The College Board is piloting two new Advanced Placement courses designed to focus on research skills that admissions counselors say are too often missing in high school graduates.
The new program for juniors and seniors, developed in collaboration with Cambridge International Examinations, will be tested over three years in 15 to 18 high schools starting this fall, the College Board announced last week.
The AP/Cambridge Interdisciplinary Investigations and Critical Reasoning Seminar will be offered in 11th grade. Students will work in teams to research and write topics of global relevance. Each school can choose its own topic and pair different disciplines, such as history and English.
The AP/Cambridge Capstone Research Project taken in 12th grade involves writing a 4,500- to 5,000-word paper that will be evaluated on students’ ability to design, plan, and manage a research project, analyze information, and communicate their findings. The College Board will follow two groups of students in the two-year program. If successful, the courses could be rolled out globally.
