A capstone project, otherwise known as a culminating project or a senior thesis, is a long-term, substantial assignment that you undertake in your final year of high school. If you are passionate about a particular subject a capstone project is the perfect way to demonstrate that passion to colleges, future employers, and your local community.
Traditionally, a “capstone” is the final piece of brickwork or stone laid atop a building to complete it. It is the culminating step in a considerable process. For students, a capstone project is similar. It is a crowning achievement to tie together what you have learned in high school. Ideally, your capstone should relate to your academic accomplishments and demonstrate to colleges your mastery of the subject.
Why are capstone projects important for high school students?
Capstone projects provide numerous benefits to students. Most obviously, they provide dedicated students with the opportunity to demonstrate their academic rigor and mastery of certain subjects. This is extremely useful in the context of college applications. However, there are several other important benefits that you can derive from this experience.
- Improved self-confidence.
- You may find that the simple process of designing your own project and carrying it to completion will engender self-belief and the confidence that you can undertake even greater projects.
- The opportunity to develop important personal and professional skills.
- A capstone project pushes you to hone your skills in public speaking, critical thinking, teamwork and leadership, research and collaboration, planning and organization, and many more.
- Greater academic focus and career direction.
- You may be unsure of exactly what you want to focus on in college and beyond.
- A capstone project gives you the chance to experiment with something that has always captured your academic attention.
- If you are passionate about a hobby or discipline, a capstone project allows you to test whether you want to pursue this passion at a higher level.
- This project will help solidify your goals and the focus of your academic future.
- Growth of personal relationships.
- One of the most significant aspects of a capstone project is the relationship that develops between mentor and student.
- Many projects will require supervision or consultation with experts – often your teachers or members of your community. These relationships can provide innumerable benefits both in the long and short term. Tapping into the network of people around you, and showing respect and interest in their expertise will take you a long way. Most professionals love nothing more than discussing their passions with excited young people.
- It never hurts to get more experts advocating for you and more community figures in your corner!
- A cure for “senioritis”!
- Less seriously, senior year can often be a wasted year. You might find that – having already completed your standardized tests, applied to college, and completed most of your important courses – you no longer are engaged with school or required to complete much work. This is often seen as an opportunity for seniors to unwind, but there are dangers associated with this.
- Not least of which is the danger of losing academic momentum and developing poor habits. By undertaking a capstone project throughout senior year, you will be further engaged with schooling and less likely to suffer from the shock of returning to normalcy in freshman fall at college.
How can a capstone project help you for college admissions?
College admissions is an extremely competitive and increasingly demanding process. As college applications become more and more comprehensive, students and parents have begun to see capstone projects as a way to gain an advantage. Many students are of the mistaken belief that colleges are primarily looking for well-rounded students.
Most high schoolers who are serious about college are encouraged to pursue interests even outside of their passions – you might have been told “you should play a sport, and an instrument, and be in the debate club, and volunteer locally, and travel!”
Apart from being stressful, and unattainable for the majority of young people, this is generally poor advice. Instead, it is better to have a handful of interests or passions that you can demonstrate a prolonged period of dedication to. This is where a capstone project fits in.
Briefly imagine you are an aspiring scientist, determined to study biology at university. When you are applying to college you want to demonstrate that this passion is a deep one, and that it is a priority for you.
In that context, it makes much more sense to apply your time towards a study of local environmental degradation than towards an unrelated sport, club, or volunteer activity.
Additionally, colleges are becoming increasingly savvy about the affectations of prospective students. Showing a genuine, long-term interest in a particular academic discipline has reemerged as one of the surest ways to gain attention from the leading colleges.
You may also find that your capstone experience was so noteworthy or illuminating that you are inspired to write your personal statements or supplemental essays about it. At the very least, you will find that your capstone project helps tie together your academic pursuits and provides you with a useful narrative structure for college applications and interviews.
How to brainstorm a capstone project
When sitting down to brainstorm a capstone project, it is important to remember that this is a personal process. It can be useful to study projects done by former students, to see what worked and what did not, and to encourage ideas of your own. But, ultimately, you want your capstone project to reflect your unique skills and interests.
Think about whatever you excel in academically. Or, perhaps, what you have always been passionate about but have long thought didn’t relate particularly to academics. Most importantly, consider what it is you want to focus your higher education and career on, and let that guide your decision.
There are limitless options for capstone projects. The only things to avoid are plagiarism and irrelevancy. Pick something that inspires you and that will provide you with a useful foundation to make the next step. If all else fails, ask people around you!
They may have a better idea of your strengths and weaknesses than you do. A simple conversation with a parent, friend, tutor, or teacher may lead you on a journey you never considered.
How to find a capstone project
Trying to find an original capstone project can be challenging. In recent years, undertaking a capstone has become quite common with American students. As such, you might find it tricky to come up with an idea that doesn’t seem overdone or, worse, like plagiarism.
However, there is only one you! The composite parts of your interests may be shared by many, but the sum of your interests is unique to you. This means that sometimes you might find your best idea is an interdisciplinary one.
Let us pretend you are a student who is interested in the environment, American history, and mapmaking. Now, if you were to try to come up with a capstone idea, you might begin by considering a study on the impact of environmental runoff in your local river or an investigation into the roots of different people living in your community.
You might then go online and see that such projects seem unoriginal or trite. Desperate and discouraged you might force yourself into one of these narrow approaches.
However, a better option would be to consider how to weave your many interests into one coherent capstone. For you, this could involve researching the construction and maintenance of wooded paths in your local forest or reservation going back to the precolonial era.
You might interview community leaders, study historical maps and texts, practice cartography, and ultimately enrich yourself in several areas at once. Needless to say, you would also produce a more authentic and unique capstone project.
Consider: You are multifaceted, and the interactions of those facets are what makes you unique!
How long should a capstone project last?
Broadly speaking, a capstone project is intended to last for the bulk of your senior year. The majority of capstone projects are proposed in the summer between junior and senior year, or early in the fall, and then completed in the spring or summer of senior year.
However, there is no absolute rule here and indeed many schools encourage students to begin working on their capstone projects as early as freshman year.
While there is no limit to how long you can work on your capstone project, there is a limit on how little. A capstone project by definition should be long-term and extensive. At a minimum, we are talking about several months.
The purpose is to demonstrate to colleges, your community, and yourself that you can undertake a project over a long period of time. This involves many skills that colleges prize, such as time management and planning, prioritization of tasks, determination, and diligence.
Remember that a good capstone project cannot be rushed. You will likely want to be working on it for at least the bulk of your senior year.
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How to design your own capstone project in simple steps
- Proposal – Your big idea! The details of the proposal you will be expected to put forward will be different from school to school, but there are some general guidelines. A proposal should be initiated by the student and put forward to a professor, teacher, or community leader. This proposal should contain an observation and a hypothesis; review of existing literature; a planned study or experiment; and possible problems with the proposal. If the proposal is approved by an expert, you are ready to proceed to the next steps.
- Anchor Experience – The main event! This is where you actually study something, observe, or conduct research. This may involve any number of things depending on your own project. This experience should usually involve a mentor and prolonged exposure to the subject at hand.
- Portfolio – Evidence and conclusions of your work! Throughout your capstone project you should maintain a portfolio of all related writing, work, and research. Your portfolio should include any experiments run, observations recorded, or conclusions reached. It is what you will show to colleges to prove your work and what you will be expected to present at the end of your project.
- Presentation – Defend your thesis or show it off! The final step of most capstone projects involves presenting your work to one or more experts in the field. Oftentimes, this just involves presenting your portfolio to the same teacher who approved your proposal and who has been acting as your mentor throughout. Sometimes, however, it may involve making a presentation before a large group of people and defending your thesis from questions and comments. The exact nature of your presentation will naturally differ depending on your choice of project.
How to pick the best capstone project
Your capstone project should relate to your intended major. If you plan to study chemistry, don’t do a capstone project on romance literature. If you plan to study American history, don’t do a capstone project on marketing in your community.
If you have not yet decided what to major in or what you want to focus your college education on, then it makes sense to use your capstone project to experiment with something – try on the hat and see how it fits.
Additionally, you want your capstone project to be something that inspires and motivates you. It is no good picking something that sounds brilliant and earthshaking in theory, but that will in practice bore or frustrate you. That is the surest way to produce poor quality work.
You should assess your own habits and motivations and come up with the best project that fits you. Colleges can usually tell a genuine interest from a manufactured one. Therefore, you should pick something which will allow you to show them your best work in a subject you are deeply immersed in. This will always produce the best results.
While I have said previously that a capstone project can be a good opportunity to experiment with a possible interest, it is important to briefly elaborate on that to provide better context.
It is an opportunity to expand on a preexisting interest that you are not sure if you want to dedicate your education or career to. It is not an opportunity to manufacture a completely new interest. Remember, a capstone is meant to be the finishing touch on your entire schooling. It should always relate to and expand upon your previous work.
It is therefore best to pick a capstone project that you function as the final step on a journey you have already been undertaking. If all else fails, consider your interests and passions and go from there. Even if it seems only tangentially related to academia, that would be better than choosing an academically sound project that doesn’t inspire you.
Capstone project examples
Subject/Major | Examples |
Accounting and Finance | Prove an elaborate math theory; study the history of joint-stock companies; invest in the market; do a case study of a local company’s finances; get an internship and undertake a project with the company. |
Art and design | Compare and contrast famous styles; do an in-depth analysis of a particular artist; create a local mural; encourage art in the community by founding a program; enter a design contest with a reputable designer. |
Biology | Analyze soil samples from different areas or over time; study the population of a local animal; experiment with plants and seeding; run a summer camp for children to encourage science and outdoor exploration; found a community garden. |
Business | Create profiles of leading companies; create a business plan and put it into action; follow the relationship between daily news and the market; analyze the stability of cryptocurrencies; critique existing business practices and provide alternative solutions. |
Chemistry | Study oil spills or clean them in your local community; design an alternative periodic table based on different criteria for elements; create a basic lab and share with others; intern at a pharmacy; analyze chain reactions. |
Computer Science | Create a piece of code that solves a problem or runs a simulation; design a website or app with a novel feature; study the change in computer language over time; set up a coding camp in your community; build a basic video game. |
Economics | Compare and contrast the economies of different countries; do a local study of how your community responds to recent economic pressures; perform a simple experiment that proves or disproves a known economic theory; study the impact of raising the minimum wage; compare economic growth during different presidencies. |
Education | Volunteer with a local school and implement a new program there; start a tutoring company; experiment with motivating difficult students; compare in-class learning with virtual learning; study the history of educational reform in your state. |
Engineering | Fix something, like a broken-down bridge in the forest or a rundown car; study how to improve planes or cars and develop a novel design; build a clock that tells time as precisely as possible; automate a process; found an engineering camp in your local rec. center. |
Environmental Science | Examine the polluting impact of local companies; analyze water quality in different areas; study the impact of weather patterns on air quality; educate young and elderly people in the community about recycling and other environmental concerns; prove the distinction between weather and climate using a long term study. |
History | Build a family tree using primary source material; investigate the history of the town you live in; research the differences between how history is taught over time and place; analyze the politicization of history; talk to community leaders and elders and recreate a moment in time. |
International Relations | Analyze the changing nature of America’s role in the world; critique the existing United Nations and suggest a new, better version; work with immigrant populations in your community to increase understanding and connectedness; how do modern international relations affect your community; how has the pandemic shaped international relations. |
Law | Analyze a famous Supreme Court cases and suggest where you disagree with the majority opinion; research the differences between legal systems around the world; study the evolution of law since ancient times; consider how intellectual property laws might change in the information age; consider how freedom of expression laws might change with the rise of deep fakes. |
Literature | Acquire funding or books for your local library; demonstrate the importance of reading in raising intelligent children; do an in-depth literary analysis of a famous author; write a piece of fiction; gather a portfolio of thematic similar poetry. |
Marketing | Study the success of famous marketing campaigns; discuss the ethics of marketing in the modern era; demonstrate the significance of Freud’s writings to the development of marketing theory; work as a social media manager at a local company; create an experiment that proves or disproves a well-known marketing theory. |
Medicine | Work as an EMT in your local community; study the great handwashing debate of medical history and consider what might currently be happening that future people would regard similarly; analyze the medical veracity of all diagnoses made in House or E.R.; study the spread of coronavirus in America; compare different medical systems around the world. |
Physics | Consider the difficulties between marrying the physics of the macro world and the micro world; study the impact of different forces to make an object safer; create models to replicate the interaction of gravitational forces; build a telescope; numerically model a physical system. |
Politics | Sign up more voters in your community; run for local office; study the impact of various factors on political allegiance; create a hypothetical third party and its platform; analyze the debates at local town hall meetings. |
Psychology | Consider the ethical conundrums of psychology and create an ethical handbook; research how suicidal feelings can arise in teens; look into the impact of hate crimes on local communities; consider the psychology of the pandemic; research how video games or social media use affects your peers. |
Veterinary Science | Institute a spaying or neutering campaign in your local community; create pamphlets helping people manage their pets’ health; study why certain animals make good pets and others do not; work on a farm; educate people on the reactions of pets to fireworks and thunderstorms and how to reduce pet anxieties. |
Conclusion: Capstone Projects in High School
Be sure to discuss your options with your family and educators and consider what options work best for you given practical considerations.
And, finally, do not be discouraged by the depth of capstone projects. Consider it not as a test to pass or fail, but rather an opportunity to learn, grow, and prove your unique brilliance!