University of California Essay Prompts

Essay Questions
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Essay Questions 2010-2011 (LINK)

Respond to both prompts, using a maximum of 1,000 words total.
You may allocate the word count as you wish. If you choose to respond to one prompt at greater length, we suggest your shorter answer be no less than 250 words.
Stay within the word limit as closely as you can. A little over — 1,012 words, for example — is fine.

Prompt #1 (freshman applicants)
Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
Prompt #1 (transfer applicants)
What is your intended major? Discuss how your interest in the subject developed and describe any experience you have had in the field — such as volunteer work, internships and employment, participation in student organizations and activities — and what you have gained from your involvement.
Prompt #2 (all applicants)
Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

Essay Questions 2009-2010
Same as 2008-2009 (Confirmed by UC's)
UC Essay Prompts 2008-09 (1012 words maximum total. Each prompt has 250 word minimum)

Prompt #1 (freshman applicants)

Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

Prompt #2 (all applicants)

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

Prompt #3 - Additional Information (500 word limit, optional)

Passport's Take:
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Remember that the admissions process at the UC's is very numbers driven, so you want to focus on topics that help your application to each school, which differ slightly in the approach to the process. We'll address school-specific differences in a bit, but for now, here's some general advice:

Prompt 1 Advice:
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1. This essay is designed to let you write about any part of your world that you consider important. Don’t feel compelled to write about family, community and school - pick one area as the centerpiece of your essay.

2. Notice that there are two parts to this prompt. Many students will describe their world but forget to explain how that world
has shaped their future hopes. Answer the question completely.

3. When an essay topic like this is so broad, remember to be even more specific with the stories you tell. It's difficult to write a compelling essay about your worldview at a general level. Either you'd have to be the best writer at your school (which, if you are, then bonus!), or you'd have to come up with an original insight about your community (very difficult to do). Instead, focus more on the anecdotes that highlight certain aspects of your world, and let the stories provide the more general insights into your world. By being more specific, you're more likely to avoid cliches, and your essay will be more memorable.

4. A great way to approach this prompt is to answer the following question first, "What doesn't the admissions committee know about you from the rest of your application?" Obviously, if you've read through the UC application, take a look. After you list your coursework, grades, test scores, and extra-curricular activities, what else is not present that is needed to understand your life to date? Examples include "unofficial" jobs like babysitting your siblings every day after school, having to provide for yourself because your parents work full-time (e.g. do you cook yourself dinner every night?), a recounting of past events that have shaped your life (changing schools, moving cities, deaths in your family, etc). None of these things appears on the application, so they might be good places to start this essay.

5. If there are holes in your application - poor grades for a short period of time, a poor test score, or a hole in your extra-curriculars - this essay is a great place to provide the "why" behind that hole. Again, the event should still be relevant to how you view your world, but it can be a good place to allow the admissions committee to gain more insight into what happened. (click here for general advice on writing about obstacles)

Prompt 2 Advice:
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1. This is your chance to brag. Obviously, you don't want to sound arrogant, but you don't want to hold back either. Remember that the UC's have very little additional information about you (since they don't look at letters of recommendation), so this essay serves as evidence of your accomplishments. Be sure to take the opportunity to talk about what has been most important to you in what you've chosen to spend your time doing.

2. Remember that your reader probably has no idea what a given item on your list of extra-curriculars actually means. Sure, there are obvious ones like captain of the football team, but what about starting for your school's tennis team? How much of an accomplishment is that? The answer will often depend on the student, and that might need some explanation in an essay.

3. Avoid cliches, especially in this essay. The big cliches will come up frequently in this essay, including at least these two:
"My biggest accomplishment was the time I scored the winning goal..."
"My biggest accomplishment was being _______, and boy, it sure was hard work." (editor of the yearbook, student body president, insert leadership position here)

It's not that you can't write about these cliched topics; it's just that you will have to try harder when you do so. You'll have to get more specific in your stories, and you might want to take the story. It's not that it wasn't your greatest accomplishment when you scored the winning goal, it's that by providing us that information, you don't give us any information that makes you unique. Take it in a different direction. Perhaps it was the moment you learned the technique that allowed you to score the winning goal that was your proudest accomplishment. Perhaps you weren't as fulfilled by that moment as you thought you'd be. Push yourself to explore what makes this accomplishment meaningful to you, and you will give the reader much better insight into your application.

4. This is another great place to tell us about an accomplishment that wouldn't otherwise show up on your application. Maybe what you're most proud of isn't something in the normal realm of the stuff listed in the application process. Perhaps there's something you've done that didn't qualify as a job or an activity but you'd like to write about it anyway. Go for it.

Prompt 3 Advice:
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1. Only use this space to explain items that don't fit into the rest of the application. This can include information about academic discrepancies, information about your school's course offerings, information on specific holes in your application, etc.

2. Don't just attach another essay! At best it will only mildly annoy your reader.

School-specific advice:
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Berkeley and UCLA engage in a form of "holistic review," in which two separate people review your application from cover to cover. These readers aren't looking for anything specific in your essays, but rather, they're looking at how the essays complete the rest of your application. Some would even argue that they're specifically looking for obstacles you've overcome or how you add to the diversity of the incoming class.

For these schools, the essays represent a tremendous opportunity to fill in the gaps of your application and answer the basic questions the readers have about you. Since the readers are trying to form an impression of you and your application, they're looking for the coherence of the entire application.

UCSD uses an entirely different metric. The reader is looking through your essays to try to figure out how many points they can assign you for what you've done. In our opinion, this leads to some brutally boring essays, but that's the natural result of assigning points for people who discuss specific topics.

Okay, so what should you write about? Well, if your goal is to get into any other schools except Berkeley or UCLA, then your goal is to focus on an area in which you can achieve points. We'll use UCSD as an example, since they have published their admissions formula in detail.

Step I: Academic review	Maximum Consideration
Uncapped Grade Point Average (GPA)	4,500
Scores of all required exams	3,200
Number of "a-g" courses beyond the minimum	500

Step II: Additional academic factors
Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC)	300
Educational environment	300

Step III: Socioeconomic factors
Low family income	300
First generation college attendance	300

Step IV: Personal characteristics and achievement factors
Demonstrated leadership	300
Special talents/ achievements/ awards	300
Community and volunteer service	300
Participation in academic development preparation programs	300
Special circumstances/ personal challenges	500

Obviously, many of these factors are set in stone, e.g. Steps 1, 2, and 3 above. Step 4 is where you can earn points, and what you write about in your essays can determine the number of points you receive for various non-academic accomplishments. Think of Step 4 as a combination of what you list as your extra-curricular activities and what you write about in your essays. How many points you get for a given category will depend on not simply the number of hours committed to a given activity but also how meaningful you make it seem in your essays.

If you've had some kind of special circumstance or personal challenge, especially if it doesn't already show up on the application, then by all means write about it. To give UCSD credit, a student's achievement can only be evaluated in light of their privileges given and obstacles overcome. But follow the general caveats for writing an essay on special circumstances/challenges.

AlisonH1	Latest page update: made by AlisonH1 , Jul 30 2010, 4:51 PM EDT (about this update About This Update Edited by AlisonH1 view changes - complete history)
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