UC Prompt 2 example essay: Drumming
The UC campuses include UC Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and San Diego. The UCs have their own application, which runs through , has , and of course, gives its essay prompts.
Figuring out which prompts to answer and how to answer them is often the most difficult part of any UC application. With the UCs going test-blind since the pandemic, the essays feel more important than ever. Admissions committees don’t expect your major to stay stable between what you put on your application and what you end up studying, so in many cases you aren’t applying for admission to a particular department. The are engineering, which requires a separate application at UC Berkeley (and applying as an undeclared major as an engineer is very competitive); arts and architecture, engineering and applied science, nursing, and theater/film/television at UCLA; and dance, music, engineering and creative studies at UCSB. It’s important to read through your essay multiple times and consider your specific word choice—does each word serve a purpose, could a sentence be rewritten to be less wordy, etc? However, it’s also important you have at least one other person edit your essay. Had this student given their essay to a fresh set of eyes they might have caught the typo and other areas in need of improvement. Additionally, this student began and ended the essay with the smell of eucalyptus. Although this makes for an intriguing hook, it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual point of the essay. It’s great to start your essay with an evocative anecdote or figurative language, but it needs to relate to your topic. Rather than wasting words on eucalyptus, a much stronger hook could have been the student nervously walking up to the stage with clammy hands and a lump in their throat. Beginning the essay with a descriptive sentence that puts us directly into the story with the student would draw the reader in and get them excited about the topic at hand. There are longstanding questions among California residents about how the UCs make their decisions. There have been reports, for instance, about capping out-of-state admits to keep things from being too competitive for in-state students. We’ve also heard that UC schools prefer to admit international students because they pay full tuition. Nevertheless, one thing college counselors seem to agree on: UCs, even the “lower-tiered” ones, make for very competitive safety schools. Community essays focus on how you contribute to a group that youâre a part of, whether it be a Girl Scout troop, your workplace environment, or even your family. Â Prompts 1 and 7 are the best fit for this type of essay, but based on your experiences, you may find success using 3, 4, 5, or 6 as well.
UC Prompt 3 example essay: Finding connections among the dissimilar
The 2023-24 admissions cycle saw the nine undergraduate University of California campuses collectively attract an all-time record of 250,000+ applications; this represented a double-digit increase from three years prior. Logic would suggest that institutions receiving as many as 174,000 applications (UCLA) would not employ a particularly holistic admissions process. Certainly, not one that would give any weight to a supplemental essay, much less to four essays. In general, large institutions do indeed rarely devote much time to carefully considering application essays. Yet, true to brand, the UC schools defy convention. And thanks to some recent global changes enacted across the whole UC system, the UC essay prompts (UC Personal Insight Questions, or PIQs for short) have become an even more essential application component to anyone who hopes to study at any of the following UC campuses:
How to write an essay for UC Prompt 4:
Because the UC application allows for more entries—and a higher character count, 500 as opposed to 150—than the Common App, we suggest writing the UC list first, then figuring out what your top 10 most important or meaningful activities are and cutting those down to size for the Common App.
UC Prompt 4 example essay: Construction
The UC Personal Insight Questions (PIQs) have become a critical part of your application, in part due to recent changes in UC’s standardized test policy.
How to write an essay for UC Prompt 5:
To everyone’s astonishment, this gargantuan system that garners over a quarter of a million applicants per year decided to go “test-blind” moving forward, despite internal data finding that test scores helped predict undergraduate achievement. This means that none of the nine schools listed above will even look at an applicant’s SAT or ACT score anymore. So, what’s the takeaway here for you, a future UC applicant? Simple: the essays matter more than ever before. Your writing will be your main opportunity to differentiate yourself from swarms of other well-qualified applicants.
How to write an essay for UC Prompt 6:
It really doesn’t matter if the UC prompts change every year or not. The point is that you learn to write the best essays that you can and succeed in getting admitted to the university – regardless of the prompt.