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!

One of our new initiatives here at Fiveable for the 2020-2021 school year is Fiveable Courses! You can sign up for the AP Seminar Fiveable course to get access to a bunch of assistance throughout either the fall or spring semester. This can be super helpful, especially if you're looking for extra support to supplement your in-class work or even an extra pair of eyes.

A Fiveable course in AP Seminar includes:

It's $55, and it'll be worth it in the long run! 🙂 Sign up for Fiveable's 

With these 5 tips, Fiveable Courses, 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 

AP Seminar Performance Task and Presentation

AP Seminar Exam

AP Seminar Exam Prep 2020 | Reviews + Free Study Help | Fiveable

AP Seminar

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

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 🏗️

One of our new initiatives here at Fiveable for the 2020-2021 school year is Fiveable Courses!  You can sign up for the AP Seminar Fiveable course to get access to a bunch of assistance throughout either the fall or spring semester. This can be super helpful, especially if you're looking for extra support to supplement your in-class work or even an extra pair of eyes.

It's $55, and it'll be worth it in the long run! 🙂 Sign up for Fiveable's 

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 

Blogs

AP Seminar

all

blogs

browse by units

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

Blogs

AP Seminar

all

blogs

browse by units

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

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