Intensive Course Programs
Intensives gave me a chance to realize my passion: art, and that I want to pursue it in college. I realized I could paint for six hours a day and still want to continue even when school ended." –Upper School student
During UPrep's intensive periods, UPrep students take one class every day for three weeks. Intensive courses are academic and include student-designed projects, day visits to organizations in Seattle, and overnight travel nearby and far away.
These experiences provide students with opportunities to explore and understand concepts in a more meaningful and authentic way. We offer two periods, once in the fall and once in the spring, where students take one intensive class full-time.
Intensives promote student leadership, collaboration, and community engagement and de-emphasize homework, solitary study, and isolated subjects. Learning like this helps our students attain the knowledge, skills, and thinking dispositions needed to successfully navigate our rapidly changing world.
Intensives in Action
Off-Campus Experiences Make Learning Real
During intensives, students and teachers can take full advantage of the freedom of time and space afforded by all-day classes, allowing Seattle and other parts of the world to become their learning laboratories.
I love that UPrep teaches these valuable intensive courses. It's so important for students to bridge the gap between the classes they enjoy and the major they ultimately declare in college. As a guest speaker, I enjoy getting the chance to tell Engineering intensive students the story of how my passion for engineering grew into a career at Boeing.” –Emily (Sylvester) Sanchez '09
Deep Space 6 intensive students complete a "mission to Mars" simulation at the Museum of Flight.
Engineering intensive students tour Boeing's 777 factory.
Intensives Enable Interdisciplinary Study
As an aspiring electrical engineer, everything I learned in the Electricity and Magnetism intensive felt like a step into my future!” –Jack Basinski '23
Many intensives allow UPrep students to learn with a team of teachers who are experts in different subject areas.
For example, the Deep Space 6 intensive is a partnership between 6th grade English and Science to explore astronomy, the solar system, and methods of inquiry in a creative, artistic, and hands-on fashion. Through a variety of trips and projects, students explore outward from the moon to the solar system, and then to some of the anomalies and the history of the universe itself. Students read, analyze, and write science fiction using their own learning and projects for inspiration. Field trips include the University of Washington Planetarium, the Challenger Learning Center at the Museum of Flight, and the Museum of Pop Culture.