to outlines in the next section), or straight parts of your paper, deadlines will 

Therefore, you need to keep your time management working and put yourself on some schedule because the due dates you'll be facing build on one another.

Keep yourself organized to be successful in Seminar! Image Courtesy of 

In AP Seminar, you'll write two main papers: your IRR (Individual Research Report) and your IWA (Individual Written Argument). While it may seem tempting to simply do your research and dive straight into writing the essay, outlining is 

 an important part of the writing process! It will make writing your paper easier.

 about starting a paper or even simply a body paragraph, outline it! There are two major types of outlines: the broad outline and the essay outline.

The first of the two is arguably the easiest; you can throw together a broad outline pretty quickly if you have an idea of what your major argument is and the points you want to make. ✍️

, you want to remember the structure that most of the works you read in Seminar will have: ACE.

In your essays, regardless of if it's the IRR or IWA, you will follow this structure. In writing your outline, first set up your paragraphs, typically an intro, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

You can simply title your intro and conclusion "intro" or "conclusion" because they don't have a "topic" per se, but each body paragraph should represent a claim that supports your argument.

 outline - that is, what topics are you going to cover and in what order? Essentially, a broad outline designs your 

, an incredibly important concept in any argumentative piece of writing. 📝

You can use your broad outline as a foundation to write the second type of outline: a detailed essay outline. This not only means referencing your evidence, but putting direct quotes, charts, citations, and explanations in outline format.

Essentially, your detailed outline forces you to write your essay mentally before and get most of the mental grunt work out of the way. For example, here's a snippet from my detailed outline of my IWA from the 2018-19 school year:

This is an example of a detailed/essay outline for Seminar. Image Courtesy of Author

Outlining is an incredibly useful tool that will follow you even beyond Seminar into Research and even just your ordinary papers.

AP Seminar is unique in the fact that, for the most part, you can choose your topics, whether in a group or by yourself. In addition, since your teacher is 

 allowed to help you, your classmates should become a HUGE asset to you when writing. ✅

As a former AP Seminar student brilliantly notes:

Work with your partners/peers when you can, even if your papers aren't the same! —Dylan Black

Peer editing is an INCREDIBLY useful tool because not only do you get editing done on your paper like normal, but your peers will also know the rubric for your essays. You'll l have to do two presentations along with your papers, one with a group (your TMP, or Team Multimedia Presentation) and one alone (your IMP, or Individual Multimedia Presentation). These presentations will have information from your paper, so the presentation's actual creation is rarely the difficult part, rather the presenting part is., so they can give individualized advice on what to improve.

Make sure you're getting feedback from people other than yourself! Image Courtesy of 

You'll have to do two presentations along with your papers, one with a group (your TMP, or Team Multimedia Presentation) and one alone (your IMP, or Individual Multimedia Presentation). These presentations will have information from your paper, so the presentation's actual creation is rarely the difficult part, rather the presenting part is.

You may have done presentations in other classes, but in AP Seminar, your presentation skills are part of the rubric, so it's 

 for you to take time to make your presentation engaging and well presented. 📊

Here are your goals when designing your presentation:

To hit these goals, you have to explicitly make choices regarding slide design (such as color schemes, fonts, and more)! The number 1️⃣ issue in many slides is 

. You should not have to put an absurd amount of text on a slide, rather only the major points you will hit on; the rest is for you to memorize or have on notes.

See if you can notice the differences in these two slides:

Here's an example of a well-designed Seminar slide. Image Courtesy of Author

This is a Seminar slide that could use some work. Image Courtesy of 

Furthermore, in your actual presentation, a great way to earn some easy points is to 

. While this doesn't necessarily mean building out a full-blown script and memorizing it, making sure you know your points and specific details like statistics will make your presentation that much better.

Think of it like this, when you're watching a presentation, you may not notice that a presenter is doing something right, but you 

 notice if something's wrong. Small things like posture, eye contact, and the tone/volume of your voice play a large part in the quality of your presentation.

5. Treat Seminar as a Learning Experience, Not Just a Class 🚗

As you might've heard in your life at one point, it's all about the 

, not the destination! This applies 💯% to Seminar, as you'll get so much more out of the class when you don't think of it as just an exam score!

 that you can carry throughout and past high school will motivate you to learn. Because of the lack of content in Seminar, you are learning almost exclusively skills about how to write, think, analyze content, and analyze arguments.

These are skills that will be instrumental in not only your English classes but in anything you read or think about in the future. Because of this, treating Seminar as a learning experience and not just a grade will help you learn more effectively!

With these 5 tips, the Fiveable community, and a little bit of work on your part, getting a 5️⃣ on AP Seminar should be a matter of a little bit of writing and presenting! After May, you'll be 

How to Get a 5 in AP Seminar

What's poppin? 🎈📌 You've signed up for Seminar, one of the 

 AP courses that serves as the first part of the two-part AP Capstone program. After passing AP Seminar and AP Research, in addition to four other AP exams, you'll earn the Capstone diploma!

you've taken before; it is interdisciplinary and allows you to explore skills that are crucial for your success after graduation: research and argumentation.

Of course, that is a VERY simplified version of what you will be doing in AP Seminar. 

We will be explaining the nuts and bolts of what AP Seminar is throughout this guide, but you may be wondering: is AP Seminar hard, and is it worth taking?

question every student thinks whenever they find AP Seminar on their course registration. Let's look at it first from a quantitative perspective.

Generally speaking, around 81% of students pass the AP Seminar exam. 

: 2020's scores excluded the individual and team multimedia presentations from their calculations.

To be successful in AP Seminar, you have to stay organized. Different teachers choose different ways to teach this test, so there's no way to generalize the 

However, the point of the class is not to learn content and show knowledge of that content but to 

Just like the bookcase offers books of multiple lengths and genres, AP Seminar is very versatile and teaches you multiple skills! Image Courtesy of 

You will learn how to analyze and dig through a variety of different sources to pull out the main ideas, arguments, and evidence to support your argument. 

The class may feel uncomfortable at first. If you like strictly right and wrong answers, you may struggle initially. However, as the course develops, those skills that you struggled with will become second nature.

Here are some words of wisdom from some past AP Seminar students about the course!

"AP Seminar is not necessarily hard, but you need to be thoughtful and intentional with the work you do. You can’t just BS your essays and expect a high score. It takes time to craft a thoughtful and well-developed essay." —Yeidi Yuja 🤔

"AP Seminar is not hard if you stay on top of your work. If you fall behind, you’re going to be cramming, which doesn’t show your best work."—Aly Moosa 👑

The answer: absolutely! One of the best benefits of AP Capstone is gaining either the AP Seminar and Research Certificate 📜 (passing both classes) or AP Capstone Diploma 🎓 (passing both classes and 4 other AP exams). You can show this off to colleges and boost your college application!

There are several benefits you get out of AP Seminar:

But don't just take it from me—let's hear it from some other AP Seminar students:

"YES! However, I'd be more hesitant taking it as a junior or senior because you won't be able to use the AP Capstone Diploma on college apps, but either way, it's a FANTASTIC class that you learn a ton in." —Dylan Black 💻

"Absolutely! Not only did it help improve my public speaking/presenting skills, but it also taught me how to “research” and create a logical argument, building life and academic skills for the future." —Aly Moosa 🏗️

So, is AP Seminar worth your time? Should you make room on your schedule for it? Yes! This class will give you the skills to succeed in other AP classes, college, and in the real world. You'll be glad you didn't 

Is AP Seminar Hard? Is AP Seminar Worth Taking?

And guess what, we've saved the easiest for last 💯!

The End of Course (EoC) Exam is putting to the test a lot of what you've done so far in the year. You'll see elements of the first four Big Ideas in all aspects of the EoC exam ✍️.

Overall, you should feel very comfortable doing what the EoC is asking you to do. It's pretty much a scaled down version of elements of PT 1 and PT 2. Things like analyzing evidence, looking for line of reasoning, and arguing a thesis, all show up in the EoC.

Let's take a look at what you'll actually be doing along with some key points to take note of:

Before we dive into the nitty gritty, one thing to keep in mind is that the 

 are short and to the point. This is great because it really highlights everything you need to do without getting too complicated. But, it can be tricky because there are so few points in the rubric so everything counts.

The first section that you'll see is the Short Answer Questions. Here you'll be given one argumentative article and asked to answer three questions.

Identify the author's main idea, argument, or thesis. 🤔

Explain the author’s line of reasoning by identifying the claims used to build the argument and the connections between them. 🗣️

Evaluate the effectiveness of the evidence the author uses to support the claims made in the argument. 👨‍💼

You do not need to get super fancy answering these questions. In fact, you should probably be able to answer the first question in just about a sentence. Again, make sure to read the rubrics to really understand how to get full points.

Let's go through each of these questions and talk about them. We'll be using the 

The first question asks you to identify the author's argument. This should be very simple! You are looking for the overall argument that the author is making. 

Usually the author will have a thesis, but if they don't, just ask yourself what overall point the author is trying to make. 

Keep in mind that you need to fully explain the author's argument. For example, take a look at Part A of the 2019 exam. The article is titled "Why the Voting Age Should be 17." You might read that and think "Oh! There's the author's argument." But, that is not the author's full argument. 

Instead, you should explain why the author thinks 🤔 that. A more complete answer would say: "The author argues that the voting age should be lowered in order to increase voter participation, allow students to be more involved in their government, and strengthen the American democracy." 

That answer still says what the title says, but goes in to way more detail.

In question 2, you need to analyze the author's claims and line of reasoning to determine if they support the overall argument the author is making. 

Just like with question 1, you may be tempted to give an answer the doesn't fully answer the question. Do not just simply list the author's claims. Instead, you should work through each of the author's claims and explain how they either help or hurt the overall argument 🗣️. 

It is better to write too much as opposed to too little here. Really, you should be aiming to write about a page or more.

The last question has you looking at the author's evidence. You need to evaluate its effectiveness in supporting the author's claims and analyze the credibility of the evidence. 

Just like the claims, you should work through each piece of evidence the author gives, explain how well it supports the argument, and explain how credible it is 🤨. 

I would recommend talking about the evidence as a whole. Is it all credible? Does some evidence do a good job of supporting the author's argument while others don't? This will help the question feel a little more organized and focused.

The Long Essay Question requires more time and planning than the Short Answer Questions. Generally, I recommend spending an hour and a half on part B.

Even though part B takes longer, what you are doing is fairly straight forward. Essentially, you are constructing an argument using two of four pieces of evidence that College Board provides. 

All of the evidence is based around a central theme, but they all have different perspectives. 

You are going to select two (minimally) of the four sources and present an argument that is not found in any of the sources. What this means is that if one source argues for 'A' and the other source argues for 'B,' then you need to argue for 'C.' Your argument should NOT 🙅🏽‍♀️ be the same as one of the pieces of evidence.

So, how do you write this thing? Here are the steps I would take to write the Long Essay Question.

Read ALL of the evidence carefully. Find the central theme that is presented. 📕

Think about what you want to argue that is different than the perspectives presented in the evidence. 👨🏽‍🏫

Select the two (or more) pieces of evidence that you are going to use. ✌️

Outline your essay, making sure to note your claims and how you connect your evidence to them. 🗒️

Write, write, write! You should be well prepared to write without stopping to think about the direction your essay is heading in. 📜

A few things to note... College Board knows that you are writing on a topic that you might not be well informed on. They also know that you will only be using two pieces of evidence. Because of that, this does not need to be the most airtight argumentative essay you've ever written. 

That being said, it should have all of the components of a good essay.

The best way to prepare for the End of Course exam is to read the rubrics and practice! You can find all the past exams along with sample responses and scoring notes 

. Use them to your advantage! Read the responses that scored high grades and recognize why they did well.

But just remember, you have been using these skills all year! You know how to do this. Be confident and don't stress!

End of Course Exam: Short Answer and Long Essay

Time to put to work everything that we've been preparing for! The Performance Tasks are your chance to show all of the stuff from the Big Ideas.

Each of the PTs are complex, but we are going to work to breakdown each of them in an easy to understand format.

Performance Task 1 is considered to be the group project. 👩‍💻 Here you will be picking a real world problem that you are trying to solve with your group. As an individual you will be analyzing evidence from a specific lens. Then, your group will be using your evidence to try to answer your question.

Seems simple, right? In a lot of ways, it is! There are just some important things to remember... and we're going to cover them now.

Picking your topic is a lot like picking a thesis for a research paper. If your topic is weak then you will have a hard time formulating a good report and presentation. ✍️

So, how do you go about picking a topic? In order to answer this let's take a look at the course and exam description.

On page 47 we can see a good overview of what you need to be doing in PT 1, specifically what type of problem you should be looking for as a group.

Most problems that a lot of students go for are 'real world' in nature. This means that the problems have to do with things outside of academia

the environment or community concerned with the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship.

Some examples of real world questions are:

Should the United States reform their prison system?

Is stem cell research ethical and viable in today's society?

How can the United States address homelessness?

As we can see, these questions tend to do with the world 🌍 and people as a whole. In general I would say that you should pick a problem having to do with the real world.

However, you can pick a problem that is academic in nature. Typically these will be ideas that challenge established academic thought. For example, if your team argues that Martin Luther actually didn't start the Protestant Reformation you would be going against preconceived academic thought.

This is VERY tough to do successfully and I would suggest only going this route if you feel very confident in your topic. 👍

So, how should you decide a topic with your group? The best thing to do is to bounce ideas off of your group. Each person should come up with several broad ideas and then present them to the group. There are no bad ideas so don't be shy here! 🙋‍♀️

As you start to settle on your problem, remember that you don't want to go too broad or too narrow. You only have a ten minute presentation to talk about your solution, so don't get crazy. If your group is finding that your solutions are way too complex and lengthy, your question is probably too broad.

As the name suggests, this is the individual portion of PT 1. BUT this does not mean that you need to do this alone. I want to mention this first and foremost. Your team is a resource, so use them!

Okay now that that's out of the way, let's talk about what the IRR actually is.

In short, your IRR is a report of all the best evidence you have gathered for your particular lens. Easy enough!

As a team you will need figure out how to break your topic into specific lenses that each team member will cover. Then, you will conduct research within that lens. For example: if your lens is 'political and historical' your research will focus on the politics and history of your topic.

If you need a refresher of lenses and perspectives, make sure to check out the unit guide for 

As you gather your evidence, remember, you don't need to include all of it in your IRR. You only have 1200 words to describe each piece of evidence and compare the multiple perspectives. It's better to have a wide variety of sources to choose from than not enough. 🌍

As you write your IRR you need to do the following:

Describe how your specific lens relates to the overall topic your team chose 🙌

Summarize the main ideas of each of the sources and explain why the sources are valuable to your particular lens ✍️

Evaluate the perspectives of the sources and explain how they interact with each other 🤔

Evaluate the multiple perspectives of your particular lens 👀

(Optional) Give a solution to your team's topic 🗣️

Another thing to keep in mind as you write is that you won't be using all of your sources in the final presentation. Don't be afraid to include sources that you know go against the team's argument.

Last thing to say about the IRR: this is not an argumentative paper. Instead, you are just focusing on the evidence! You do not need to convince the reader of anything, just analyze the evidence.

Now the teamwork really starts! Your TMP is all about proposing a solution to your presented problem.

The presentation should NOT just talk about the existence of a problem, but should focus on the 

Before you get started I would highly recommend revisiting the 

 unit guide. The communication that you have with your team will make or break your presentation.

After completing your IRR you should come together with your group to start thinking 🤔 about a solution.

Do not come into the presentation with a solution already made up in your mind. You can for sure have ideas, but be willing to work with your group towards a solution.

The solution should not be too broad. You should be able to securely back it up with evidence.

Work with your team to selective evidence ✍️ that supports your solution. If you need to find more evidence outside of your IRR, you can do that.

Now that you have your solution and your evidence, you should start working on developing your claims and figuring out which team member will present what. You aren't required to write a script but it's certainly encouraged! 🗣️

As you start putting together your multimedia presentation, remember, it should accompany your spoken presentation. It should include minimal text and shouldn't distract the audience. A presentation with only image and no words is better than a presentation with too many words.

Each image should also be purposeful and shouldn't just be filler.

Most of the tips for giving a presentation are talked about in the 

As we wrap things up I keep hitting on what I've said: make sure to work with your team! 👩‍💻 Keep them in the loop! This process will be so much easier if you work together. Don't be afraid to ask questions and change things up if it works for the group.

 This is a must and will really help to make sure you get all of the points you possibly can. They can be found 

Exam: Performance Task 1: Team Project and Presentation

PT 2 may seem more intimidating than PT1, especially since you have to do it all yourself. But, don't let the 2000 word paper 👀 or the eight minute presentation scare you off!

In a lot of ways, PT 2 should be more familiar to you. Here, you are writing ✍️ a traditional argumentative research paper and then presenting on it. It's pretty much that simple.

Where things can get kind of intimidating is the implementation of the stimulus materials.

These are a collection of articles, poems, videos, songs, or really anything in between, that are meant to guide 👨‍💼 students towards a particular topic.

Using this topics students will brainstorm their own research question and and construct an argumentative paper.

The presentation is simply a place where you can explain your argument and the evidence you chose while demonstrating your knowledge of your thesis ✍️.

Let's work through each section of PT 2 and look at how best to approach it.

Each year the College Board release a set of Stimulus Materials to act as guide 👨‍💼 for students as they choose their topic. Each source that the College Board provides in this packet is based around a large central theme that students should use as a guide while they choose their topic.

Before we get any further, let's look at the 👉 

Here we can see that we have 7 different sources. This will be true (as of now) in all stimulus packets.

We can also the variety in sources that College Board provides. We have everything from academic journals to a Bob Dylan song 🎵.

Typically, in Stimulus Packets there will be a peer reviewed article, a historical source, an opinionated argumentative source, a piece of media, and some collections of poetry, music, or fiction.

The great thing about the Stimulus Packet is that you are allowed to go through it with your class and your teacher. As you analyze each source think about the central theme across all sources. In the Stimulus Packet I linked, the central theme is 'change.'

Remember, this theme will be broad, but you should start thinking about topics that fit 👉 👈 within it.

Stimulus Packet is not just there to serve as the topic for PT 2, you will also need to incorporate at least one of the sources in your actual written paper.

: I recommend using at least two sources in your paper. That way you are sure to get those points on the rubric.

Because of this, you should also look for a topic that will fit well with some of the sources. Because the sources are so diverse, you shouldn't have too hard of time finding a topic that interests you while still incorporating a source.

Now that we have our big theme, we can move on to topic selection!

Now to the most important part of PT2.... picking your topic 😍! Again, you should be brainstorming around the larger topic from the Stimulus Packet and one of the sources within it.

I would recommend doing this with a classmate 👨‍🏫. Having someone you can bounce ideas off of can be really helpful. I would strongly encourage not doing the same topic as classmate so that you don't run into plagiarism issues.

As you're brainstorming topics it's important to remember not to go too big or too small. You should be broad enough that you have enough evidence to use, but specific enough that you don't have too much to talk 🗣️ about.

Don't be afraid to pursue multiple topics and do some preliminary research. Sticking to one topic early can often lead to stress if you can find enough evidence or the right evidence for you.

You should also feel comfortable changing your topic slightly as you do research. As much as your topic should influence your research, your research should also influence your topic.

 to review how to find a good variety of evidence 

Now that we've settled on a topic and we've found good evidence, we can start writing ✍️!!

The Individual Written Argument (IWA) is essentially a standard argumentative research paper where you are arguing for a thesis using claims and evidence.

Your entire IWA sort of rests on your thesis 👀 so it's important get that written first and foremost. The traditional three pronged thesis is of course acceptable, but not required. What should be true is that your thesis needs to outline your entire argument. I should know exactly what you are going to argue just by reading your thesis.

Once you begin writing you are essentially just writing a standard argumentative research paper, even if it is the longest paper you've written.

Here are some things to keep in mind 🤔 while you write:

The evidence is there to support your claims, just like the claims are there to support your argument. All of these elements need to work together. Don't just make your paper a book report on your evidence. 📕

Line of reasoning is also crucial for a successful paper. Organize your claims and your evidence in a way that makes sense to the reader. Check out the 

Don't ramble! 2000 words seems like a lot, but you have a lot to talk about! Be thoughtful with your words. ✍️

I would aim for about 15 to 20 pieces of unique evidence when you go into writing. If you use less, you use less! It's better to be over prepared than under. 💻

Finally we've made it... the Individual Multimedia Presentation 🗣️! Your IMP will be very similar to the Team Multimedia Presentation. However, instead of arguing for your solution to the problem, you will be arguing your thesis.

A good way to think about this is that you will be translating your paper into an eight minute presentation. You need to explain the importance of your argument while connecting your claims with your evidence 🤝.

You should also take some time to explain the different perspectives of your evidence.

 to review good presentation strategies 👨🏿‍💼.

You will also be asked to answer two questions. This is your 

 section. These question will ask you to reflect on the research process and how you could extend on your topic.

As always, these questions are available to you. You can find them on page 63 of the 

Wrapping things up I want to remind you not to get too stressed out. PT 2 can easily feel very overwhelming, but if you chunk things up and plan, you will be great!

 are your friend! Make sure to read them to understand exactly how to get all the points you need.

Exam: Performance Task 2: Individual Research-Based Essay and Presentation

It's time to team up for the last Big Idea!

AP Seminar Guidance 2020-21💬

Trending

Study Resources

Big Idea 1: Question and Explore

Big Idea 2: Understand and Analyze

Big Idea 3: Evaluate Multiple Perspectives

Big Idea 4: Synthesize Ideas

Big Idea 5: Team, Transform, and Transmit

Exam Tasks & Guidance

Blogs

Creators

Steven Kucklick

Dylan Black

Emma Mellors

Join Our Community

AP Seminar Guidance 2020-21💬

Trending

Study Resources

Big Idea 1: Question and Explore ﻿

Big Idea 2: Understand and Analyze ﻿

Big Idea 3: Evaluate Multiple Perspectives ﻿

Big Idea 4: Synthesize Ideas ﻿

Big Idea 5: Team, Transform, and Transmit﻿

Exam Tasks & Guidance﻿

Blogs﻿