The UC Personal Insight questions are slightly different from most standard college application essay prompts. So if you’re just joining us, take a look at our first blog— DECODING THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (UC) COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAYS: GETTING STARTED, and try your hand at the Brainstorming exercise, before diving further into the UC application essay prompts.
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Exploring the Personal Insight questions in detail
If you’ve had the time to go through our last couple of blogs, you should already be familiar with the 8 UC Personal Insight questions. Now let’s break down the next three UC application essay prompts alongside the guidance already available on the UC website.
If you’re strapped for ideas, perhaps the guidance below will help spark some obscure source of inspiration.
Assess the guidance carefully. Can you apply this to develop any of your ideas?
Mull over the key words and suggested guidance. Do you think you can approach the questions from a different angle?
Re-check your idea-prompt combinations. Perhaps an idea you developed for a particular question, could be better suited to answer a different one?
As before, go through each of the prompts, and continue to update your Brainstorming tables.
Develop your incident/ anecdote column to now accommodate a bulleted essay blueprint—tentative introduction, body, and conclusion.
Prompt 4: Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.
Things to consider:
An educational opportunity can be anything that has added value to your educational experience and better prepared you for college. For example, participation in an honors or academic enrichment program, or enrollment in an academy that’s geared toward an occupation or a major, or taking advanced courses that interest you — just to name a few.
If you choose to write about educational barriers you’ve faced, how did you overcome or strive to overcome them? What personal characteristics or skills did you call on to overcome this challenge? How did overcoming this barrier help shape who are you today?
Approach:
This question has two parts—the educational opportunity, and the barrier.
Unless the opportunity helped you overcome the barrier, focus on either, but not both.
1. Connect to the question:
Educational Opportunity—likely to appeal to academic achievers. Is there a special workshop, exchange program, mentoring opportunity or internship that you could write about? Does this experience connect to your career aspirations?
Educational Barrier—universal appeal for students that seek to share their special circumstances with the admissions committee.
2. Show instead of tell:
This prompt lends itself to narratives that showcase personal growth.
Don’t list adjectives, bring them out through the narrative— What did you do? What challenges did you face? What did you learn? How has this affected who you are today and who you will be tomorrow?
3. Mind your tone:
Do you sound entitled? When writing about an expensive/exclusive educational opportunity, acknowledge your privilege and highlight values like enthusiasm, humility, and gratitude in your narrative; like in this excerpt from a UC Application Essay.
Example – Educational Opportunity:
Did you also notice how this anecdote about the opportunity seamlessly transitions into subtle mentions of complimentary accomplishments? Why don’t you try something like this to fit your response?
Write positively. When tackling the educational barrier, begin with an emphatic anecdote, but don’t dwell on the struggle. Highlight values like resilience, perseverance, and determination.
4. Prompts 4, 5, and 6 of the UC Personal Insight questions overlap:
You may attempt all three, as long as your interpretations and ideas are not repetitive.
How does this academic barrier affect your life? Financial struggles that forced you to take up after-school jobs, issues like dyslexia or ADHD, affect more than just your grades, and might fit the UC Challenge essay question (Prompt 5) better.
This is NOT a Why-Major prompt. Try the Academic Subject essay (Prompt 6) below, if you want to write a response like that.
5. Think outside the box:
Have you ever done something ingenious or outrageous to gain access to a learning opportunity?
For instance, someone like Hermione Granger, might write about how she used a time turner to bypass timetable conflicts and attend multiple subject classes parallelly, so that she could explore a wider variety of subjects, before committing to a specific subject combination! – This response doesn’t highlight any novel learning opportunity or career path. However, it showcases her resourcefulness, and obvious passion for learning, which adds value to her application.
6. Versatility:
If you’ve already written essays responding to Common Application prompts 2 (Obstacle) or 5 (Personal Growth), can you adapt ideas from them to fit the UC Academic Opportunity/Barrier question?
OR
Do you want to develop a version of this essay that you can later expand and adapt to fit these aforementioned prompts?
Prompt 5: Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?
Things to consider:
A challenge could be personal, or something you have faced in your community or school. Why was the challenge significant to you? This is a good opportunity to talk about any obstacles you’ve faced and what you’ve learned from the experience. Did you have support from someone else or did you handle it alone?
If you’re currently working your way through a challenge, what are you doing now, and does that affect different aspects of your life? For example, ask yourself, “How has my life changed at home, at my school, with my friends or with my family?”
Approach:
Look at the types of challenges this prompt guides you to. This isn’t just for applicants who’ve faced significant adversity, discrimination or hardship in their lives. For instance, think of someone undeniably privileged like Dudley Dursley. Could he interpret this prompt to write about a personal challenge?—Adjusting to real world expectations after a sheltered upbringing, learning to ignore prejudice and be tolerant, accepting, and overcoming his fear of anything “different”.
This may also be interpreted like the Academic Barrier prompt we just explored. If you intend to respond to both, take care to feature different skills and stories.
1. Connect to the question:
What is your most significant challenge? How did you overcome it?—Can this be a story about your journey from adversity to success?
Do your plot points address the impact of this challenge on your “academic achievement.”?
2. Show instead of tell:
Weave a narrative around character development. What values have you developed?—Tenacity, resolve, or an indomitable spirit? How has this affected who you are today and who you will be tomorrow? Let's take a look at this excerpt from a UC Application Essay
Example – Challenge, that leverages a humble, universal, adolescent identity quest, to fit this prompt. Dig deep. Do you have a story like this?
Make a bold statement. Begin or end with a vivid anecdote for maximum dramatic impact.
3. Mind your tone:
When writing about adversity, flip the narrative. Don’t be negative. Focus on how you leveraged weaknesses and turned them into strengths; like in this excerpt from a UC Application Essay
Example – Challenge:
Emote passionately, but avoid sweeping declarations, hyperbole, clichés or stretched metaphors.
4. Prompts 4, 5, and 6 of the UC Personal Insight questions overlap:
You may attempt all three, as long as your interpretations and ideas are not repetitive.
How much does this challenge affect you?—Has it affected ALL aspects of your life, including academics? Or, just your academics? If the idea that you’ve matched to this prompt affects just your academics, perhaps it would fit the UC Academic Barrier question (Prompt 4) detailed above better?
This is NOT a Why-Major prompt. Try the Academic Subject essay (Prompt 6) below, if you want to write a response like that.
5. Versatility:
If you’ve already written essays responding to Coalition prompts 1 (Character), 3 (Beliefs Challenged) or Common Application prompt 2 (Obstacles); can you adapt ideas from them to fit the UC Challenge question?
OR
Do you want to develop a version of this essay that you can later expand and adapt to fit these aforementioned prompts?
Prompt 6: Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.
Things to consider:
Many students have a passion for one specific academic subject area, something that they just can’t get enough of. If that applies to you, what have you done to further that interest? Discuss how your interest in the subject developed and describe any experience you have had inside and outside the classroom — such as volunteer work, internships, employment, summer programs, participation in student organizations and/or clubs — and what you have gained from your involvement.
Has your interest in the subject influenced you in choosing a major and/or future career? Have you been able to pursue coursework at a higher level in this subject (honors, AP, IB, college or university work)? Are you inspired to pursue this subject further at UC, and how might you do that?
Approach:
Play to your strengths. Include this essay in your application, if you excel at, or are passionate about a particular academic subject.
This is a Why-Major essay. Do your research—Are the subject(s) you’re writing about offered at UC?
Focus the first two thirds of your response, on what you’ve already accomplished, and then if the word count allows, the last one third on future aspirations. Don’t be like Luna Lovegood. Her essay was too focused on her career aspirations in Magizoology (magical zoology), and not enough on her academic proficiency in Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology.
1. Connect to the question:
This question has two parts—the inspiration and the action.
Inspiration is personal—Why does this subject inspire you? Get creative and anecdotal.
Action is grounded—If everybody in class read the same text books, turned in similar assignments and projects. What did you do differently? For instance, take a look at this excerpt from a UC Application Essay. Do you see how the student’s love for the subject pervades the narrative, as well as every aspect of her life?
Example – Academic Subject
Applying undecided?— Focus on curiosity and eagerness for new learning.
Applying with an eclectic subject combination?—Connect it to a niche interest like in this excerpt from a UC Application Essay
Example – Academic Subject:
2. Show instead of tell:
Begin with an anecdote, and then support your narrative with descriptive examples.
What is your personal motivation?— Fond memories of reading the newspaper with your grandfather spurred a life-long passion for journalism? Honing your skills to do justice to the family business? Shattering glass ceilings in a male-dominated STEM field? Is your interest in medical or accessibility research in the field of biology or robotics motivated by the suffering or loss of a loved one?
Showcase initiative and skills developed outside the classroom—special courses, research work, internships, #humblebrag. But never like a list. Connect them gracefully into a narrative flow like in this excerpt from a UC Application Essay
Example – Academic Subject:
3. Mind your tone:
What elicits and sustains your love for this subject? Write spiritedly and with enthusiasm.
When incorporating your career aspirations and goals into the narrative, be brief.
4. Prompts 4, 5, and 6 of the UC Personal Insight questions overlap:
You may attempt all three, as long as your interpretations and ideas are not repetitive.
This is your journey from inspiration to action. If your inspiration is motivated by trauma or loss, social, behavioural or learning issues, detail them further in the Challenge (Prompt 5) or Educational Barrier (Prompt 4) questions detailed above.
5. Versatility:
This question is common most college applications. So, prepare this response regardless of whether you include it in your UC application.
Keep updating your Brainstorming tables and essay blueprints. Stay tuned and we’ll return with in-depth explorations of the last two UC Personal Insight prompts, alongside excerpts from UC college application essay examples.
