When I was going into high school, I looked around at my options of magnet school programs. Ultimately, I decided to attend Western Guilford High School with the AP Capstone Academy. With this program there were a few requirements, including the need to take AP Seminar and AP Research. These classes were designed to make you look at different subjects with a critical mind and come to solutions based on fact and fact alone.
When I entered into AP Research my senior year, I immediately fell in love with the course. Each person was looked at individually and graded according to their research. There were no tests or homework grades. We created our own timelines of when things were due. By the end we needed to have written a 3,000 word paper and give a 12-15 minute presentation with oral defense. This was the perfect course for someone who was not good at test taking or any of the typical standardized classes.
My research was titled “Analyzing the Ectomorph, Mesomorph, and Endomorph Body Types Within Women and Their Representation In American Network Television Commercials”. I watched commercials within the three most popular network television shows and categorized the body types within all of the commercials throughout. I hypothesized that women who looked more athletic and slender would be represented vastly more than anyone else, and women who were noticeably overweight or obese would be underrepresented since 33% of the U.S. population falls into that category. I was correct in my assumption that overweight or obese women would be underrepresented, and incorrect that there would be an overwhelming amount of athletic, slender women. There were definitely more, but not an overpowering amount.
When I turned in my essay, it ended up being 24 pages long. My presentation was thirteen minutes, and my oral defense was about five. I assumed that this was the end of my coursework. I felt confident in what I did, and felt sure that I would actually pass an AP Exam. When scores came back in July of 2018, I found out that I had received a 5, the highest score you can get. This was exciting in itself because the best I had gotten on any previous AP exam was a 3, and only in two of seven AP classes I had ever taken.
In April of 2019, I got a phone call out of the blue from the teacher in charge of the AP Capstone program at Western Guilford. She informed me that I had received a perfect score on my exam. After some further research, it turned out that 111 students in the world out of the 10,000 who took this exam received this score. I was the only one at my school and I believe the only one in North Carolina the 2017-2018 school year.
I enjoyed my research greatly and hope that others have the opportunity to experience the joy of creating and looking into subjects that interest them.