Photo Credit: College Board

By: Kemi Osamiluyi

Editor-in-Chief

The newest chance for Hammond students to distinguish themselves on the national stage: the AP Capstone Diploma. The AP Capstone Diploma is an amazing opportunity for students to explore their independence in learning and research. It is a two-year long diploma that can be attained by taking AP Seminar and AP Research in chronological order. The AP Capstone Diploma provides students with a national certification for requirements pertaining to college-level research and presentation skills. Interested in earning this diploma? This article will teach you how to.

This current school year, 2025-2026, is the first year that AP Seminar will be offered. Next school year, 2026-2027, will be the first year that AP Research is offered as well. Howard County can start this pathway their sophomore year of high school or later. This means that current juniors, Class of 2027, will be the first graduating class of Howard County to have the ability to graduate with this accredited diploma.

Overseeing the integration process of this new diploma pathway is Independent Research Teacher Alec Livieratos. After his first year teaching Independent Research, Intern/Mentor I & II G/T, he wanted to provide Hammond students with new opportunities to explore their intellectual curiosity. When asked “How do you feel about the opportunity to have an AP Capstone?” He had a lot to say. “I am super excited! The AP Capstone Diploma is a great opportunity for Hammond students. We currently have the highest enrollment rate in AP Seminar across the county.” The AP Capstone Diploma is an exciting opportunity for Howard County students to set themselves apart from other high-achieving students across the nation.

The first step to earning this diploma is taking AP Seminar followed by AP Research in a subsequent year. In addition to taking and passing both AP exams with a score of 3 or higher, students must take 4 additional AP exams of their choosing and pass each of them with a 3 or higher as well, in order to earn the AP Capstone Diploma. Mr. Livieratos says, “So that could be an AP music class, AP math class, an AP history class, or an AP science class. Any of them will count towards an AP Capstone Diploma. So it’s really interdisciplinary, which is cool, and it’s not just my program that’s going to help students get there, it’s all AP classes that’ll help students get the AP Diploma.”

Let’s break down the topics for each class.

AP Seminar is the first course that students will take in the AP Capstone pathway. AP Seminar focuses on various topics, allowing students to construct their own learning. “I like to say that AP Seminar is just AP Argument or AP Critical Thinking. Those are the themes of the class, breaking down arguments and how to think critically.” The class’ usefulness doesn’t end in the classroom however– “And we can apply those concepts to any curriculum-based subject that we’re looking at. So in AP Seminar, we look at historical documents. We look at songs, we look at art, we look at poetry, we look at journal articles.” AP Seminar gives students the opportunity to take charge of their own learning, building their own curriculum and discussing their own topics of interest.

On the other hand, AP Research holds a different skill-set construction. “AP Research is going to be a year-long deep dive into a topic that students are passionate about. It’s very similar to independent research in the sense that students will spend the year getting to pick a topic that they are passionate about and become experts on said topic. At the end of the year, our students in AP Research will know more about their subject than any other students in the building, and possibly any other teacher in the building when it comes to their topic, because of the deep level of research they are going to do that spans an entire year.”

“So it’ll be different for every student, but at the end of the day, they will produce a college-level research paper and a college-level presentation where they provide an oral defense to the work that they are presenting from their research.” So far, there have been about 50 students taking the course.

So, it’s apparent that following the AP Capstone track will help you become a better researcher. But how will earning this diploma prepare you for the real world and beyond? “I think that these are the skills, in talking to academic advisors and college representatives, these are the skills that translate to all college classes. It’s not just math skills, historical thinking skills, economic skills, language skills. These are the skills that create successful college students and successful learners, lifelong learners.”

There are some important things to remember if you want to earn this Diploma: These classes cannot be self-studied– sorry seniors! AP Seminar and AP Research cannot be taken within the same year; they must be taken one after the other in order to count. In addition to this, the AP Capstone Program will be a post-College and Career Readiness pathway for the 2026-2027 school year. There will be a new section in the 2026-2027 catalog that will explain what these pathways are, and it lists AP Capstone as one of those options.
Interested in earning the AP Capstone Diploma? Read more about the AP Capstone Diploma here: https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/ap-capstone-diploma-program or stop by to visit Mr. Livieratos anytime in room C102.