uc personal statement prompt

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Personal insight questions

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• You will have 8 questions to choose from. You must respond to only 4 of the 8 questions.
• Each response is limited to a maximum of 350 words.
• Which questions you choose to answer is entirely up to you. However, you should select questions that are most relevant to your experience and that best reflect your individual circumstances.

Keep in mind

• All questions are equal. All are given equal consideration in the application review process, which means there is no advantage or disadvantage to choosing certain questions over others.
• There is no right or wrong way to answer these questions. It’s about getting to know your personality, background, interests and achievements in your own unique voice.  
• Use the additional comments field if there are issues you'd like to address that you didn't have the opportunity to discuss elsewhere on the application. This shouldn't be an essay, but rather a place to note unusual circumstances or anything that might be unclear in other parts of the application. 

Questions & guidance

Remember, the personal insight questions are just that—personal. Which means you should use our guidance for each question just as a suggestion in case you need help. The important thing is expressing who you are, what matters to you and what you want to share with UC. 

1. Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time. Things to consider: A leadership role can mean more than just a title. It can mean being a mentor to others, acting as the person in charge of a specific task, or taking the lead role in organizing an event or project. Think about what you accomplished and what you learned from the experience. What were your responsibilities?

Did you lead a team? How did your experience change your perspective on leading others? Did you help to resolve an important dispute at your school, church, in your community or an organization? And your leadership role doesn't necessarily have to be limited to school activities. For example, do you help out or take care of your family? 2. Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side. Things to consider: What does creativity mean to you? Do you have a creative skill that is important to you? What have you been able to do with that skill? If you used creativity to solve a problem, what was your solution? What are the steps you took to solve the problem?

How does your creativity influence your decisions inside or outside the classroom? Does your creativity relate to your major or a future career? 3. What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time? Things to consider: If there is a talent or skill that you're proud of, this is the time to share it.You don't necessarily have to be recognized or have received awards for your talent (although if you did and you want to talk about it, feel free to do so). Why is this talent or skill meaningful to you?

Does the talent come naturally or have you worked hard to develop this skill or talent? Does your talent or skill allow you opportunities in or outside the classroom? If so, what are they and how do they fit into your schedule? 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 you are today? 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? 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?

7. What have you done to make your school or your community a better place? Things to consider: Think of community as a term that can encompass a group, team or a place like your high school, hometown or home. You can define community as you see fit, just make sure you talk about your role in that community. Was there a problem that you wanted to fix in your community?

Why were you inspired to act? What did you learn from your effort? How did your actions benefit others, the wider community or both? Did you work alone or with others to initiate change in your community? 8. Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California? Things to consider:  If there's anything you want us to know about you but didn't find a question or place in the application to tell us, now's your chance. What have you not shared with us that will highlight a skill, talent, challenge or opportunity that you think will help us know you better?

From your point of view, what do you feel makes you an excellent choice for UC? Don't be afraid to brag a little.

Writing tips

Start early..

Give yourself plenty of time for preparation, careful composition and revisions.

Write persuasively.

Making a list of accomplishments, activities, awards or work will lessen the impact of your words. Expand on a topic by using specific, concrete examples to support the points you want to make.

Use “I” statements.

Talk about yourself so that we can get to know your personality, talents, accomplishments and potential for success on a UC campus. Use “I” and “my” statements in your responses.

Proofread and edit.

Although you will not be evaluated on grammar, spelling or sentence structure, you should proofread your work and make sure your writing is clear. Grammatical and spelling errors can be distracting to the reader and get in the way of what you’re trying to communicate.

Solicit feedback.

Your answers should reflect your own ideas and be written by you alone, but others — family, teachers and friends can offer valuable suggestions. Ask advice of whomever you like, but do not plagiarize from sources in print or online and do not use anyone's words, published or unpublished, but your own.

Copy and paste.

Once you are satisfied with your answers, save them in plain text (ASCII) and paste them into the space provided in the application. Proofread once more to make sure no odd characters or line breaks have appeared.

This is one of many pieces of information we consider in reviewing your application. Your responses can only add value to the application. An admission decision will not be based on this section alone.

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Last updated July 17, 2024

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Blog > Essay Examples , UC Essays > 9 Outstanding UC Essay Examples (Graded by Former Admissions Officers)

9 Outstanding UC Essay Examples (Graded by Former Admissions Officers)

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Kylie Kistner, MA Former Willamette University Admissions

Key Takeaway

We talk a lot about essays in the college application process. And for good reason. Essays are one of the most critical parts of your application, and the University of California Personal Insight Questions are no different. Even though they’re quite different from personal statements or supplemental essays , UC essays serve a similar purpose: to help admissions officers get to know you and envision you on their campus.

But the tricky thing about UC essays is that they have a very particular style and form. If you don’t write your UC essays in the right way, you risk tanking your application.

Writing them the right way, however, can land you in the admit pile.

Let's start by looking at an example essay. Then we'll dive into the prompts themselves, go over some strategy, and and look at even more examples. Ready?

UC Example Essay - Prompt #7

We’ve got an extra example for Prompt #7: . This one comes from the Essay Academy , our digital college essay course. It’s about a student’s initiative to bring literacy to their community. Take a look:

This writer makes it very clear what community they’re talking about. They state the problem (libraries closing down), their solution (filling the library gap through book club), and the action steps they took to make their community a better place.

Along the way, we clearly see their strengths: they are willing to take initiative and to think critically about what the community needs. The essay also answers the entire prompt and meets the style and tone requirements of UC essays. It’s clear, action-oriented, and to-the-point. Excellent!

Now, let's actually take a look at the prompts.

The UC Personal Insight Question Prompts

The University of California system, which consists of nine campuses across the state, requires students to apply directly via their institutional application portal. That means that you won’t be submitting your Common Application to them or writing school-specific supplemental essays. Instead, you’ll choose four of the following eight prompts to respond to.

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

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?

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

Once you have your prompts chosen, the essays themselves should be no greater than 350 words each.

Together, your essays should be different but cohesive enough to tell a fairly complete story of who you are.

Before we get to the examples, we have a few tips to keep you on track.

How to Write the UC Personal Insight Questions

Okay, so we actually have a whole other comprehensive guide to the UC essays that breaks down the process in extreme detail.

So for now, we’ll just go over the essentials.

What’s helpful about the UC PIQs is that we don’t have to guess what admissions officers are looking for—the UCs tell us directly in the Points of Comprehensive Review . Read through all thirteen points, but pay special attention to #10. That’s where your essays will be doing the heaviest lifting.

With that in mind, there are four rules for writing UC essays that you should stick to like glue:

Answer the prompt.

We’ll say it again for the people in the back: answer the prompt! The UC essay prompts ask very specific questions and contain multiple parts. If you misinterpret the prompt, you may end up writing the completely wrong essay.

You might find that diagramming or annotating the prompts helps you pull out the important pieces. Break down what each of your chosen prompts asks you to do, and list out all the questions in order. That way, you’ll make sure you’re not missing anything.

Skip the fluff.

Your personal statement likely has some creative descriptions or metaphors. You may have even incorporated figurative or poetic language into your supplementals. And that’s great. In fact, that’s encouraged (within reason, of course).

But UC essays are different. They’re all business.

Whereas your personal statement might open with an attention-catching hook that describes a scene in vivid detail, your UC essays should jump straight in. In general, your essay should be organized in a clear way that tells a straightforward story.

Focus on action steps.

As we saw in the Points of Comprehensive Review, admissions officers want to learn about how your concrete experiences have shaped you. That means that your essays should revolve around action steps rather than, say, 350 words of intense personal reflection. What those action steps should look like will depend on the prompts you’ve chosen. But by the end of your essay, your admissions officers should know what you’ve done and why.

Show a strength.

In the UC essays, it’s easy to get caught up in the details of the prompt and style of the essay. But don’t lose sight of the purpose of any college essay in the process: to showcase a strength to your admissions officers.

Every UC essay you write should correspond with a specific strength. That might be wisdom, artistry, good judgement, entrepreneurship, leadership—you get the idea.

Let’s say you want one of your essays to demonstrate leadership. The idea isn’t that you come out and say, “This shows that I am a leader.” Instead, by the end of the essay, after reading about everything you’ve done and reflected on, your admissions officers should sit back in their chair and say, “Wow, that student is a leader.” You’ll see what we mean in the examples.

Because of all these golden rules, your UC essays will look quite different than your Common Application essay or supplementals. They’ll probably look quite different from any essay you’ve written.

That’s where examples come in handy. Ready to dive in?

UC Prompt 1: Leadership

1. Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.

Prompt 1 Example Essay

When we moved to a new neighborhood, my dad always complained about the house next to us. Full of weeds and random objects, it had clearly been neglected(( Notice how, at least compared with common application personal essays, the tone of this essay is much more staid?)) .

I didn’t pay much attention to his complaints until one day when I saw that our neighbor was an elderly man. He was struggling to bring his trash to the bins outside. Suddenly, it all clicked. If taking out the garbage was a challenge, then surely he wasn’t able to do yard work. That’s why it looked neglected.

My dad always taught me that leadership isn’t about giving orders. It’s about doing what needs to be done(( A direct, succinct definition of leadership.)) . With this advice in mind, I decided that I would help our neighbor.

After my realization, I went and knocked on our neighbor’s door. I introduced myself and learned that his name was Hank. When the time was right, I informed him that I’d be cutting our grass the following weekend and would love to cut his as well. Hank initially refused.

Speaking with Hank, I learned that leadership is also about listening to people’s needs(( Showing a lesson from the experience.)) . In that moment, Hank needed to be reassured that I wanted to help. I told him it would be easy for me to cross over to his yard while I had the equipment out. He finally agreed.

The next Saturday, I got to work. The job would be bigger than I expected. All the objects needed to be picked up before I could mow. I decided to enlist the help of my two younger siblings. At first, they said no. But a good leader knows how to inspire, so I told them about Hank and explained why it was important to help. Together, we cleaned up the yard. Now, each time I mow our lawn, I mow Hank’s afterward.

Through this experience, I learned that leadership is about seeing problems and finding solutions. Most importantly, it’s about attitude and kindness(( The author of this essay does a good job staying focused on a clear definition.)) . The neighborhood is grateful that the eyesore is gone, Hank is grateful for the help, and I am grateful for my new friend.

Word Count: 343

UC Essay Checklist

Does the writer convey a strength?

Yes. The writer shows initiative in seeking out the neighbor and willingness to help in all the hard work they did.

Is every part of the prompt answered?

Yes. Since this prompt has an “or,” we know that the writer doesn’t have to meet every single criterion listed. They respond to the “positively influenced others” part of the prompt, which we can see through their interactions with their neighbor.

Does the writer adhere to UC conventions?

Yes. The essay is straightforward and clearly organized. The writer lists action steps in chronological order.

UC Prompt 2: Creativity

2. Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

Prompt 2 Example Essay

As a cellist, I express my creativity through music(( Directly answering the prompt up front. )) . Whether I’m playing in a symphony, chamber orchestra, quartet, or solo performance, I bring my art to the world with my instrument. My creativity has transformed me from a small child playing out of tune to a solo artist featured in my state’s youth symphony.

I’ve loved music from a young age, and I began playing the cello when I was six years old. What began as a hobby to keep an energetic child engaged has become my life’s purpose.

At first, I only played along with my private lesson teacher, Ms. Smith. I loved dancing my fingers across the fingerboard, plucking the strings, and making screeching noises with my bow. Ms. Smith told my parents that I had promise but needed to develop discipline. Despite my young age, I listened. By the time I reached middle school, I had made principal cellist in my school’s orchestra. Leading a section of fellow cellists brought my creativity to a whole new level. Not only was I expressing myself through my own music, but I also expressed myself through my leadership. With a subtle nod or an expressive sway, I learned to shape the music those behind me played. I felt most comfortable and free when I was playing my cello.

That feeling only grew as I moved into high school. In ninth grade, I landed my first solo. With it came a new creative sensation: stage fright(( This part of the essay distracts a bit from the main theme.)) . Until then, I’d only experienced positive emotions while playing. I needed to make solo performance more positive. With endless practice and exercises like playing for the public on the sidewalk, I learned that solo performance is simply a way to share my love of music with those around me.

Now, as principal cellist of my state’s youth orchestra, I jump at the chance to perform any solo I can get. Getting to this point has taken me countless late nights practicing in my bedroom and weekends spent in rehearsals. But without my cello to express my creative side, I wouldn’t be me.

Word Count: 347

Yes. The writer is an artist—a musician specifically. Their creativity shines through.

Yes. This prompt is pretty straightforward: “Describe how you express your creative side,” which the writer does by describing their love of the cello. Notice how the writer doesn’t just say they’re creative because they play the cello. They describe that creativity in detail.

Mostly. The short paragraph about stage fright takes us on a slight detour from the prompt. To make this essay even better, the writer could have eliminated that anecdote or reframed it to be more about creative expression.

UC Prompt 3: Talent or Skill

3. What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

Prompt 3 Example Essay

How many toes does an armadillo have? What were the main causes of the Crimean War? Who discovered atoms? When my friends or family have questions, they come to me for answers. I am an expert researcher. Although my passion for research began as a fun hobby, it has evolved into one of my greatest skills(( The writer opens with an interesting but not too out-there hook and then gets straight to answering the prompt.)) .

My first real mystery came when I was in ninth grade. My mom wanted to track down an old friend from high school but hadn’t had any luck searching on her own. Having grown up with the internet, I was my mom’s best chance. Not sure where to begin, I took to YouTube tutorials. Using the few family details my mom remembered, I tracked down the friend’s brother then found the friend’s married name(( Here’s a great example of what the skill looks like.)) . Alas–we found her on social media. I felt triumphant as I saw the happiness wash over my mom’s face.

Since then, my skill has grown exponentially(( And here the writer gets at the “developed and demonstrated the talent over time” part of the prompt.)) . Combining my natural curiosity with my love of history, I’ve advanced my research skills by volunteering with my local library for the past two years. I have learned about how keywords and search engines work, practiced cataloging and archiving, and waded my way through the intricacies of the library’s database technology. Suddenly, researching wasn’t just about finding people’s Facebook profiles. It was about having any information I wanted to find at my fingertips.

Access to information is more important now than ever. That’s why I decided to put my research knowledge to work. Part of being a good researcher is teaching others how to access information too, so I founded the SOHS Research Club. We begin each meeting by raising the hardest question we can think of, and I use the projector in the library to walk club members through my research process. Members have all gone on to share their knowledge with their friends and family. The SOHS Research Club has spread information literacy to my whole community(( Gesturing to the greater significance of the skill)) .

Looking ahead to all the ways my research skills will improve in college, I know that I’ll be ready to find an answer for anything.

Word Count: 350

Yes. We see that they’re not only skilled at research but also that they want to support their community.

Yes—but. The prompt asks about your greatest talent or skill . It also asks how you have developed and demonstrated that talent over time. The writer does answer these questions, but I’d like to see more about when the SOHS Research Club took place as part of this development.

Yes. The essay is clear, organized, and to-the-point.

UC Prompt 4: Educational Opportunity or Barrier

4. Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

Prompt 4 Example Essay

I jump at any chance to get my hands dirty. I am an aspiring ecologist. I’m lucky enough to live in a college town, so I was elated last semester when a postdoctoral fellow invited me to join her research team(( Okay, looks like this writer is addressing the “how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity” part of the prompt.)) .

Although at first(( Good signposting and transitions. UC essays should be clear and straightforward. This writer easily walks us through the step-by-step of what happened.)) I was intimidated by the prospect of working alongside college students and faculty, I decided to embrace the opportunity to learn what being an ecologist is really like.

The project involved studying Asclepias syriaca populations in my local park. More commonly known as Milkweed, this flower species has a long and important history in North America, particularly for Indigenous people. After learning about its history as a food source, medicine, and critical part of ecological function, I couldn’t wait to be part of the research.

As a research assistant, I helped with data collection. We began by using twine to section off population groups in the park. Then, every week I returned to the populations to collect information about population growth. I counted the number of flowers in the population, and, with a clear ruler, I measured and recorded the height of every individual flower.

The work was tedious. On my hands and knees, I squinted at the millimeter markings, trying to obtain the most accurate measurements possible. Each week, I’d return home with muddy jeans and a smile on my face.

Participating in this research project taught me that being an ecologist is about much more than looking at plants(( Going beyond the research to reflect on lessons learned—nice!)) . It’s also about learning from mentors and engaging with and having respect for the historical context of the plants we study. Being a scientist is also not as glamorous as movies like Jurassic Park lead on. Instead, science requires careful planning, patience, and hard work.

But what I learned the most from this educational opportunity is that science doesn’t exist in some nebulous place. It exists right here in front of me. I look forward to continuing to use science to serve my community.

Word count: 328

Yes. We see their intellectual curiosity and willingness to learn through their research journey.

Yes. We have another “or” prompt! This time they’ve chosen to focus on an “educational opportunity,” which is the research project. They certainly explain how they “took advantage” of it.

Yes. There’s no fluff, just a coherent narrative focused on actions the writer took.

UC Prompt 5: Challenge

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?

Prompt 5 Example Essay

While most kids fear monsters, my greatest fear has always been tests. Since elementary school, I’ve dealt with incapacitating test anxiety. I’d sit down for a spelling test and faint from anxiety(( Straight into answering the prompt)) . Math tests in middle school would make me run to the bathroom ill. By the time I reached high school, where the testing stakes became even higher, my test anxiety increased exponentially.

More than normal feelings of nervousness or anxiousness, it is a diagnosis I wrestle with daily. Test anxiety caused me to miss a number of tests that I had no option to re-take. It’s caused me to receive abysmal scores on standardized and state tests, which has had repercussions in the classes I’m allowed to take(( Strategically, this was a good prompt for this student to answer because it gives them a way to contextualize any poor grades they earned early in high school. It also gets at the “academic achievement” part of the prompt.)) . My test anxiety has been the greatest challenge of my life. In a school system so reliant on testing, it has completely affected my ability to achieve academically.

By the time I took the PSATs, I couldn’t even move my hand to write my name. I knew something had to change. I reached out for help. My mom knew I had been struggling but didn’t understand the extent of my illness. Together, we contacted my school counselor, who told us how to find a therapist.

With my doctors, I worked to mitigate the effects of my test anxiety on a medical and psychological level(( Action steps! This prompt requires you to talk about the specific steps you took to overcome the challenge. The writer does exactly that in this paragraph.)) . I began taking beta-blockers that helped slow my heart rate, thus tricking my body into being less anxious. Alongside that, I spent months working through the reasons my brain interpreted testing as such a threat. I learned to appreciate my intrinsic value instead of relying on external factors like test scores. And rather than viewing tests as chances to fail, I began to understand them as opportunities to showcase my growth.

Now, after two long years of effort, I can take any test with ease. Since learning how to manage my disorder, I’ve successfully taken my driver’s test, SATs and ACTs, and all seven of my AP exams. I’m looking forward to all the tests I’ll take in college(( And we end on a very positive note that shows lots of growth)) .

Yes—which is difficult with this prompt. The writer doesn’t get bogged down in the challenge of having test anxiety. Instead, they use this prompt as an opportunity to show a strength: resilience to overcome such a difficult problem.

Yes. And this prompt has multiple parts, too. It wants you to describe 1) a challenge, 2) the steps you’ve taken to overcome the challenge, and 3) how the challenge affected your academic achievement. This writer does all three.

Yes. The writer doesn’t provide any poetic descriptions or metaphors. They say what they mean.

UC Prompt 6: Academic Interest

6.  Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

Prompt 6 Example Essay

Sitting in front of my baby cousin, I held my hands in front of my face. I quickly snapped them down and exclaimed, “Peek-a-boo!” Delighted, he erupted into laughter. From the perspective of my more developed brain, this game is quite boring. It’s overly repetitive, and the outcome—my face reveal—is basic and consistent. But to a brain that hasn’t yet gone through the sensorimotor phase of development, the game is a downright hoot. What I perceive as boring is actually magic to a baby’s mind. Without the concept of object permanence, my cousin thinks that I disappear completely behind my hands. When my face returns, he marvels as I inexplicably materialize in front of him. It’s no wonder he can play peek-a-boo for hours.

Since I took IB Psychology my sophomore year, I have been fascinated with child psychology(( It takes a paragraph before we get to the prompt (which is too long), but I like the nerdiness the writer shows in the intro)) . No matter when or where we are born, we all undergo similar stages of development that help us understand the world around us. Imagine Albert Einstein chewing on a rock or Genghis Khan taking his first steps. Researching child development unlocks something universal and equalizing about the human experience.

Because of my interest in child psychology, I decided to get more involved with my community. I began by volunteering in a psychology lab at my local university. While there, I get our child participants settled before sessions. Occasionally I get to help with data collection. I also landed a job as a teacher’s aide at a nearby Head Start, where I feed lunches, play, and read. In both of these activities, I’ve learned so much about how to interact with toddlers, to think like they think, and to help them grow into kind and happy children(( This paragraph shows exactly how they’ve furthered their interest.)) .

My school doesn’t offer any additional psychology courses, so I took a community college class this summer. I’m looking forward to taking more advanced psychology classes as a psychology major, and I’m eager to bring the research skills I’ve been developing to one of the UC’s many child development labs. One day, I hope to use all these skills as a child therapist.

Word Count: 348

Yes. The student is very intellectually curious about child development—a perfect strength for this prompt.

Yes. The writer talks about an academic subject, child development, and describes how they advanced that interest through a research lab, classes, and a job at Head Start.

Yes—but. Overall, the essay does a great job adhering to UC essay conventions. But the first paragraph almost doesn’t. As it is, the writer stays focused on telling the story. However, it takes up quite a bit of space in the essay without really conveying much about the writer’s journey. If there were a metaphor or any poetic language in there, it would have been too far. Same goes for the snippet about Einstein and Genghis Khan—it adds personality but is close to overdoing it.

UC Prompt 7: School or Community

7. What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

Prompt 7 Example Essay

Nourishing loved ones by cooking for them is one of my biggest passions. But my hobby has become more difficult since moving to a food desert. Food deserts are areas without easy access to grocery stores or healthy foods. These disparities are clear in the school cafeteria, with the majority of students eating processed school lunches or packaged foods brought from home. I decided to do something about it.

The idea came to me one day as I made my way from AP Biology to my cooking elective. We needed a school community garden(( The writer sets up the stakes in the introduction so we truly understand the situation here)) . If we couldn’t access fresh foods in our neighborhood, then we would grow our own. We just needed a space to grow them and money to buy supplies.

I began by finding a spot to plant our garden. My friends and I walked around the entire school and decided that the courtyard would be the perfect place. After explaining my idea to the Assistant Principal, I got permission to proceed.

Next(( This paragraph is full of good action steps)) I raised money for the supplies. With $20 in seed money from my parents, which I promptly paid back, I drew and printed stickers to sell at lunch. The stickers were anthropomorphized vegetables. They cost $0.10 per sticker to make, and I sold them for $1.00 each. Soon enough, I had not only raised enough money to set up the garden, but I had rallied the whole school around my cause. Thirty of my classmates showed up, vegetable stickers on their water bottles, to help me plant the garden.

For the last year, we’ve maintained a spread of seasonal vegetables in the garden. We bring a basket to the cooking elective teacher each week so students can practice cooking with fresh vegetables, and we hold a daily farm stand at lunch(( And we see that they are legitimately improving their community)) . At the stand, students can grab whatever fresh produce they want to add to their lunch.

My school’s garden nourishes my community, and I am nourished every day by the fact that my efforts have made a true difference to those around me.

Word Count: 341

Yes. The writer shows really great initiative and community understanding in their willingness to start a community garden from scratch.

Yes. With only one question, this prompt is pretty straightforward. And the writer’s answer is simple: to make their school community a better place, they made a community garden.

Yes. The writer goes into detail about every step they took to make the community garden come to life. I especially like how the writer goes beyond these details to emphasize how much the community garden impacted the school community.

UC Prompt 8: Additional Information

8. Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

Prompt 8 Example Essay

When I posted a TikTok video of myself studying, I didn’t expect anyone but my friends to see it. But within hours, my video had gone viral— tens of thousands of people(( That’s a lot of people. This shows the magnitude and impact of the video.)) saw the carefully-crafted shots I’d taken of my desk setup and homework timelapse. The comment section flooded. People appreciated the work I’d put into curating the perfect desk. They thanked me for inspiring them to get started on their own homework. I was overwhelmed by the response.

At first I felt really shy. What if people from school saw it and made fun of me? I kept questioning myself so much that I completely froze. Finally, one comment caught my attention. It read, “I’ve been having a hard semester and can barely get myself out of bed, let alone to do my homework. But this is so calming! Maybe I’ll try.” That comment made me realize that it didn’t matter what people at my school thought. What mattered was that I loved making that video and it had made an actual difference in the lives of the people who saw it.

And that’s when I decided to make my mark on #StudyTok(( This is a pretty unique topic that wouldn’t have necessarily fit into the other prompt categories, which makes it a good candidate for prompt #8.)) . Since that first video, I’ve posted 318 others and accumulated over 35,000 followers(( More numbers to show impact)) . I’ve had more videos go viral and reach hundreds of thousands of people looking for work inspiration. Even the videos that some would see as “fails” still reach a couple hundred people. That may not be a big deal in the Internet world, but those same people would fill up my high school’s auditorium. My goal for every video is to make my viewers feel relaxed and able to take on whatever work they have to do. It helps me and my viewers complete our work.

These videos have made me more confident and organized, and I can’t wait to continue them in college. When I get an extra assignment or have to stay up late to finish a paper, I become excited instead of frustrated because I know that the little StudyTok community I’ve created will be there right alongside me.(( This conclusion drives home the what “makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the UC” part of the prompt.))

Yes. They show creativity through their video production and leadership through their huge community impact.

Mostly. This prompt is a tricky one to answer because its components aren’t as straightforward as the others. Through such a huge impact, the writer makes it implicitly clear why this story demonstrates that they are a good candidate for admissions to the UC, but the message could be more explicit.

Yes. The writer conveys the sequence of events in a clear and organized way, and they use good metrics to show the impact of their videos.

Key Takeaways

Did you catch our golden rules throughout? Yep. That’s what makes these essays stand out, and that’s what’ll make your essays stand out, too.

And even though these essays come from different students, hopefully you also got a sense of how an admissions officer reads a portfolio of essays for a single student.

Remember: just like your other applications, your overall goal for your UC application is to create a cohesive application narrative that shows your core strengths.

Having read all these essays, you’re now well on your way to writing your own. Try jumping into the Essay Academy or our UC essay writing guide  for help getting started.

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How to Write Great UC Essays (Examples of All Personal Insight Questions Included)

A step-by-step guide to conquering all uc personal insight questions (piqs), with examples of all uc essay prompts and an analysis of successful uc essays.

(Note: This article can also be found in our free, 110-page comprehensive guide to writing every college essay, How to Get Into America’s Elite Colleges: The Ultimate Guide .

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: the uc personal insight questions, overview: the uc essay prompts, how to choose uc prompts, outlining your uc essays, uc personal insight question 1: leadership, uc personal insight question 2: creativity, uc personal insight question 3: talent, uc personal insight question 4: educational opportunity/barrier, uc personal insight question 5: adversity, uc personal insight question 6: academic passion, uc personal insight question 7: community, uc personal insight question 8: everything else, uc personal insight question 9: transfer, part 3: frequently asked questions.

Whether you’re a California resident or not, you may have considered applying to University of California (UC) schools —and for good reasons. In addition to being the nation’s best public university system overall, the UC system includes several elite schools that may be better options than private schools for competitive applicants due to their prestige, diversity, and value. At the top of this list are UC Berkeley and UCLA, widely considered Public Ivies . Educating nearly quarter of a million undergraduates, UCs are a home for California residents, out-of-state attendees, and international students alike.

Given their attractiveness, admission is competitive, ranging from 8.8 percent for UCLA and 11.6 percent for UC Berkeley to about 25.7 percent for UC Irvine and 62.7 percent for UC Santa Cruz (all numbers for the 2023 entering class). And every year, it gets tougher to make the cut for some of the most sought-after campuses like UCLA, which sat at 18 percent in 2014–2015 and has been sinking steadily since.

But it’s worth the effort to apply to UC schools. Why? Because filling out one application allows you to apply to every UC school.

You can think of the campuses according to the following tiers, based on their U.S. News & World Report rankings . Eight of the nine undergraduate campuses ( UCSF and UC Hastings offer graduate degrees only) rank in the top 100 schools, with six of nine in the top 50:

Tier 1: UCLA (#15) tied with UC Berkeley (#15) in 2024, UC San Diego (#28) tied with UC Davis in 2024. Tier 2: UC Irvine (#33), UC Santa Barbara (#35), Tier 3: UC Merced (#60), UC Riverside (#76), UC Santa Cruz (#82)

(Related reading: The Best UC Schools: UC Rankings )

An overview of applying to UC schools

If you’re already filling out the Common Application, that means you’ll write a personal statement, complete the Activities section, and assemble supplemental essays for several schools. If you’re also applying to the UCs, you might consider ordering your process this way:

Write your Common App personal statement .

Shorten your Common App personal statement for use on one UC essay, if applicable.

Write remaining UC essays and fill out the UC Activities section (which is longer than the Common App Activities section ).

Repurpose your UC Activities list for Common App Activities and your remaining UC essays for Common App supplemental essays .

However it would be a mistake to treat the UC application as another set of supplemental essays, or as small fry after tackling your 650-word personal statement. Here’s how we recommend planning and then executing the essays that comprise your application to the University of California.

Why do UC essays matter? How much do they matter?

Over the past decade, as the University of California received more applications— 206,893 freshman applications for the 2024 entering class —the admissions committees found themselves unable to make difficult calls on students based solely on test scores and GPAs. That’s why, in 2017, the UC system switched to new “personal insight questions.” They are, in other words, an opportunity for you to show who you are beyond your scores; that’s why the committees dreamed these up, and it’s why spending time to craft these essays will go a long way.

These questions are also a chance to show more sides of yourself than students could in previous years when applying to UC schools, when there were fewer questions asking for longer answers.

The UC schools follow holistic admissions, like many private universities, which means their ranking system takes into account a number of qualitative aspects of your life—whether or not you’ve made the most of the opportunities you’ve been given, the level of your extracurricular involvement, and other “big picture” elements. While holistic admissions can be frustrating to those of us on the outside, leaving us to question what exactly gets weighed behind the scenes, there is one certainty: your essays matter—some folks estimate they account for up to 30% of admissions decisions—when a university tells us its process is qualitative and subjective.

Looking for UC Personal Insight Question examples? Subscribe below to gain instant access to 50 full-length example essays covering each prompt, plus an in-depth analysis of each essay to learn what UC admissions committees are looking for.

Gain instant access to 50 exclusive full-length UC personal insight question essay examples covering all eight questions, plus in-depth analyses for each empowering you to write exceptional essays.

Let’s meet our students

As we move through this guide to acing your UC application, we’ll be following a few students who successfully made it to Tier 1 UC campuses. These students are based on several real applicants with whom we have worked over the past nearly 20 years.

Student #1: Arman. Arman, a generalist, has strong grades, earning a 4.0 with high honor roll. He participates in academic team events, and is also physically active, playing intramural basketball and coaching younger children in YMCA after-school activities. He’s not sure what he’d like to major in, but he’s worked at a law office over the summer and is interested in cultural studies and education.

What’s not on his resumé? Arman comes from a mixed ethnic background—he’s Mexican-American and Armenian-American—and both cultures have informed his childhood, sometimes complementing one another, and other times colliding.

Student #2: Maria. Maria is passionate about the environment, having grown up in California during the drought. From her AP Environmental Science class to the various recycling and water-saving initiatives she’s volunteered on in her small Central Valley town in the northern part of the state, she’s learned what she likes and hopes to study. She also plays tennis and has danced since she was small.

What’s not on her resumé? She’s never pursued it in a formal extracurricular fashion, but Maria loves art, and does pottery and ceramic work here and there on weekends.

Student #3: Karan. Karan, an international applicant, is interested in the arts. He likes reading and cinema, and might want to study anything from Art History to English to French film. He moved around a lot so his extracurriculars are inconsistent, but he has made some short films on YouTube and has competed in parliamentary debate.

What’s not on his resumé? Karan’s lived in three countries: India, the U.A.E., and Canada. Due to the constant geographic instability and the need to always chase the next visa, he’s never felt quite at home in any of those environments.

Student #4: Denise. Denise, a transfer applicant, has always been interested in technology. Though her large public high school did not have much in the way of computer science courses, she got herself accepted to STEM summer programs, where her passions were confirmed. She wants to be closer to the tech world, though she isn’t sure what she’d like to study—STEM, business, or some intersection of the two.

What’s not on her resumé? Denise was raised by a single father and her family has not had an easy time financially for many years.

Student #5: Nadia. Nadia is passionate about politics and political advocacy. An enthusiastic competitor on the statewide mock trial and debate circuits, she has taken every class at her large public high school related to government and speech possible. She’s also interested in international relations and law school.

What’s not on her resumé? Nadia struggled with low self-esteem and physical and cyberbullying when she was younger. Her older siblings often had to intervene to keep things from getting out of hand. This is often still on her mind.

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As we’ve said, there is only one application required to be considered by all the UC campuses. There are eight essay prompts (called “personal insight questions”) on the UC application. UC requires students to answer four of the personal insight questions, and there’s no right answer about which ones you choose. Each of the eight UC personal insight questions has a 350 word limit.

This is not quite like your Common App. The Common App gives you the chance to make one single, bold, loud statement—a 650-word personal statement—and to embellish that essay with more information in the Activities section and, in some cases, in supplemental essays. The UC application, by contrast, gives you four chances to make shorter, more focused statements. This means you’ll want to think about coherency and consistency, while also avoiding repetitiveness.

The main difference between the UC personal insight questions and the Common app personal statement essay is that with UC, you may not be able to tell a single story in all its glory, as you can theoretically do in the Common App essay. But the advantage with the UC personal insight essays is that you have multiple chances and multiple angles to express yourself. In many ways, the UC application can feel “truer to life,” since so few of us have a single story or experience that defines us, but are rather comprised of many smaller stories. Thinking about the UC application in those terms can lift some students out of the funk that comes from the sense that you need to express your whole self to an admissions committee in order to get in.

Here are the most recent University of California freshman application personal insight questions :

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

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?

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

Some students have the impulse to try to parcel out what they feel is their “Single Important Story” across several essays, since they have only 350 words instead of 650. We suggest not thinking of the UC application in these terms. Instead, try to offer four pieces of yourself that, when placed together, add up to make a whole.

So how do you choose which four pieces to use—or, more directly, how do you choose which four questions to answer of the eight offered? It’s not about picking one question to describe the four extracurricular activities you’ve participated in, or one question that explains your major, another that explains your personal life, and two for extracurricular activities. There’s no formula. But here are a few things to take under consideration as you determine which questions make the most sense for you to answer:

1. Recyclability

Can you reuse your personal statement or supplemental essays to answer one of the UC prompts?

Does the phrasing of any of these questions remind you of the prompt you responded to on your Common App personal statement?

For example, when considering questions 4 and 5, “an educational barrier” and “significant challenge”, recall this Common App prompt: “The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”

Does the phrasing of any of these questions remind you of a Common App supplemental essay, or have you written something that answers the question already?

For example, question 2 asks you to describe the way in which you are creative. This might overlap with a response to one of the recent supplemental essay questions from Rice University—“The quality of Rice's academic life and the Residential College System are heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural traditions each student brings. What personal perspective do you feel that you will contribute to life at Rice?”—if you wrote about intellectual or academic creativity, as Maria did.

2. Repetitiveness vs. coherency

Perhaps you want the admissions committee to know about your experience navigating a large high school with few academic opportunities. You might see a chance to explain this in either Question #4 (which we’ll call the educational opportunity/barrier question) and Question #5 (which we’ll call the personal adversity question).

There’s no reason you can’t answer both. But you’ll need to be able to articulate a separate goal for each answer. Drawing up a separate mini-outline for each question (which we’ll explain more shortly) will help you determine whether you’re truly writing two different essays about related topics, or repeating yourself without adding new information or angles on the original.

3. Add to your uniqueness

As mentioned above, you’ll likely be competing against over 200,000 applicants for a limited number of UC seats. That means you’ll need to highlight anything that makes you stand out or speaks to your uniqueness.

Choosing questions like number six (Think about an academic subject that inspires you) or number seven (What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?) can give you space to elaborate on unique qualities you have that would benefit UC schools.

Try to think of your responses as painting a full picture of you as a person and imagine how an admissions committee member might imagine you when reading your essays. Choose to answer questions that help you stand out and provide insight into the person you will become given the opportunity to be a UC student.

4. Identify Your Strengths

Are you better at sharing a detailed personal narrative or discussing an abstract idea? Choose prompts that allow those strengths to shine through.

For example, questions 1, 5, and 7 are all about experiences or moments in your life where you did something or faced a challenge. These would be prime candidates for a personal narrative, allowing you to highlight your storytelling and “hook” the reader with attributes of your journey or personality that would benefit the UC community.

On the other hand, you may choose question 3 or 6 to discuss an abstract idea. These questions offer you the space to dive into an interest an explain the idea thoroughly. In this way, your enthusiasm for a subject can be featured. Answering prompts like these can be especially beneficial if you already know what you’d like to major in giving you a chance to explain why your preferred UC school is the perfect place to explore your passions.

5. Consider Your Campus Choices

Not all the UCs are the same. Some are more focused on the arts, others on sciences or research. Does a particular prompt allow you to highlight skills or interests that would resonate with a specific campus?

When advising our students on standardized tests who ask, “What makes a good score?” we often say strive for your highest score, not a good score. Why aim lower? The same advice applies here. You’ll likely be applying to multiple UC schools, but you probably have a favorite in mind. Research the school you’d like to attend and write about how aspects of your skills align with aspects of that school’s character. If UCLA is your dream school because you wish to study film, perhaps questions two or three would be a good choice for you to expand upon your creative talents.

Additionally, a few prompts give you the chance to be more future-focused and discuss your aspirations and goals within your answer. Choosing questions such as one, three, five, or seven grant you an opportunity to slide in future plans about what you intend to do upon acceptance to a UC and how that school will make your bright future possible.

6. Most importantly: which questions speak to you?

Your heart might not start to thud faster at every single one of these questions. But there’s likely one “buzzword” that popped out to you. Creativity. Leadership. Community. Challenge. Figure out which question contained that lucky buzzword, and work on answering that one first. That will put you in a positive headspace for continuing to the other questions that may not come quite as naturally.

While 350 words isn’t very long—about three paragraphs—it’s still long enough that you may benefit from outlining your essay in advance. The good news is that most 350-word, three-paragraph essays follow a standard structure. Some students treat their UC essays as short-answer questions, which might imply that you don’t need an outline. Try to avoid that by, instead, treating them as highly-condensed essay questions.

We’ll get into some specific examples shortly as we go question-by-question, but for now, keep this basic model of the three-paragraph, tripartite essay in mind:

Paragraph 1: Hook (and thesis statement)

In this paragraph, the writer hooks us, with an image, a brief anecdote, or a snappy sentence or two. But there’s little time to linger.

By the end of the paragraph, the writer clearly articulates their thesis statement, which will guide us through the next two-thirds of the essay.

In an essay this short, the thesis statement does not always come at the end of the first paragraph. Sometimes the first two paragraphs are taken up by captivating narration of an event, and the thesis comes in the conclusion, in the successful thematic and narrative tying-up of the essay. But when outlining and planning your essay, it’s a good idea to be certain about what the thesis is, and to try to begin to convey it—either outright, or hinting at it—by the end of the first paragraph. We’ll see some examples of it appearing in the first, second, and third paragraphs below.

Paragraph 2: Examples, illustrations, and a sense of change/growth overtime

In this paragraph, the writer brings in specific illustrations of the thesis statement, and, crucially, must convey a sense of time, change, and/or growth. Like many college essays, the UC questions ask applicants to reflect on a significant moment in order to demonstrate introspection and analytical insight. Change is often crucial to that. Usually you are not the same on one side of a major life experience as you are on the other.

Paragraph 3: Conclusions, including a sense of how the essay topic will influence the writer now and into the future

As with many good essays, this paragraph should try to lead the reader to a sense of closure, conveying a lesson and a sense of what has been learned and gained from the experience.

Here is the first personal insight essay prompt, with notes from the UC Admissions website about how to think about it:

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.   Things to consider: A leadership role can mean more than just a title. It can mean being a mentor to others, acting as the person in charge of a specific task, or taking the lead role in organizing an event or project. Think about what you accomplished and what you learned from the experience. What were your responsibilities? Did you lead a team? How did your experience change your perspective on leading others? Did you help to resolve an important dispute at your school, church, in your community or an organization? And your leadership role doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to school activities. For example, do you help out or take care of your family?

Leadership UC essay example

Let’s use Arman’s essay as an example:

I exclaimed, “You’re too lazy for your own good!” In the moment, it seemed like a perfect way to motivate my best friend, Serj. I was trying to get him to the gym. He’d asked me to hold him accountable as his workout partner. But as soon as those words slipped out, I saw in Serj’s posture, wide eyes, and flared nostrils that I had made a huge mistake.

This exchange had been a long time coming. For months I had texted Serj one hour before our scheduled gym sessions. Still, Serj canceled on me frequently. When he did show up, he seemed happy—but that was rare. I’d been lifting weights for three years, and I know how great you can feel because of it. But by yelling at Serj, I was not convincing him of the benefits of being active. I was shaming him. Five gut-wrenching seconds after I delivered my stinging honesty, I apologized. But we hardly spoke for two weeks. Eventually he accepted my apology, even thanking me for pushing him to be active. I knew, though, that I would have to earn his trust again as a workout partner.

That day, I discovered honesty’s best friend: empathy. I thought telling Serj the cold truth about his behavior would finally help him see that he was wrong to blow off the gym. But my honesty was my subjective opinion. When I later talked to Serj, I learned about the fears that had kept him from self-motivation—he had never been athletic, and he found it hard to believe that putting himself through a physical ordeal would be useful. He was already berating himself enough in his head. I didn’t need to do it for him. Since that experience, I have exercised more empathy when asked to lead. When coaching elementary school kids at sports camps, I praise their effort first before delivering criticism. Children are glad to retry any drill—but I know it’s in part because I’ve imagined, first, how scary it is to try something new, and I’ve acknowledged that first.

We can reverse-outline Arman’s essay to see how it’s working:

Paragraph 1:  He has a hook —him yelling at his best friend, and then he provides brief context, just enough to inform us without derailing us.

There’s not much of a big “thesis” statement when you first glance at that paragraph, but when we look closer, we see that there is one sentence that will drive us through the next two paragraphs: “I had made a huge mistake.” That’s enough here.

Paragraph 2: You could say paragraph #2 is all about offering more context for how we reached this emotionally climactic moment that served as the hook.

But it’s also doing the work we mentioned above, of demonstrating change. Note that Arman isn’t showing change or growth overtime by saying “on day one of working out we did this, on day two that…” etc. Instead, he’s demonstrating a sense of change and growth through reflection and retrospection. We can tell that he has grown since the mistake because he acknowledges why it was a mistake (“shaming him”). The paragraph also mentions an apology, which is a sign of change.

Paragraph 3:  Lastly, the essay begins its final paragraph with a very clear lesson that is an elaboration on the thesis in the first paragraph: “I discovered honesty’s best friend: empathy.” Now we can read the previous paragraphs through that lens.

Even better, paragraph three does two more things with its conclusion: First, it resolves the original conflict and we learn what happened with Serj. And second, it actually uses a personal story to discuss extracurricular activities, but without being heavy-handed. It spins out the lesson with Serj to something that is already listed on Arman’s activity list, coaching kids’ sports.

One key takeaway from Arman’s essay is its careful balance of humility and reflection. When students see the word “leader,” they can often begin to brag about themselves and their accomplishments. But your activity list can contain all the big wins and important titles under your belt. The essay is a chance for you to humanize those, and to demonstrate introspection. Arman does that by showing how he made a mistake and corrected for it.

Arman also avoids getting bogged down in abstract concepts, another pitfall of questions that ask about “leadership” and “community.” In fact, Arman doesn’t even use the word “leader” until the final paragraph—that’s a major show of strength. It demonstrates that he understands how he is answering the question—by discussing two intangibles of leadership, honesty and empathy. He earns the right to talk about honesty and empathy because he’s writing only about his own experience for two paragraphs, so by the time he touches on those big, abstract words, he’s already filled them with his own meaning.

Here is the second personal insight essay prompt, with notes from the UC Admissions website about how to think about it:

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.   Things to consider: What does creativity mean to you? Do you have a creative skill that is important to you? What have you been able to do with that skill? If you used creativity to solve a problem, what was your solution? What are the steps you took to solve the problem? How does your creativity influence your decisions inside or outside the classroom? Does your creativity relate to your major or a future career?

Creativity UC essay example

Let’s use Maria’s essay as an example:

For twelve years, I have spent my weekends and summers making ceramics and painting at the community center, and when I need to relieve stress, I often sketch. These might seem like private acts of self-expression. But they have impacted the way I solve problems, particularly in my sustainability work. I’m passionate about the environment, and a few years ago, I realized many of my classmates didn’t understand how to live with the lowest impact on the environment. With the help of a science teacher, I founded the Water Conservation Club and set out to engage my peers. Art proved invaluable in these projects.

The first initiative we tried was a calendar initiative for elementary school students. I visited classrooms, talked about recycling, environmentalism, and clean energy, and then asked first, second, and third-graders to draw pictures of how they could live more sustainably. Their drawings showed them picking up trash, saving water, even going on a hiking trip with their families instead of flying across the country for vacations. With the children’s parents’ okay, we turned their drawings into calendar art, and sold the calendars, raising over $1,000 for TreePeople’s Drought Defense Challenge, which hopes to tackle California’s 6-year drought. I’ve visited those classrooms and found that those students are still engaged. Their parents arranged a carpool, they use leftover water to water the class plants, and recycle paper and plastic.

The second initiative was a children’s book I wrote and illustrated, called It’s Just One Drop. It followed an anthropomorphized water drop walking around town, seeing the different ways people waste water, which affected his reservoir home. The community members eventually realize their wrongdoings and work to conserve water through taking shorter showers, turning the sink water off, and doing full loads of laundry. Although the book hasn’t been published yet, I’ve used it to teach preschoolers the importance of water conservation.

In either case, I could have talked to classrooms using a chalkboard or a PowerPoint. But bringing my proclivity for art into the picture helped me reach young people who might otherwise have glazed over.

How is Maria’s essay working? It’s not quite like Arman’s, or like the standard model we outlined above, but that’s just fine. She reached this structure organically, with her first draft, and it can serve as another model for how to answer these questions.

Paragraph 1: Maria explains that she loves art (which answers “how she expresses her creative side”) and offers a clear thesis statement about how art helps her solve non-artistic problems. The thesis statement is especially strong because she’s not talking about art applying to non-artistic problems in the abstract—she specifically tells us she’s going to discuss her environmentalism work.

Paragraphs 2 and 3: Both of these serve as the body paragraphs that give two different examples of Maria’s artistic inclinations empowering her to do better work on sustainability.

Paragraph 4: Maria doesn’t need much of a conclusion here, because it’s pretty clear how art has helped her deal with non-artistic problems. She also doesn’t need a whole lot of emotional introspection for this essay. All she needs is to remind us that without her art habit, those would have been more boring projects. Maria could also talk about her prospective major or how she wants to leverage art in it, but when she reached this version of the essay, it read as complete and fulfilled in its own right.

A good application would have some answers that read like Arman’s—introspective, personal, emotional—and some like Maria’s—efficient, clear, interested in communicating her skills and activities. But too many like Maria’s will make a student sound cold and calculating, whereas too many like Arman’s might make the admissions committee forget that he is a student who can accomplish tasks and get things done.

Here is the third personal insight essay prompt, with notes from the UC Admissions website about how to think about it:

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?   Things to consider: If there’s a talent or skill that you’re proud of, this is the time to share it. You don’t necessarily have to be recognized or have received awards for your talent (although if you did and you want to talk about it, feel free to do so). Why is this talent or skill meaningful to you? Does the talent come naturally or have you worked hard to develop this skill or talent? Does your talent or skill allow you opportunities in or outside the classroom? If so, what are they and how do they fit into your schedule?

Talent UC essay example

Let’s take a look at Denise’s essay on this topic:

The first time I touched a computer, I didn’t know it was a computer. That is to say: I am of the generation that never had to think much about technology, because it’s always been available to us. But one day in middle school I asked my father how it worked. “How what works?” he asked. “The phone,” I said, pointing to his cell phone. And then I realized my question applied to the other devices I’d taken for granted—the computer, streaming videos, apps. That summer, my dad found out about a free program at a local university on Saturdays. It would teach you the basics about computers, including how to code.

Ever since, I have been learning about coding as much as I could. My high school does not have a computer science class, but I petitioned my school to let me enroll in a few classes on technology and society, including intro to computer science, at a community college. I have also used resources like General Assembly to self-teach. I came to love working with computers and coding because each problem I had to solve goes toward building something. The reward doesn’t always come quickly—there are bugs to fix and many ways you can break what you are trying to build. But when it does, it’s visible.

I also studied design and graphics on my own and used the combination of these skills to create websites for friends, family, and local businesses. While it is not a formal extracurricular activity, it is my after-school job.

It would be funny to call coding a “talent.” It has never felt like it came naturally, but through sweat and frustration. Perhaps my talent is my interest in computers, the same thing that caused me to ask “How does it work?” when I was younger is now what causes me to ask “How can I make this work?”

Denise’s essay is built in the following manner, which may now be familiar to you!:

Paragraph 1: A hook, though it’s a mild hook. She begins by telling us a bit about what she got to take for granted as a young person, then points out that she pushed against the grain of truly taking it for granted. It’s an expert humble-brag.

There’s no clear thesis statement in this paragraph in the sense that Denise doesn’t say “My talent is coding.” Rather, there’s an implied thesis emerging at the end of the essay, when she tells us that her “talent” is a combination of determination (“sweat and frustration”) and curiosity (“how can I make this work?”). That’s an awesome way to redefine the prompt on her own terms.

Paragraphs 2 and 3: This section shows the growth and change we look for in the middle of an essay. It’s very concrete, telling us everything Denise did to get herself an education in technology.

Paragraph 4: In the concluding paragraph, Denise makes sure we don’t get lost in the weeds that paragraphs 2–3 brought us into. She’s at risk of allowing us to forget that she’s supposed to be talking about her talent in an introspective way if she doesn’t do this. But in the first sentence of the paragraph (“It would be funny to call coding a ‘talent.’”) she reminds us of the essay’s topic while also subverting it. It’s another great humble brag—in telling us that she doesn’t believe it came innately, she’s humble, but she’s just intelligently chronicled (the brag!) all the ways she worked hard to get to this place. Again, here she could choose to add, “therefore I wish to study computer science in California,” but it’s implied in this strong essay.

Here is the fourth personal insight essay prompt, with notes from the UC Admissions website about how to think about it:

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?

Educational opportunity/barrier UC essay example

Let’s take see what Karan wrote on this topic:

The summer after ninth grade, I had the chance to attend a pre-college program in North Carolina. It was a special opportunity because I had never before been to the United States, and I knew I wanted to go to college in the U.S. I have grown up around the world, in India, the U.A.E., and Canada. But this program had a few spots for international students, and I was selected to attend. Students took a college-level course for three weeks. I chose to enroll in a class called ‘Philosophy in Literature and Film.’ The focus, for my session, was philosophies of technology and science.

Over those weeks, I read thinkers and writers and watched films and listened to music by artists I had never heard of, from Philip K. Dick to Jean Baudrillard to Kraftwerk. I learned to think about art as what my professor called an “anxious condition”—the way society expresses its concerns, about politics, the future, and, in the case of our class, technology.

As the product of a school system where math and science are prized above the humanities, I had to convince my parents that studying philosophy in books and movies was a good way to spend the summer, and I came back personally certain that it had been. I could now see big themes and meaning in popular culture and in the books I read. And before, I was unsure of how to integrate my interest in things other people thought of as abstract: religion, philosophy, history, books, and film. My summer class showed me that ideas like religion and philosophy can serve as lenses to analyse the past and popular culture, or as the material that we use in writing books or making films.

I would like to continue this journey of interdisciplinary study in college, possibly becoming a professor. The program I attended marked the beginning of my certainty about this path.

Karan’s essay has a few things going for it, namely that it’s written in a readable and informational style both on the structural and the sentence level, which is to his advantage because he’s discussing complex ideas, including critical theory, philosophy, and more. Let’s break it down:

Paragraph 1:  This paragraph is all about the who-what-when-where-why. Karan tells us what the program was, how he came to attend it, when he went, and crucially tells us why it mattered to him (“a special opportunity”). The “thesis” for this essay will come later, and that’s fine, because the opener is very clear.

Paragraph 2: This paragraph demonstrates more specifics about the program. It’s really important that Karan does this, because otherwise the admissions committee might think he doesn’t remember much of what he learned in class. He gives just enough information—three names and one phrase used by the professor—to show that he was mentally present and, more importantly, intellectually moved by the course.

Paragraph 3: Now we get into the meat of why what Karan learned mattered to him—that change and growth. He gives several specific takeaways: he discovered the value of the humanities, and learned about what interdisciplinary study means. Again, his concreteness while discussing abstract topics works to his advantage.

Paragraph 4: Karan concludes efficiently and tells us that the summer has shaped his professional ambitions. That clearly answers the question about how he took advantage of the opportunity.

There are a few other small things Karan did that are worth noticing. He paid attention—consciously or subconsciously—to the language in the question, which differentiated between opportunities and barriers. He chose to write about an opportunity, which implies privilege; his parents may have paid for this program. But because he acknowledges it as a ‘special opportunity’ and says he ‘had the chance’ to go, he doesn’t come across as entitled, but in fact, grateful.

Here is the fifth personal insight essay prompt, with notes from the UC Admissions website about how to think about it:

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?”

Adversity UC essay example

Here is Maria’s response to this question:

It was October my junior year, when my mom learned she had breast cancer. It was terrifying. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I went to school exhausted, helped with errands, and tried to juggle classes and extracurriculars. My energy began to drop, as did my grades.

Unexpectedly, it was tennis that helped me overcome this academically and personally challenging period. Since I was six, my dream was to win a tennis tournament. But I struggled with the pressure of competition. I foreshadowed my loss prior to a match, allowing nerves take over. My body trembled; it was difficult to breathe. By the end of middle school, my losses outweighed my wins, and I no longer believed in myself.

But shortly after my mother received her news, I began to work with a new coach—Dusan Vemic, Novak Djokovic’s former assistant coach. Novak’s positive mindset had encouraged and inspired me at some of my lowest points, so working with Dusan seemed like fate. I explained my anxieties, hoping he could fix them. He simply said, “Make the most of every moment and focus on yourself. This is how you win.”

The advice was almost annoyingly simple. And yet, his Zen-like philosophy emanated every time he watched from the sidelines. It turned out that he wasn’t trying to get me to win. He was trying to get me to enjoy tennis as I had not been able to for years. I won more, though not a whole tournament.

More importantly, I took the new perspective off the court, to AP English, my toughest class, when my mind would always wander to my mom. It took me tremendous effort to write essays and comprehend the material. I was so scattered that my teacher advised me to drop the class. But Dusan’s meditative philosophy helped. I stayed in the class, focused on each step, gradually improving, ultimately earning a 4 on the AP exam. When school was out, I got my reward: I could come home and sit next to my mom, and just be with her for a while.

Maria successfully handles three challenges in this question by wrapping them into one: her mother’s illness, a difficulty with AP English, and struggles with tennis. Her key idea comes in an unexpected place, right in the middle of the essay. But because she braids the whole piece around Dusan’s philosophy, this essay works. Let’s look closer:

Paragraph 1: She introduces us to the major challenge (the hook), her mother’s diagnosis. But then she quickly and clearly articulates how that manifested to her—low energy, exhaustion.

Paragraph 2: This paragraph has a clear thesis statement—tennis helped her—and then backs into a bit of context about tennis, which is necessary for us to understand the rest of the essay. It also articulates a goal—winning a tournament—which in this case ends up being a red herring. It’s not what the essay is about, but it tells us what Maria thought life might be geared toward at the time.

Paragraphs 3 and 4: In these paragraphs we see growth and change. A change literally occurs in that a new character enters Maria’s life in paragraph 3, her tennis coach; in paragraph 4, he gives her advice which goes on to affect her life.

Paragraph 5: This concluding paragraph very clearly (though not heavy-handedly) ties up all three challenges, telling us how the tennis philosophy served her through her school troubles. Maria might have reached the end of a draft and realized that she didn’t have a great resolution for her mother’s diagnosis. It’s such a big, existentially challenging question to try to tackle in 350 words. That’s why the brevity of her final line works so well: it acknowledges that she can’t fix that, but, using that Zen-like philosophy of her coach, admits that the best she can do at this point in time is to spend time with her sick mother, and that’s pretty good.

One of the toughest things about answering the Challenge Question is the risk of cliché. Often when we are facing major challenges—illness, grief, loss, anxiety, etc—we are dealing with emotions beyond the scope of language. That means that the language we use to talk about it, with other people, with therapists, and in an essay, can sound like platitudes. “Just be in the moment” is, in a vacuum, a pretty cheesy lesson, no matter how much truth is contained in it.

Maria does a good job here of acknowledging that the words her coach gave her were not enough. She characterizes his words (“Zen-like philosophy”) and interprets them for us, telling us they weren’t about getting her to win but about giving her another kind of strength. It doesn’t matter if she’s gotten her coach’s intention right—what matters is that the admissions committee sees how Maria internalized those words, which would be clichéd on their own, and made them into something particular and healing for her circumstance.

Here is the sixth personal insight essay prompt, with notes from the UC Admissions website about how to think about it:

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?

Academic passion UC essay example

Nadia has a strong response to this question that we will use as an example:

The academic subject from which I draw the most inspiration is US Government and Politics. My interest in understanding the process through which our country’s government affects every individual stems from observing the material I learned in the classroom applied in a real world setting.

My interest in the subject encouraged me to enroll in the Advanced Placement course. One of the topics discussed that spoke to me most is the power of political participation. Inspired by this particular lesson, I practiced my activism by applying for an internship at the office of my district’s congressman, Matt Dababneh. There, I spent four months answering phone calls, filing papers, and reading letters, and learned the importance of community relations, social skills, and organizational skills needed to thrive in politics.

Following the completion of my internship, I continued my community involvement by joining my school’s student council, where I was selected by the administration to become class representative. My duties were similar to that of my internship, where I addressed complaints from students and moderated them directly to the administration. One example was when a group of students approached me regarding the lack of a mock trial class at our school. I gathered signatures, wrote a letter of request, and took the matter to the principal. My community participation led the school to offer a mock trial class to all middle and high school students.

At the University of California, I intend to pursue a major in Political Science to further my understanding of politics and the impact of each individual on policymaking. Furthermore, I am compelled to participate in student government upon my acceptance to UC schools in order to exercise my interests in a much larger and diverse community of students.

Nadia’s essay is short, efficient, and gets to the point—but it gets the job done. A word like “passion” can sometimes cause us to entertain flights of fancy, trying to convey something about the ineffable reasons we find poetry transcendent, or our abstract dreams of becoming a doctor in the wake of a grandparent’s death. Sometimes it is the right choice to use dramatic language to talk about a dramatic issue. But Nadia’s approach matches her personality. She’s a get-things-done kind of person. She developed an interest in politics, and went about chasing that career.

We can look more closely, still:

Paragraph 1: This is an example of an essay that opens with its thesis statement. Nadia doesn’t fuss about with a hook. She could—another student might open with the day they first saw the California state capitol—but her essay is just fine without that, because it’s clear and communicative. She also tells us that her interest stemmed from the intersection of theory and real-life application, which means that we can expect her essay to discuss the real-life application of politics.

Paragraphs 2 and 3: And indeed it does! Off the bat, Nadia tells us about working for Dababneh in paragraph 2, and in the ensuing paragraph, about her student council work. Giving us two different experiences is great because it shows a pattern of interest in the subject. It’s even better that Nadia draws a through-line—she talks about her experience at the Congressman’s office influencing her run for student government. That tells the admissions committee not only that there was change and growth, that key quality the middle of the essay must convey, but also that Nadia is aware of that change and growth and can make narrative sense of it.

Paragraph 4: Nadia concludes with a natural spin-it-forward take. At UC, she plans on continuing with these interests, and she knows exactly how.

As is the case with many of these responses, we wouldn’t want all of Nadia’s essays to read exactly like this. We’d want her to have a little bit more personal introspection in at least one of the others, even if that doesn’t come naturally to her. But this essay is spot-on in answering the question honestly and with good energy.

Here is the seventh personal insight essay prompt, with notes from the UC Admissions website about how to think about it:

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?   Things to consider: Think of community as a term that can encompass a group, team or a place — like your high school, hometown or home. You can define community as you see fit, just make sure you talk about your role in that community. Was there a problem that you wanted to fix in your community? Why were you inspired to act? What did you learn from your effort? How did your actions benefit others, the wider community or both? Did you work alone or with others to initiate change in your community?

Community UC essay example

We’re going to turn to Nadia again, here:

For most of my childhood, I was overweight. I was bullied by my classmates, who pushed and shoved me and called me “fatso” and “blimp.” When I was fourteen, I began eating healthier and exercising. It took two years to shed not only the weight but also the pain that had come with being a pariah. I did not want anyone else to suffer from the physical and mental pain that I endured as an overweight child.

In order to spread awareness about childhood obesity, I co-founded the Healthy Kids club, which organizes fundraisers and invites guest speakers to educate students about early-onset heart disease and diabetes, as well as how these diseases follow into adulthood and worsen with age. We worked to get healthier snacks in school, successfully banning certain junk foods like chips and soda, and regularly met with cafeteria staff to ensure health conscientious items remain on the menu.

In my junior year, we registered the organization as a 501c (3) nonprofit. Working with other schools in the Los Angeles area, we initiated a program called “An Apple a Day Fades it Away”, where we visited schools, handed out apples, and presented elementary school students with activity-filled days of education about the critical role healthy eating plays in lifelong health.

My own experience led me to found the group, and continues to inform our presentations. At each session with young people, I tell my own story. The ability to show students pictures of myself from five years ago, not being able to play sports or participate in PE due to asthma, and now the captain of a varsity team, means I can connect with students on a personal level. As I depart for college, I will ensure that the Healthy Kids Foundation remains a presence in my high school hallways, and I hope to create a chapter of it at the University of California, where I can draw on college students to serve as volunteers, spreading the message in even more communities.

Nadia’s doing a lot well here. Notice that in this essay, she did get pretty personal, which makes that hyper-efficient academics question more tenable.

Talking about her own vulnerability also serves another purpose: it gives her humility in a question that might often invite a sense of savior-like arrogance. Most of us, at eighteen, haven’t solved a major problem in the world; we might have put in some respectable work in our communities, though, and this question gives students a chance to articulate that.

Getting this question right requires a sense of scope and scale—students should be able to talk about a major issue they care about, and then explain how they’ve addressed it in their own communities, without pretending that they’ve solved the root cause of that entire issue. In other words, you should try to tap into a global issue and address how you dealt with it locally.

We’ll take a look at the play-by-play to see how Nadia’s achieving this effect:

Paragraph 1: Here, Nadia does have a hook—her own pain, frustration, and change—and by the end of the paragraph, she’s made the personal public, turning her pain into a force for larger good.

Paragraphs 2 and 3: These paragraphs document and detail what Nadia did in the group. Her trademark efficiency is back here. She’s clear about her accomplishments, which is a breath of fresh air for admissions officers, who often see vagueness when young people try to categorize what exactly they do with their extracurriculars.

Paragraph 4: Nadia concludes this by returning to her personal story, which bookends the essay nicely, and then she also does what she did in the academics question, spinning her interest forward.

Here is the eighth and final personal insight essay prompt, with notes from the UC Admissions website about how to think about it:

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California? Things to consider:  If there’s anything you want us to know about you, but didn’t find a question or place in the application to tell us, now’s your chance. What have you not shared with us that will highlight a skill, talent, challenge or opportunity that you think will help us know you better? From your point of view, what do you feel makes you an excellent choice for UC? Don’t be afraid to brag a little.

Everything else UC essay example

For this last essay, let’s return to Arman:

I grew up in an insular ethnocultural community that is very proud of its “pure” heritage. As a biracial Mexican-American and Armenian individual attending an Armenian private school with “full Armenians” my entire life, I have often felt like an outsider. For example, I have heard many Armenians express serious disapproval about Armenians like my mother marrying odars, that is, foreigners. Unfortunately, this way of thinking insults my proud Mexican-American heritage, and leads me to wonder whether I am a disgrace or even a burden to my community. This thought process extends to my relationships with others. I am often wondering if race plays into how people interact with me.

Of course, I’ve experienced many occasions when Armenians wanted to learn about me or become friends initially based on my biracial status. But the bad has sometimes outweighed the good, causing my confidence to plummet.

I hope to develop a more positive self-concept at the University of California through interactions with diverse students and by studying my two heritages in a way I cannot in high school. Through ethnic studies classes—many of which were pioneered at UC schools—and extracurricular groups, I think I can have more conversations about race that have not been possible in my life thus far. By learning from professors and other student leaders, I will be able to facilitate complex, yet necessary conversations about race for others, in turn, so that members of my college community feel integrated and appreciated for their differences.

Arman uses this essay to talk about exactly what isn’t on his resumé. In another one of his essays, the Academic Passion question (Question #6), he did discuss his interest in cultural studies and global identities. But he hasn’t had a chance to discuss this element of his personal life yet, so here it goes. It’s a good way to make use of Question #8.

You might also take advantage of Question #8 to adapt your Common App PS, if you haven’t already been able to shorten and reuse that. This is a chance to communicate what hasn’t already found a home.

For one last time, let’s break down Arman’s essay:

Paragraph 1: Arman is primarily interested in communicating something personal as clearly as possible here, so he doesn’t mess around with a hook, but instead moves quickly to his thesis: “I have often felt like an outsider.” He uses the rest of this question to provide informational context for a reader who doesn’t know what it was like to grow up Armenian-American and Mexican-American.

Paragraph 2: This is a middle paragraph that doesn’t quite show the “change and growth” we’ve been talking about, but it still works. In this case, Arman has set up one concept—his outsider status—in paragraph 1, and he uses paragraph 2 to briefly caveat it, acknowledging what his reader might be thinking. (“Is that really always the case?”) But he quickly moves it back to his territory.

Paragraph 3: Now, Arman spins things forward, and in a very rich manner. He not only says “I want to go to the University of California to pursue xyz,” but demonstrates that he has fully imagined how his life can change intellectually and personally from attending a UC school. He also shows that he knows something about the UC system, referencing its diversity and academic history.

It’s a short essay, well below word count, but it answers the question with intelligence and flourish, so hats off!

Students applying to transfer to the University of California must answer three of seven questions— the question list is the same as the above, minus the “Academic Passion” question. There is, for the fourth response, one required question all transfer applicants must address. Here it is:

Please describe how you have prepared for your intended major, including your readiness to succeed in your upper-division courses once you enroll at the university.

Things to consider: How did your interest in your major develop? Do you have any experience related to your major outside the classroom — such as volunteer work, internships and employment, or participation in student organizations and activities? If you haven’t had experience in the field, consider including experience in the classroom. This may include working with faculty or doing research projects. If you’re applying to multiple campuses with a different major at each campus, think about approaching the topic from a broader perspective, or find a common thread among the majors you’ve chosen.

Transfer UC essay example

Let’s see how Denise handled this question:

I have spent my first two years at Foothill Community College in Los Altos, California, learning about the technology industry, which is in our backyard. It has been an education both in and out of the classroom. In the classroom, I have focused on computer science, while out of the classroom I have completed internships to learn more about Silicon Valley, where I hope to make my career.

My computer science courses have prepared me technically for a career in the industry. From my class in IT systems to my honors distinctions as a Cisco securities technician and as a VMWare certified professional, I have the skills to find work at a technology company (as I did as an intern last summer at a software firm in San Jose). My hope is that by transferring to the University of California, I can add to these competencies a larger sense of the technology world, by learning about advancements across fields from virtual reality to artificial intelligence.

I have also prepared to pursue a second major in business at the University of California. I have taken courses in basic business law, where I learned more about the regulations technology companies are subject to, and in marketing, where I practiced explaining complicated scientific ideas to lay people and learned more about the psychology behind getting users’ attention and keeping it. In addition to my tech internship at the software firm last summer, I have also continued working with that company’s marketing department part-time. I interview companies who use this firm’s software and write up case-studies about their use-cases, which the company then uses to get more clients. All this has trained me to understand the day-to-day workings of businesses. I look forward to learning more about international business trends at the University of California, and to attending public talks led by business leaders around the state.

Denise tackles this question in three neat paragraphs:

Paragraph 1: She ties together her two interests, in computer science and business, and also states that she’s worked on them in and out of the classroom.

Paragraph 2: She devotes this paragraph to talking about technology. Her resumé and GPA are both a little stronger on business matters, but she’s articulated a clear interest in technology, which makes this paragraph ring authentically. It also recalls her other essay about her talent, and keeps a consistent picture.

Paragraph 3: Denise then does the same thing in her business paragraph. In both paragraphs, she makes sure to spin things forward, making it clear that she has goals that will be much more easily achieved if she can attend the University of California.

How should I think about the activities section? Can I copy and paste my Common App activities?

Take a look at our Common App Activities Section guide for general help with tackling extracurriculars. You’ll notice that the UC application lets students go longer, listing up to 30 activities, whereas the Common App won’t let you write down more than 10 activities. The UC application also divides things into categories, including Coursework other than A-G, Educational Prep Programs, Volunteer & Community Service, Work Experience, Awards & Honors, and Extracurricular Activities.

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.

(Suggested reading: How to Write an Impressive UC Activities List )

Should I apply to all the UCs? How should I choose, if I’m not applying to all of them?

The University of California makes it easy to apply to its campuses; all you have to do is click the boxes next to schools’ names. We advise you to apply to all the schools you’re even remotely interested in if you have the financial resources to pay each application fee ($70 per school).

To choose which schools to apply to, research introductions to the campus provided by the university admissions offices, try to visit, watch YouTube videos of campus tours, and speak with current students and alumni about their college experience. Those will give you a good sense of the qualitative elements that distinguish campuses from one another.

I’m an out-of-state student. Do I stand a chance of getting in?

You do, but it’s harder. Each campus has different demographics . At UC Berkeley, about 79.9% of freshmen in the fall of 2023 were in-state students, whereas at UC Riverside, 94.4% were California residents. Out-of-state applicants must have a 3.4 GPA or above, and never earn less than a C grade. You can find more information about the differences between applying as an in-state versus out-of-state student here , from the admissions office.

I’m an international student. Should I apply to the UC system?

The University of California is a popular choice for international students for many reasons. These are big research schools, and some of the best in the world. Though international students make up a small percentage of UC students across all campuses—just over 10%—it’s still worth applying to as many of the campuses as you can.

I attend a competitive high school in California—does this ruin my shot at getting into the highest-ranked UCs (e.g., UC Berkeley and UCLA)?

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.

In general, college admissions are getting more competitive because more people are applying to college. This is the case for in- and out-of-state applicants. But it seems like the UCs have responded to public criticism a few years ago by holding out-of-state applicants to high standards (requiring a baseline of a 3.4 GPA), and trying to give spots to more Californians.

Overall, though, students who attend better schools with more resources are expected to achieve higher academic and extracurricular accomplishments than their counterparts at schools with fewer AP classes, extracurriculars, etc. Holistic admissions means students are evaluated within their own context, based on whether or not they took full advantage of what was available to them. Many students from competitive public and private high schools across the state get in each year, so it's certainly possible to get into a Tier 1 UC regardless of where you attended high school.

Does my declared major matter for getting into one UC or another?

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 exceptions 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.  

But if you feel strongly about one course of study or another, you might consider making that a topic or a mention in one of your essay responses. The admissions committee is looking for a clear story across your four essays, so if you’re interested in biology and medicine but write two essays about your high school English class, you might also want to balance that with an answer that explains your interest in medicine, or even how your love of reading dovetails with your interest in biology and medicine.

About the Author

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on college admissions. Over the past 15 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into top programs like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT using his exclusive approach.

Want to learn more about what it takes to get into UC schools?

Click below to review our school-specific guides.

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How to Get Into UCLA: Requirements and Strategies

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How to Write a Perfect UC Essay for Every Prompt

College Essays

If you're applying to any University of California (UC) campus as an incoming first-year student , then you have a special challenge ahead of you. Applicants need to answer four UC personal insight questions, chosen from a pool of eight unique prompts different from those on the Common App. But not to worry! This article is here to help.

In this article, I'll dissect the eight UC essay prompts in detail. What are they asking you for? What do they want to know about you? What do UC admissions officers really care about? How do you avoid boring or repulsing them with your essay?

I'll break down all of these important questions for each prompt and discuss how to pick the four prompts that are perfect for you. I'll also give you examples of how to make sure your essay fully answers the question. Finally, I'll offer step-by-step instructions on how to come up with the best ideas for your UC personal statements.

Feature image credit: Boston Public Library /Flickr

What Are the UC Personal Insight Questions?

If you think about it, your college application is mostly made up of numbers: your GPA, your SAT scores, the number of AP classes you took, how many years you spent playing volleyball. But these numbers reveal only so much. The job of admissions officers is to put together a class of interesting, compelling individuals—but a cut-and-dried achievement list makes it very hard to assess whether someone is interesting or compelling. This is where the personal insight questions come in.

The UC application essays are your way to give admissions staff a sense of your personality, your perspective on the world, and some of the experiences that have made you into who you are. The idea is to share the kinds of things that don't end up on your transcript. It's helpful to remember that you are not writing this for you. You're writing for an audience of people who do not know you but are interested to learn about you. The essay is meant to be a revealing look inside your thoughts and feelings.

These short essays—each with a 350-word limit—are different from the essays you write in school, which tend to focus on analyzing someone else's work. Really, the application essays are much closer to a short story. They rely heavily on narratives of events from your life and on your descriptions of people, places, and feelings.

If you'd like more background on college essays, check out our explainer for a very detailed breakdown of exactly how personal statements work in an application .

Now, let's dive into the eight University of California essay questions. First, I'll compare and contrast these prompts. Then I'll dig deep into each UC personal statement question individually, exploring what it's really trying to find out and how you can give the admissions officers what they're looking for.

Think of each personal insight essay as a brief story that reveals something about your personal values, interests, motivations, and goals.

Comparing the UC Essay Prompts

Before we can pull these prompts apart, let's first compare and contrast them with each other . Clearly, UC wants you to write four different essays, and they're asking you eight different questions. But what are the differences? And are there any similarities?

The 8 UC Essay Prompts

#1: Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time.

#2: Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

#3: What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

#4: Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

#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?

#6: Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

#7: What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

#8: Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

How to Tell the UC Essay Prompts Apart

• Topics 1 and 7 are about your engagement with the people, things, and ideas around you. Consider the impact of the outside world on you and how you handled that impact.
• Topics 2 and 6 are about your inner self, what defines you, and what makes you the person that you are. Consider your interior makeup—the characteristics of the inner you.
• Topics 3, 4, 5, and 8 are about your achievements. Consider what you've accomplished in life and what you are proud of doing.

These very broad categories will help when you're brainstorming ideas and life experiences to write about for your essay. Of course, it's true that many of the stories you think of can be shaped to fit each of these prompts. Still, think about what the experience most reveals about you .

If it's an experience that shows how you have handled the people and places around you, it'll work better for questions in the first group. If it's a description of how you express yourself, it's a good match for questions in group two. If it's an experience that tells how you acted or what you did, it's probably a better fit for questions in group three.

For more help, check out our article on coming up with great ideas for your essay topic .

Reflect carefully on the eight UC prompts to decide which four questions you'll respond to.

How Is This Guide Organized?

We analyze all eight UC prompts in this guide, and for each one, we give the following information:

• The prompt itself and any accompanying instructions
• What each part of the prompt is asking for
• Why UC is using this prompt and what they hope to learn from you
• All the key points you should cover in your response so you answer the complete prompt and give UC insight into who you are

Dissecting Personal Insight Question 1

The prompt and its instructions.

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time.

Things to consider: A leadership role can mean more than just a title. It can mean being a mentor to others, acting as the person in charge of a specific task, or taking a lead role in organizing an event or project. Think about your accomplishments and what you learned from the experience. What were your responsibilities?

Did you lead a team? How did your experience change your perspective on leading others? Did you help to resolve an important dispute at your school, church in your community or an organization? And your leadership role doesn't necessarily have to be limited to school activities. For example, do you help out or take care of your family?

What's the Question Asking?

The prompt wants you to describe how you handled a specific kind of relationship with a group of people—a time when you took the reigns and the initiative. Your answer to this prompt will consist of two parts.

Part 1: Explain the Dilemma

Before you can tell your story of leading, brokering peace, or having a lasting impact on other people, you have to give your reader a frame of reference and a context for your actions .

First, describe the group of people you interacted with. Who were and what was their relationship to you? How long were you in each others' lives?

Second, explain the issue you eventually solved. What was going on before you stepped in? What was the immediate problem? Were there potential long-term repercussions?

Leadership isn't limited to officer roles in student organizations. Think about experiences in which you've taken charge, resolved conflicts, or taken care of loved ones.

Part 2: Describe Your Solution

This is where your essay will have to explicitly talk about your own actions .

Discuss what thought process led you to your course of action. Was it a last-ditch effort or a long-planned strategy? Did you think about what might happen if you didn't step in? Did you have to choose between several courses of action?

Explain how you took the bull by the horns. Did you step into the lead role willingly, or were you pushed despite some doubts? Did you replace or supersede a more obvious leader?

Describe your solution to the problem or your contribution to resolving the ongoing issue. What did you do? How did you do it? Did your plan succeed immediately or did it take some time?

Consider how this experience has shaped the person you have now become. Do you think back on this time fondly as being the origin of some personal quality or skill? Did it make you more likely to lead in other situations?

What's UC Hoping to Learn about You?

College will be an environment unlike any of the ones you've found yourself in up to now. Sure, you will have a framework for your curriculum, and you will have advisers available to help. But for the most part, you will be on your own to deal with the situations that will inevitably arise when you mix with your diverse peers . UC wants to make sure that

• you have the maturity to deal with groups of people,
• you can solve problems with your own ingenuity and resourcefulness, and
• you don't lose your head and panic at problems.

Demonstrating your problem-solving abilities in your UC college essay will make you a stronger candidate for admission.

How Can You Give Them What They Want?

So how can you make sure those qualities come through in your essay?

Pick Your Group

The prompt very specifically wants you to talk about an interaction with a group of people. Let's say a group has to be at least three people.

Raise the Stakes

Think of the way movies ratchet up the tension of the impending catastrophe before the hero swoops in and saves the day. Keeping an audience on tenterhooks is important—and distinguishes the hero for the job well done. Similarly, when reading your essay, the admissions staff has to fundamentally understand exactly what you and the group you ended up leading were facing. Why was this an important problem to solve?

Balance You versus Them

Personal statements need to showcase you above all things . Because this essay will necessarily have to spend some time on other people, you need to find a good proportion of them-time and me-time. In general, the first (setup) section of the essay should be shorter because it will not be focused on what you were doing. The second section should take the rest of the space. So, in a 350-word essay, maybe 100–125 words go to setup whereas 225–250 words should be devoted to your leadership and solution.

Find Your Arc

Not only do you need to show how your leadership helped you meet the challenge you faced, but you also have to show how the experience changed you . In other words, the outcome was double-sided: you affected the world, and the world affected you right back.

Give your response to question 1 a compelling arc that demonstrates your personal growth.

Dissecting Personal Insight Question 2

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

Things to consider: What does creativity mean to you? Do you have a creative skill that is important to you? What have you been able to do with that skill? If you used creativity to solve a problem, what was your solution? What are the steps you took to solve the problem?

How does your creativity influence your decisions inside or outside the classroom? Does your creativity relate to your major or a future career?

This question is trying to probe the way you express yourself. Its broad description of "creativity" gives you the opportunity to make almost anything you create that didn't exist before fit the topic. What this essay question is really asking you to do is to examine the role your brand of creativity plays in your sense of yourself . The essay will have three parts.

Part 1: Define Your Creativity

What exactly do you produce, make, craft, create, or generate? Of course, the most obvious answer would be visual art, performance art, or music. But in reality, there is creativity in all fields. Any time you come up with an idea, thought, concept, or theory that didn't exist before, you are being creative. So your job is to explain what you spend time creating.

Part 2: Connect Your Creative Drive to Your Overall Self

Why do you do what you do? Are you doing it for external reasons—to perform for others, to demonstrate your skill, to fulfill some need in the world? Or is your creativity private and for your own use—to unwind, to distract yourself from other parts of your life, to have personal satisfaction in learning a skill? Are you good at your creative endeavor, or do you struggle with it? If you struggle, why is it important to you to keep pursuing it?

Part 3: Connect Your Creative Drive With Your Future

The most basic way to do this is by envisioning yourself actually pursuing your creative endeavor professionally. But this doesn't have to be the only way you draw this link. What have you learned from what you've made? How has it changed how you interact with other objects or with people? Does it change your appreciation for the work of others or motivate you to improve upon it?

Connecting your current creative pursuits with your chosen major or career will help UC admissions staff understand your motivations and intentions.

Nothing characterizes higher education like the need for creative thinking, unorthodox ideas in response to old topics, and the ability to synthesize something new . That is what you are going to college to learn how to do better. UC's second personal insight essay wants to know whether this mindset of out-of-the-box-ness is something you are already comfortable with. They want to see that

• you have actually created something in your life or academic career,
• you consider this an important quality within yourself,
• you have cultivated your skills, and
• you can see and have considered the impact of your creativity on yourself or on the world around you.

College admissions counselors, professors, and employers all value the skill of thinking outside the box, so being able to demonstrate that skill is crucial.

How can you really show that you are committed to being a creative person?

Be Specific and Descriptive

It's not enough to vaguely gesture at your creative field. Instead, give a detailed and lively description of a specific thing or idea that you have created . For example, I could describe a Turner painting as "a seascape," or I could call it "an attempt to capture the breathtaking power and violence of an ocean storm as it overwhelms a ship." Which painting would you rather look at?

Give a Sense of History

The question wants a little narrative of your relationship to your creative outlet . How long have you been doing it? Did someone teach you or mentor you? Have you taught it to others? Where and when do you create?

Hit a Snag; Find the Success

Anything worth doing is worth doing despite setbacks, this question argues—and it wants you to narrate one such setback. So first, figure out something that interfered with your creative expression . Was it a lack of skill, time, or resources? Too much or not enough ambition in a project? Then, make sure this story has a happy ending that shows you off as the solver of your own problems: What did you do to fix the situation? How did you do it?

Show Insight

Your essay should include some thoughtful consideration of how this creative pursuit has shaped you , your thoughts, your opinions, your relationships with others, your understanding of creativity in general, or your dreams about your future. (Notice I said "or," not "and"—350 words is not enough to cover all of those things!)

Dissecting Personal Insight Question 3

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

Things to consider: If there's a talent or skill that you're proud of, this is the time to share it. You don't necessarily have to be recognized or have received awards for your talent (although if you did and you want to talk about, feel free to do so). Why is this talent or skill meaningful to you?

Does the talent come naturally or have you worked hard to develop this skill or talent? Does your talent or skill allow you opportunities in or outside the classroom? If so, what are they and how do they fit into your schedule?

Basically, what's being asked for here is a beaming rave. Whatever you write about, picture yourself talking about it with a glowing smile on your face.

Part 1: Narrative

The first part of the question really comes down to this: Tell us a story about what's amazing about you. Have you done an outstanding thing? Do you have a mind-blowing ability? Describe a place, a time, or a situation in which you were a star.

A close reading of this first case of the prompt reveals that you don't need to stress if you don't have an obvious answer. Sure, if you're playing first chair violin in the symphony orchestra, that qualifies as both a "talent" and an "accomplishment." But the word "quality" really gives you the option of writing about any one of your most meaningful traits. And the words "contribution" and "experience" open up the range of possibilities that you could write about even further. A contribution could be anything from physically helping put something together to providing moral or emotional support at a critical moment.

But the key to the first part is the phrase "important to you." Once again, what you write about is not as important as how you write about it. Being able to demonstrate the importance of the event that you're describing reveals much more about you than the specific talent or characteristic ever could.

Part 2: Insight and Personal Development

The second part of the last essay asked you to look to the future. The second part of this essay wants you to look at the present instead. The general task is similar, however. Once again, you're being asked to make connections:  How do you fit this quality you have or this achievement you accomplished into the story of who you are?

A close reading of the second part of this prompt lands on the word "proud." This is a big clue that the revelation this essay is looking for should be a very positive one. In other words, this is probably not the time to write about getting arrested for vandalism. Instead, focus on a skill that you've carefully honed, and clarify how that practice and any achievements connected with your talent have earned you concrete opportunities or, more abstractly, personal growth.

Remember to connect the talent or skill you choose to write about with your sense of personal identity and development.

What's UC Hoping to Learn About You?

Admissions officers have a very straightforward interest in learning about your accomplishments. By the end of high school, many of the experiences that you are most proud of don't tend to be the kind of things that end up on your résumé .

They want to know what makes you proud of yourself. Is it something that relates to performance, to overcoming a difficult obstacle, to keeping a cool head in a crisis, to your ability to help others in need?

At the same time, they are looking for a sense of maturity. In order to be proud of an accomplishment, it's important to be able to understand your own values and ideals. This is your chance to show that you truly understand the qualities and experiences that make you a responsible and grown-up person, someone who will thrive in the independence of college life. In other words, although you might really be proud that you managed to tag 10 highway overpasses with graffiti, that's probably not the achievement to brag about here.

Unless you were hired by the city to paint the overpasses, in which case definitely brag about it.

The trick with this prompt is how to show a lot about yourself without listing accomplishments or devolving into cliché platitudes. Let's take it step by step.

Step #1: Explain Your Field

Make sure that somewhere in your narrative (preferably closer to the beginning), you let the reader know what makes your achievement an achievement . Not all interests are mainstream, so it helps your reader to understand what you're facing if you give a quick sketch of, for example, why it's challenging to build a battle bot that can defeat another fighting robot or how the difficulties of extemporaneous debate compare with debating about a prepared topic.

Keep in mind that for some things, the explanation might be obvious. For example, do you really need to explain why finishing a marathon is a hard task?

Step #2: Zoom in on a Specific Experience

Think about your talent, quality, or accomplishment in terms of experiences that showcase it. Conversely, think about your experiences in terms of the talent, quality, or accomplishment they demonstrate. Because you're once again going to be limited to 350 words, you won't be able to fit all the ways in which you exhibit your exemplary skill into this essay. This means that you'll need to figure out how to best demonstrate your ability through one event in which you displayed it . Or if you're writing about an experience you had or a contribution you made, you'll need to also point out what personality trait or characteristic it reveals.

Step #3: Find a Conflict or a Transition

The first question asked for a description, but this one wants a story—a narrative of how you pursue your special talent or how you accomplished the skill you were so great at. The main thing about stories is that they have to have the following:

• A beginning: This is the setup, when you weren't yet the star you are now.
• An obstacle or a transition: Sometimes, a story has a conflict that needs to be resolved: something that stood in your way, a challenge that you had to figure out a way around, a block that you powered through. Other times, a story is about a change or a transformation: you used to believe, think, or be one thing, and now you are different or better.
• A resolution: When your full power, self-knowledge, ability, or future goal is revealed.

If, for example, you taught yourself to become a gifted coder, how did you first learn this skill? What challenges did you overcome in your learning? What does this ability say about your character, motivations, or goals?

Dissecting Personal Insight Question 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?

Cue the swelling music because this essay is going to be all about your inspirational journey. You will either tell your story of overcoming adversity against all (or some) odds or of pursuing the chance of a lifetime.

If you write about triumphing over adversity, your essay will include the following:

A description of the setback that befell you: The prompt wants to know what you consider a challenge in your school life. And definitely note that this challenge should have in some significant way impacted your academics rather than your life overall.

The challenge can be a wide-reaching problem in your educational environment or something that happened specifically to you. The word "barrier" also shows that the challenge should be something that stood in your way: If only that thing weren't there, then you'd be sure to succeed.

An explanation of your success: Here, you'll talk about what you did when faced with this challenge. Notice that the prompt asks you to describe the "work" you put in to overcome the problem. So this piece of the essay should focus on your actions, thoughts, ideas, and strategies.

Although the essay doesn't specify it, this section should also at some point turn reflexive. How are you defined by this thing that happened? You could discuss the emotional fallout of having dramatically succeeded or how your maturity level, concrete skills, or understanding of the situation has increased now that you have dealt with it personally. Or you could talk about any beliefs or personal philosophy that you have had to reevaluate as a result of either the challenge itself or of the way that you had to go about solving it.

If you write about an educational opportunity, your essay will include the following:

A short, clear description of exactly what you got the chance to do: In your own words, explain what the opportunity was and why it's special.

Also, explain why you specifically got the chance to do it. Was it the culmination of years of study? An academic contest prize? An unexpected encounter that led to you seizing an unlooked-for opportunity?

How you made the best of it: It's one thing to get the opportunity to do something amazing, but it's another to really maximize what you get out of this chance for greatness. This is where you show just how much you understand the value of what you did and how you've changed and grown as a result of it.

Were you very challenged by this opportunity? Did your skills develop? Did you unearth talents you didn't know you had?

How does this impact your future academic ambitions or interests? Will you study this area further? Does this help you find your academic focus?

If writing about an educational obstacle you overcame, make sure to describe not just the challenge itself but also how you overcame it and how breaking down that barrier changed you for the better.

Of course, whatever you write about in this essay is probably already reflected on your résumé or in your transcript in some small way. But UC wants to go deeper, to find out how seriously you take your academic career, and to assess  how thoughtfully you've approached either its ups or its downs.

In college, there will be many amazing opportunities, but they aren't simply there for the taking. Instead, you will be responsible for seizing whatever chances will further your studies, interests, or skills.

Conversely, college will necessarily be more challenging, harder, and potentially much more full of academic obstacles than your academic experiences so far. UC wants to see that you are up to handling whatever setbacks may come your way with aplomb rather than panic.

Define the Problem or Opportunity

Not every challenge is automatically obvious. Sure, everyone can understand the drawbacks of having to miss a significant amount of school because of illness, but what if the obstacle you tackled is something a little more obscure? Likewise, winning the chance to travel to Italy to paint landscapes with a master is clearly rare and amazing, but some opportunities are more specialized and less obviously impressive. Make sure your essay explains everything the reader will need to know to understand what you were facing.

Watch Your Tone

An essay describing problems can easily slip into finger-pointing and self-pity. Make sure to avoid this by speaking positively or at least neutrally about what was wrong and what you faced . This goes double if you decide to explain who or what was at fault for creating this problem.

Likewise, an essay describing amazing opportunities can quickly become an exercise in unpleasant bragging and self-centeredness. Make sure you stay grounded: Rather than dwelling at length on your accomplishments, describe the specifics of what you learned and how.

Elaborating on how you conducted microbiology research during the summer before your senior year would make an appropriate topic for question 4.

Dissecting Personal Insight Question 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?"

It's time to draw back the curtains and expand our field of vision because this is going to be a two-part story of overcoming adversity against all (or some) odds.

Part 1: Facing a Challenge

The first part of this essay is about problem-solving. The prompt asks you to relate something that could have derailed you if not for your strength and skill. Not only will you describe the challenge itself, but you'll also talk about what you did when faced with it.

Part 2: Looking in the Mirror

The second part of question 5 asks you to consider how this challenge has echoed through your life—and, more specifically, how what happened to you affected your education.

In life, dealing with setbacks, defeats, barriers, and conflicts is not a bug—it's a feature. And colleges want to make sure that you can handle these upsetting events without losing your overall sense of self, without being totally demoralized, and without getting completely overwhelmed. In other words, they are looking for someone who is mature enough to do well on a college campus, where disappointing results and hard challenges will be par for the course.

They are also looking for your creativity and problem-solving skills. Are you good at tackling something that needs to be fixed? Can you keep a cool head in a crisis? Do you look for solutions outside the box? These are all markers of a successful student, so it's not surprising that admissions staff want you to demonstrate these qualities.

The challenge you write about for question 5 need not be an educational barrier, which is better suited for question 4. Think broadly about the obstacles you've overcome and how they've shaped your perspective and self-confidence.

Let's explore the best ways to show off your problem-solving side.

Show Your Work

It's one thing to be able to say what's wrong, but it's another thing entirely to demonstrate how you figured out how to fix it. Even more than knowing that you were able to fix the problem, colleges want to see how you approached the situation . This is why your essay needs to explain your problem-solving methodology. Basically, they need to see you in action. What did you think would work? What did you think would not work? Did you compare this to other problems you have faced and pass? Did you do research? Describe your process.

Make Sure That You Are the Hero

This essay is supposed to demonstrate your resourcefulness and creativity . And make sure that you had to be the person responsible for overcoming the obstacle, not someone else. Your story must clarify that without you and your special brand of XYZ , people would still be lamenting the issue today. Don't worry if the resource you used to bring about a solution was the knowledge and know-how that somebody else brought to the table. Just focus on explaining what made you think of this person as the one to go to, how you convinced them to participate, and how you explained to them how they would be helpful. This will shift the attention of the story back to you and your efforts.

Find the Suspenseful Moment

The most exciting part of this essay should be watching you struggle to find a solution just in the nick of time. Think every movie cliché ever about someone defusing a bomb: Even if you know 100% that the hero is going to save the day, the movie still ratchets up the tension to make it seem like, Well, maybe... You want to do the same thing here. Bring excitement and a feeling of uncertainty to your description of your process to really pull the reader in and make them root for you to succeed.

You're the superhero!

Dissecting Personal Insight Question 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 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?

This question is really asking for a glimpse of your imagined possibilities .

For some students, this will be an extremely straightforward question. For example, say you've always loved science to the point that you've spent every summer taking biology and chemistry classes. Pick a few of the most gripping moments from these experiences and discuss the overall trajectory of your interests, and your essay will be a winner.

But what if you have many academic interests? Or what if you discovered your academic passion only at the very end of high school? Let's break down what the question is really asking into two parts.

Part 1: Picking a Favorite

At first glance, it sounds as if what you should write about is the class in which you have gotten the best grades or the subject that easily fits into what you see as your future college major or maybe even your eventual career goal. There is nothing wrong with this kind of pick—especially if you really are someone who tends to excel in those classes that are right up your interest alley.

But if we look closer, we see that there is nothing in the prompt that specifically demands that you write either about a particular class or an area of study in which you perform well.

Instead, you could take the phrase "academic subject" to mean a wide field of study and explore your fascination with the different types of learning to be found there. For example, if your chosen topic is the field of literature, you could discuss your experiences with different genres or with foreign writers.

You could also write about a course or area of study that has significantly challenged you and in which you have not been as stellar a student as you want. This could be a way to focus on your personal growth as a result of struggling through a difficult class or to represent how you've learned to handle or overcome your limitations.

Part 2: Relevance

The second part of this prompt , like the first, can also be taken in a literal and direct way . There is absolutely nothing wrong with explaining that because you love engineering and want to be an engineer, you have pursued all your school's STEM courses, are also involved in a robotics club, and have taught yourself to code in order to develop apps.

However, you could focus on the more abstract, values-driven goals we just talked about instead. Then, your explanation of how your academics will help you can be rooted not in the content of what you studied but in the life lessons you drew from it.

In other words, for example, your theater class may not have stimulated your ambition to be an actor, but working on plays with your peers may have shown you how highly you value collaboration, or perhaps the experience of designing sets was an exercise in problem-solving and ingenuity. These lessons would be useful in any field you pursue and could easily be said to help you achieve your lifetime goals.

If you are on a direct path to a specific field of study or career pursuit, admissions officers definitely want to know that. Having driven, goal-oriented, and passionate students is a huge plus for a university. So if this is you, be sure that your essay conveys not just your interest but also your deep and abiding love of the subject. Maybe even include any related clubs, activities, and hobbies that you've done during high school.

Of course, college is the place to find yourself and the things that you become passionate about. So if you're not already committed to a specific course of study, don't worry. Instead, you have to realize that in this essay, like in all the other essays, the how matters much more than the what. No matter where your eventual academic, career, or other pursuits may lie, every class that you have taken up to now has taught you something. You learned about things like work ethic, mastering a skill, practice, learning from a teacher, interacting with peers, dealing with setbacks, understanding your own learning style, and perseverance.

In other words, the admissions office wants to make sure that no matter what you study, you will draw meaningful conclusions from your experiences, whether those conclusions are about the content of what you learn or about a deeper understanding of yourself and others. They want to see that you're not simply floating through life on the surface  but that you are absorbing the qualities, skills, and know-how you will need to succeed in the world—no matter what that success looks like.

Focus on a telling detail. Because personal statements are short, you simply won't have time to explain everything you have loved about a particular subject in enough detail to make it count. Instead, pick one event that crystallized your passion for a subject   or one telling moment that revealed what your working style will be , and go deep into a discussion of what it meant to you in the past and how it will affect your future.

Don't overreach. It's fine to say that you have loved your German classes so much that you have begun exploring both modern and classic German-language writers, for example, but it's a little too self-aggrandizing to claim that your four years of German have made you basically bilingual and ready to teach the language to others. Make sure that whatever class achievements you describe don't come off as unnecessary bragging rather than simple pride .

Similarly, don't under-reach. Make sure that you have actual accomplishments to describe in whatever subject you pick to write about. If your favorite class turned out to be the one you mostly skipped to hang out in the gym instead, this may not be the place to share that lifetime goal. After all, you always have to remember your audience. In this case, it's college admissions officers who want to find students who are eager to learn and be exposed to new thoughts and ideas.

Dissecting Personal Insight Question 7

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

Things to consider: Think of community as a term that can encompass a group, team or a place— like your high school, hometown or home. You can define community as you see fit, just make sure you talk about your role in that community. Was there a problem that you wanted to fix in your community?

Why were you inspired to act? What did you learn from your effort? How did your actions benefit others, the wider community or both? Did you work alone or with others to initiate change in your community?

This topic is trying to get at how you engage with your environment. It's looking for several things:

#1: Your Sense of Place and Connection

Because the term "community" is so broad and ambiguous, this is a good essay for explaining where you feel a sense of belonging and rootedness. What or who constitutes your community? Is your connection to a place, to a group of people, or to an organization? What makes you identify as part of this community—cultural background, a sense of shared purpose, or some other quality?

#2: Your Empathy and Ability to Look at the Big Picture

Before you can solve a problem, you have to realize that the problem exists. Before you can make your community a better place, you have to find the things that can be ameliorated. No matter what your contribution ended up being, you first have to show how you saw where your skills, talent, intelligence, or hard work could do the most good. Did you put yourself in the shoes of the other people in your community? Understand some fundamental inner working of a system you could fix? Knowingly put yourself in the right place at the right time?

#3: Your Problem-Solving Skills

How did you make the difference in your community? If you resolved a tangible issue, how did you come up with your solution? Did you examine several options or act from the gut? If you made your community better in a less direct way, how did you know where to apply yourself and how to have the most impact possible?

Clarify not just what the problem and solution was but also your process of getting involved and contributing specific skills, ideas, or efforts that made a positive difference.

Community is a very important thing to colleges. You'll be involved with and encounter lots of different communities in college, including the broader student body, your extracurriculars, your classes, and the community outside the university. UC wants to make sure that you can engage with the communities around you in a positive, meaningful way .

Make it personal. Before you can explain what you did in your community, you have to define and describe this community itself—and you can only do that by focusing on what it means to you. Don't speak in generalities; instead, show the bonds between you and the group you are a part of through colorful, idiosyncratic language. Sure, they might be "my water polo team," but maybe they are more specifically "the 12 people who have seen me at my most exhausted and my most exhilarated."

Feel all the feelings. This is a chance to move your readers. As you delve deep into what makes your community one of your emotional centers, and then as you describe how you were able to improve it in a meaningful and lasting way, you should keep the roller coaster of feelings front and center. Own how you felt at each step of the process: when you found your community, when you saw that you could make a difference, and when you realized that your actions resulted in a change for the better. Did you feel unprepared for the task you undertook? Nervous to potentially let down those around you? Thrilled to get a chance to display a hidden or underused talent?

To flesh out your essay, depict the emotions you felt while making your community contribution, from frustration or disappointment to joy and fulfillment. 

Dissecting Personal Insight Question 8

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

Things to consider: If there's anything you want us to know about you, but didn't find a question or place in the application to tell us, now's your chance. What have you not shared with us that will highlight a skill, talent, challenge or opportunity that you think will help us know you better?

From your point of view, what do you feel makes you an excellent choice for UC? Don't be afraid to brag a little.

If your particular experience doesn't quite fit under the rubrics of the other essay topics , or if there is something the admissions officers need to understand about your background in order to consider your application in the right context, then this is the essay for you.

Now, I'm going to say something a little counterintuitive here. The prompt for this essay clarifies that even if you don't have a "unique" story to tell, you should still feel free to pick this topic. But, honestly, I think you should  choose this topic only if you have an exceptional experience to share . Remember that E veryday challenges or successes of regular life could easily fit one of the other insight questions instead.

What this means is that evaluating whether your experiences qualify for this essay is a matter of degrees. For example, did you manage to thrive academically despite being raised by a hard-working single parent? That's a hardship that could easily be written about for Questions 1 or 5, depending on how you choose to frame what happened. Did you manage to earn a 3.7 GPA despite living in a succession of foster families only to age out of the system in the middle of your senior year of high school? That's a narrative of overcoming hardship that easily belongs to Question 8.

On the flip side, did you win a state-wide robotics competition? Well done, and feel free to tell your story under Question 4. Were you the youngest person to single-handedly win a season of BattleBots? Then feel free to write about it for Question 8.

This is pretty straightforward. They are trying to identify students that have unique and amazing stories to tell about who they are and where they come from. If you're a student like this, then the admissions people want to know the following:

• What happened to you?
• When and where did it happen?
• How did you participate, or how were you involved in the situation?
• How did it affect you as a person?
• How did it affect your schoolwork?
• How will the experience be reflected in the point of view you bring to campus?

The university wants this information because of the following:

• It gives context to applications that otherwise might seem mediocre or even subpar.
• It can help explain places in a transcript where grades significantly drop.
• It gives them the opportunity to build a lot of diversity into the incoming class.
• It's a way of finding unique talents and abilities that otherwise wouldn't show up on other application materials.

Let's run through a few tricks for making sure your essay makes the most of your particular distinctiveness.

Double-Check Your Uniqueness

Many experiences in our lives that make us feel elated, accomplished, and extremely competent are also near universal. This essay isn't trying to take the validity of your strong feelings away from you, but it would be best served by stories that are on a different scale . Wondering whether what you went through counts? This might be a good time to run your idea by a parent, school counselor, or trusted teacher. Do they think your experience is widespread? Or do they agree that you truly lived a life less ordinary?

Connect Outward

The vast majority of your answer to the prompt should be telling your story and its impact on you and your life. But the essay should also point toward how your particular experiences set you apart from your peers. One of the reasons that the admissions office wants to find out which of the applicants has been through something unlike most other people is that they are hoping to increase the number of points of view in the student body. Think about—and include in your essay—how you will impact campus life. This can be very literal: If you are a jazz singer who has released several songs on social media, then maybe you will perform on campus. Or it can be much more oblique: If you have a disability, then you will be able to offer a perspective that differs from the able-bodied majority.

Be Direct, Specific, and Honest

Nothing will make your voice sound more appealing than writing without embellishment or verbal flourishes. This is the one case in which how you're telling the story is just as—if not more—important than what you're telling . So the best strategy is to be as straightforward in your writing as possible. This means using description to situate your reader in a place, time, or experience that they would never get to see firsthand. You can do this by picking a specific moment during your accomplishment to narrate as a small short story and not shying away from explaining your emotions throughout the experience. Your goal is to make the extraordinary into something at least somewhat relatable, and the way you do that is by bringing your writing down to earth.

Your essays should feature relatable thoughts and emotions as well as insights into how you will contribute to the campus community.

Writing Advice for Making Your UC Personal Statements Shine

No matter what personal insight questions you end up choosing to write about, here are two tips for making your writing sparkle:

#1: Be Detailed and Descriptive

Have you ever heard the expression "show; don't tell"? It's usually given as creative writing advice, and it will be your best friend when you're writing college essays. It means that any time you want to describe a person or thing as having a particular quality, it's better to illustrate with an example than to just use vague adjectives . If you stick to giving examples that paint a picture, your focus will also become narrower and more specific. You'll end up concentrating on details and concrete events rather than not-particularly-telling generalizations.

Let's say, for instance, Adnan is writing about the house that he's been helping his dad fix up. Which of these do you think gives the reader a better sense of place?

My family bought an old house that was kind of run-down. My dad likes fixing it up on the weekends, and I like helping him. Now the house is much nicer than when we bought it, and I can see all our hard work when I look at it.

My dad grinned when he saw my shocked face. Our "new" house looked like a completely run-down shed: peeling paint, rust-covered railings, shutters that looked like the crooked teeth of a jack-o-lantern. I was still staring at the spider-web crack in one broken window when my dad handed me a pair of brand-new work gloves and a paint scraper. "Today, let's just do what we can with the front wall," he said. And then I smiled too, knowing that many of my weekends would be spent here with him, working side by side.

Both versions of this story focus on the house being dilapidated and how Adnan enjoyed helping his dad do repairs. But the second does this by:

painting a picture of what the house actually looked like by adding visual details ("peeling paint," "rust-covered railings," and "broken window") and through comparisons ("shutters like a jack-o-lantern" and "spider-web crack");

showing emotions by describing facial expressions ("my dad grinned," "my shocked face," and "I smiled"); and

using specific and descriptive action verbs ("grinned," "shocked," "staring," and "handed").

The essay would probably go on to describe one day of working with his dad or a time when a repair went horribly awry. Adnan would make sure to keep adding sensory details (what things looked, sounded, smelled, tasted, and felt like), using active verbs, and illustrating feelings with dialogue and facial expressions.

If you're having trouble checking whether your description is detailed enough, read your work to someone else . Then, ask that person to describe the scene back to you. Are they able to conjure up a picture from your words? If not, you need to beef up your details.

It's a bit of a fixer-upper, but it'll make a great college essay!

#2: Show Your Feelings

All good personal essays deal with emotions. And what marks great personal essays is the author's willingness to really dig into negative feelings as well as positive ones . As you write your UC application essays, keep asking yourself questions and probing your memory. How did you feel before it happened? How did you expect to feel after, and how did you actually feel after? How did the world that you are describing feel about what happened? How do you know how your world felt?

Then write about your feelings using mostly emotion words ("I was thrilled/disappointed/proud/scared"), some comparisons ("I felt like I'd never run again/like I'd just bitten into a sour apple/like the world's greatest explorer"), and a few bits of direct speech ("'How are we going to get away with this?' my brother asked").

What's Next?

This should give you a great starting point to address the UC essay prompts and consider how you'll write your own effective UC personal statements. The hard part starts here: work hard, brainstorm broadly, and use all my suggestions above to craft a great UC application essay.

Making your way through college applications? We have advice on how to find the right college for you , how to write about your extracurricular activities , and how to ask teachers for recommendations .

Interested in taking the SAT one more time? Check out our highly detailed explainer on studying for the SAT to learn how to prepare best.

Worried about how to pay for college after you get in? Read our description of how much college really costs , our comparison of subsidized and unsubsidized loans , and our lists of the top scholarships for high school seniors and juniors .

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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UC Essay Prompts 2024-25 – Personal Insight Questions

June 18, 2024

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:

• Santa Barbara

Are the UC Personal Insight Questions important? 

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.

In May 2020, as the pandemic wreaked havoc on the U.S. educational system (not to mention the rest of the country/world), the UC Board of Regents voted to make all of their universities test-optional for students applying to enroll in fall 2021 and fall 2022. By itself, such an announcement was hardly notable. After all, hundreds of other high-profile colleges made similar temporary policy changes due to the impact of COVID-19. It was the changes for fall 2022 applicants (and beyond) that shocked the higher education universe…

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.

Given this new reality, let’s turn our attention to the focal point of the article—the UC essays themselves. For each, we will offer thoughts/tips to guide you with prompt selection and execution of a stellar composition.

A Guide to the UC Personal Insight Questions (PIQs)

The UC Personal Insight Questions vary from other college essays in that the UCs explicitly prefer factual responses.

What does this mean?!

While you should still plan to write with attention to syntax and style, the UCs are most interested in information vs. creativity. Accordingly, you don’t need to worry about having an interesting hook, thoughtful metaphors, or a high level of descriptive language. Instead, focus on communicating impact—measurable, if possible—on both yourself as well as others. Aim for as much clarity and straightforwardness as possible. Remember, UC admissions officers are reading quite quickly, and you want to ensure that your message is received on their first read.

Wondering what that might look like? Check out our blog: UC Essay Examples.

*Note: Your response to each UC PIQ is limited to 350 words.

UC Essay Prompt # 1

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.

Leadership is an admirable quality, but it can manifest in many different forms. This essay is not only for those who captained a varsity team to a state title or founded a charitable organization or served as student body president. Teamwork and collaboration are also valued leadership skills both in academia and in the workplace, and students with strong interpersonal skills and a high EQ can be an asset to any university. Think beyond the title that you may have held and more about the action(s) of which you are most proud. Note that the university invites you to share a story that involves your family. In other words, it doesn’t just have to be school or extracurriculars.

To sum up, this essay is about leadership, broadly defined. You can chronicle anything from mentoring others on your debate team to a simple instance of conflict resolution within your peer group. This is often a prompt that appeals more to extroverts, but that does not preclude a story of quiet leadership from being a winning choice here.

UC Essay Prompt #2

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

Whether you are a prospective studio art, mechanical engineering, mathematics, or psychology major, creativity and the art of problem-solving will likely be at the heart of what you do. Even if few would refer to you as a “creative type,” this prompt can still serve as a nice platform from which to reveal more about what makes you tick and the unique ways in which your synapses fire.

There are two ways to go with this prompt. First, you could: Tie your creativity directly to your future major and/or career. Secondly, you could paint a picture of your personal brand of creativity that reveals who you are as an individual, whether that’s painting, knitting, coding, or something else. Either way, this prompt can inspire some highly impactful, needle-moving responses from applicants.

UC Personal Insight Questions Prompt #3

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

If you are a world-class athlete, you are likely already in the recruitment process. If you placed high in AIME or won a National Merit Scholarship, that is already stated in the awards section. Therefore, using the prized 350 words of real estate to merely rehash the fact that you won an award would not be an inspiring move.

If you read the question closely, UC wants to know how you got good at whatever it is that you excel at doing. A few years back, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that becoming a master or expert at anything takes 10,000 hours of practice. Consider talking about the grind and sacrifice it took you to become great at a given skill and how you see that skill becoming even more finely tuned/developed over time. If this skill fits into your future academic/career plans, all the better—share that too!

UC PIQ Prompt#4

Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

This is a prompt that acknowledges the fact that some students are born with more advantages than others. Some teens attend schools with very limited advanced course offerings; others attend high schools with 25+ AP courses. Whether you come from a privileged or an economically disadvantaged home, this prompt can be a solid choice for you.

First off, it’s important to acknowledge that an “educational opportunity” doesn’t have to be your regular high school curriculum; it can be a summer program, debate club, shadowing opportunity with a physician, or a language immersion program in Peru.

On the overcoming an educational barrier front, this could be an issue of resources/economics or the barrier could be in the form of a learning disability, mental or physical health challenge, or just merely stretching yourself to take an AP Physics course when that area was not your strong suit.

Colleges like students who demonstrate grit, perseverance, and resilience as these qualities typically lead to success in a postsecondary environment. No matter what type of example you offer, demonstrating these admirable traits can do wonders for your admissions prospects.

UC Personal Insight Questions 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?

This is a more generalized version of PIQ #4. Challenges can be anything mentioned in the previous section (disabilities, illness, etc.). They could also be events like moving in the middle of junior year or being impacted by a natural disaster. Or perhaps your parents got divorced, a grandparent passed away, or any number of other personal/family traumas one can name. If a challenge you faced and overcame is a core part of your personal story, then this is a great choice. Just be sure to include the positive steps you have taken in response to the challenge, and discuss how it affected your academics!

UC Essay Prompt #6

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

Students who are “Undecided” may shy away from this prompt. Contrarily, those who are laser-focused on a given academic area often find this to be an ideal selection. Whether it’s a general love for math/science or literature or a specific interest in aerospace engineering or 19th-century Russian novels, use this opportunity to share what makes you tick, the ideas that keep you up at night, and what subject inspires you to dream big. You’ll also want to be sure to include the tangible ways that you’ve pursued this interest—perhaps you took an upper-level class or joined a related club at school, watched documentaries, listened to podcasts, secured an internship, joined an online forum, etc.

Furthermore, explain how your love of this subject may tie into your area of study or even a future career path. That said, avoid mentioning specific campus resources in your response, especially if you are applying to multiple UCs, as all campuses receive the same essay questions.

UC Personal Insight Questions Prompt #7

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

How you interact with your present surroundings is the strongest indicator of what kind of future community member you’ll be. This PIQ asks you to define your role within a community—your high school, your neighborhood, your family, or even a club or sports team. Some words of warning with this one: don’t get too grandiose in explaining the positive change that you brought about. Of course, if you truly brought peace to a war-torn nation or influenced global climate change policy, share away; but, nothing this high-profile is expected. This is more a question about how to relate to others, your value system, your charitable/giving nature, and how you interact with the world around you. If you have a sincere and heartfelt story in this vein to share, then #7 is an excellent selection.

UC Essay Prompt #8

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

Is there anything you have yet to share that is absolutely elemental to who you are as a person? Without the benefit of an in-person interview, it may feel like you never fully had a chance to connect intimately with a UC admissions officer. You have a burning sense that you have not communicated your true essence, your je ne sais quoi, your…you get the idea. If something important hasn’t been communicated elsewhere in the application, then PIQ #8 is about to become your best friend.

Consider that the admissions reader is already somewhat familiar with your academic history, activities, and awards. What don’t they know, or, what could they understand on a deeper level? This could be a particular skill or talent, or something about your character or personality. This one is intentionally open-ended, so use this space to share your most cherished accomplishments or most winning attributes. The university itself is inviting you to “brag” here. Therefore, we recommend obliging, by presenting the equivalent to a “closing argument” at the end of this admissions trial.

College Transitions’ Final Thoughts — UC PIQs

• With the introduction of a test-blind policy , the UC PIQs have never been of greater importance.
• Pick the four UC essay prompts from which you can generate the most compelling and revealing responses. No prompts are inherently favored or preferred by the admissions committee.
• If you are able to organically and convincingly tie in your academic and career interests, take the opportunity to do just that (in any prompt).
• If you’re applying to a STEM major, it is generally advised to include PIQ #6 in your round-up.
• Strongly consider PIQ #8. It is the most open-ended option and allows you to highlight anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere in the application.
• The UCs do not receive the Common App essay, so you can adapt it for one of these prompts. Win!

Want to learn more about how to get into the University of California campus of your dreams? Visit the following blogs for all of the most recent admissions data as well as tips for gaining acceptance:

• How to Get Into UC Berkeley: Acceptance Rate and Strategies
• How to Get Into UCLA: Acceptance Rate and Strategies
• How to Get Into UC Davis: Admissions Data and Strategies
• How to Get Into UC Irvine: Acceptance Rate and Strategies
• How to Get Into UC Santa Barbara: Acceptance Rate and Strategies
• The Best UC Schools Ranked
• Easiest and Hardest UCs and CSUs to Get Into
• College Essay

Andrew Belasco

A licensed counselor and published researcher, Andrew's experience in the field of college admissions and transition spans two decades. He has previously served as a high school counselor, consultant and author for Kaplan Test Prep, and advisor to U.S. Congress, reporting on issues related to college admissions and financial aid.

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UC Essay Prompts 2024-25

Uc essay prompts 2024-2025.

Students applying to UC schools must be prepared to answer the UC prompts as part of the application process. Each year, the University of California receives over 200,000 undergraduate freshmen applications. An important part of these applications are the UC Personal Insight Questions, also known as UC PIQs. In this article, we’ll break down the UC essay prompts to help you ace your UC application.

In addition to reviewing each of the UC essay prompts, we will discuss unique aspects of the UC application. We will also share tips to help you choose the UC prompts that are best suited to you. Finally, we’ll share additional resources that can aid you in writing your UC PIQs, including UC essay examples.

Applying to the University of California

Many of the University of California’s campuses are ranked among the best colleges in the nation. Not only that, the UCs are also some of the most affordable schools, especially for California residents. So, it’s no surprise the number of students that end up applying to UC schools. With so many qualified applicants, it’s important to start early and put dedicated time and effort into your UC PIQs.

Ready to learn more about UC Personal Insight Questions? Before we dive into the UC PIQs, we’d like to share a bit about the UC application process . The UC admissions process differs in several ways from many other U.S. schools. Here are a few key facts to keep in mind before you start responding to the UC essay prompts:

You must apply through the UC system’s application, known as UC Apply .

The UC schools do not accept the Common Application or the Coalition Application. As such, they will not see the personal statement that many schools require you to submit via these applications. Ensure anything you want to share comes across in your responses to the UC Personal Insight Questions.

The UC Apply deadline is November 30 .

The UC schools do not have special deadlines like early action or early decision. However, their general application deadline is earlier than it is at most other schools. The UC application is available to fill out from October 1 to November 30 each year. As a result, we recommend choosing your UC essay prompts as soon as they become available. That way, you can write several drafts of your UC essays and polish them in advance of the November deadline.

The UCs use a holistic admissions process.

After reading your UC Personal Insight Questions, each UC school will consider your application as a whole. That means your grades, courses, special research projects, talents, and high school rank, among many other factors, are all important. As such, put effort into every part of your application. Notably, the UC schools are test blind , meaning they do not review test scores. Hence, do not lose sight of the importance of answering your UC prompts fully. Each of the UC Personal Insight Questions is a chance to prove yourself as a candidate for admission. 

We hope this provides more context as to how the UC Personal Insight Questions fit into the broader application process. Next, we’ll explore the UC schools more in-depth.

How many UCs are there?

There are ten University of California schools in total. However, only nine have undergraduate programs. These nine schools are the following, in order of most selective to least selective:

UC Acceptance Rates

• UCLA – 9% acceptance rate
• UC Berkeley – 12% acceptance rate
• UC Irvine – 26% acceptance rate
• UC San Diego – 25% acceptance rate
• UC Santa Barbara – 28% acceptance rate
• UC Davis – 42% acceptance rate
• UC Santa Cruz – 61% acceptance rate
• UC Riverside – 70% acceptance rate
• UC Merced – 89% acceptance rate

Several of these schools rank among the best colleges in California . Keep in mind that you can apply to all nine with the same application using UC Apply. While this makes applying convenient, it also means that all the UCs you apply to will receive the same UC essays. As a result, your UC Berkeley essays will be identical to your UC Davis essays and UC Irvine essays.

With this in mind, you might be wondering how to make your application stand out to a specific UC. First, start by reviewing the admissions processes for each of the UC schools you wish to attend. Then, identify key characteristics those UC schools are looking for in their applicants.

For example, consider UCLA. A successful UCLA application will demonstrate a student’s academic and personal achievements, despite any challenges they may have faced. Touching on these themes in your UCLA essay can help you build a strong UCLA application.

Make sure that your UC essays reflect your best characteristics in some form. Since the UC schools are part of the same system, they share many of the same values. Common characteristics they are looking for include creativity, problem-solving, persistence, leadership, and diversity. Use your responses to UC essay prompts to highlight how you demonstrate these qualities.

Which UCs require essay prompts?

All of the UCs require students to respond to UC Personal Insight Questions as part of their UC application. When you submit your responses to the UC PIQs on UC Apply, you’ll select which UCs to send them to. Unlike the school-specific nature of some supplemental essays, your UC essays should not mention a specific school. They are, instead, solely focused on your personal experiences.  

Furthermore, each of the UCs you apply to will review your application independently. Schools are not aware of which other UCs you applied to. Nor are they able to tell whether you were admitted to another UC. In short, although the UC essay prompts are the same at every school, they are evaluated separately by each school.

How many UC Personal Insight Questions are required?

Freshmen are required to submit responses to four of the eight available UC Personal Insight Questions. Meanwhile, transfer students must only respond to three. However, in addition to these UC essay prompts, transfer students must also submit a response to one additional required question.

Later, we’ll explore each of the eight UC PIQ prompts in depth. We’ll also share tips for selecting the right UC PIQs for you. Before we get to the prompts, let’s look at how long your responses to the UC essay prompts should be.

How long are UC Personal Insight Questions?

Each of your four responses to the UC Personal Insight Questions can be up to 350 words long. With limited space, you should focus on sharing only the most important reflections and details to strengthen your story. Once you’ve written drafts, ask a friend or mentor to help edit your responses to the UC essay prompts. A second set of eyes can help you remove unnecessary words or phrases, finding space for more critical ideas. 

While 350 words for one essay is not a lot of space, remember you are writing four essays in total. As such, you have 1400 words in total to express who you are in your UC PIQs. 

Next, we’ll share the UC essay prompts that you can respond to for your PIQs. 

What are the UC Essay Prompts?

As we mentioned above, there are eight UC essay prompts. Remember, all eight UC essay prompts are the same no matter which school you are applying to. So, you can use the same prompt for your UC Irvine essay, UC San Diego essay, or UC Davis essay. 

Here are the eight UC prompts for the UC PIQs:

Below, we’ll explore each UC essay prompt in greater detail. And, we’ll provide tips and reflection questions to ensure your responses answer the prompt effectively .

UC Essay Prompt #1: Leadership

The first of the eight UC essay prompts is about leadership. The question is as follows:

UC Personal Insight Question #1

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time..

The word leadership often calls to mind a formal title, such as president of a club or head of student council. However, that is not how these UC prompts define leadership. In fact, the UC essay prompts allude to the fact that leadership occurs in many different scenarios. Colleges also value informal forms of leadership, such as the examples listed in the prompt.

Importantly, the UC essay prompts ask for an example of your leadership. Be sure to provide a specific example in your essay, rather than simply stating that you are a leader. For instance, maybe you stood up for a friend who was being bullied. Or maybe you created a study group to help your classmates do well on a difficult test. These are instances of informal leadership that would be excellent ideas for UC PIQ prompts.

Writing UC Personal Insight Questions about leadership can be intimidating if you feel like you haven’t had much formal leadership experience. However, almost everyone has had some experience where they’ve positively influenced others. Use these tips to discover and capture your leadership experience when answering your UC PIQ prompts:

Tips for approaching UC PIQ #1

1. ask friends, family, and mentors for examples..

Sometimes, it can be hard to see our own accomplishments. Consider surveying your friends, family, and mentors, like teachers or coaches, for examples. Ask them how they have seen you positively influence others. From there, note if any examples feel particularly meaningful to you.

2. Be specific.

As with all UC essays, you’ll want to be specific to make a captivating argument. Spend time brainstorming specific details about your experience so that you can write about it in a compelling manner. For example, if you stood up for a friend who was being bullied, consider including details about the incident. How did you feel in the moment? What stands out to you now? 

3. Highlight your impact.

In this UC PIQ, admissions is looking for an example of how you made an impact on others. So, don’t forget to include what the effect of your involvement was. Perhaps in the bullying example, your friend told you they felt supported and safer at school, and the bullying stopped. What you learned from your experiences is as important as what happened to you.

If you choose the leadership prompt as one of your UC PIQ prompts, be sure to use these tips. Thoroughly reflecting on an experience is key to writing successful UC PIQs. Strong UC PIQ examples demonstrate strong critical thinking, another valuable trait to demonstrate in your UC Personal Insight Questions.

UC PIQ #1 Reflection Questions

As you review your draft response to the leadership UC PIQ, consider whether your response answers the following questions:

• Does your response clearly demonstrate a positive impact you had on others?
• Did you provide details to illustrate your story?
• Does your essay have an insightful reflection on what you learned about leadership?

Responding effectively to PIQ #1 requires answering yes to all these questions. Now, let’s continue looking at the UC prompts with UC PIQ #2.

UC Essay #2: Creativity 

The second of the eight available UC PIQ prompts focuses on creativity. Like the leadership question, you should interpret creativity broadly. Here is the second of the UC prompts:

UC Personal Insight Question #2

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. describe how you express your creative side..

You might read this question and think: “I’m not creative!” However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t choose it for one of your UC Personal Insight Questions. As the UC prompts state, every person is creative. We simply express our creativity differently. Creativity can include finding new routes to school in the morning to evade traffic. It might also look like discovering new ingredients and recipes for your school lunches. However you define or express your creativity is valid and could make a great topic for your UC PIQs.

When selecting a topic for your UC essay prompts, think about moments when you were particularly mentally energized. Reflect on what you were doing and how you approached that situation. Then consider whether you can tell an engaging story about that situation that demonstrates your creativity. 

Here are some tips for writing strong responses to UC essay prompts on creativity:

Tips for approaching UC PIQ #2

1. think outside the box..

Creativity at its core is about tapping into your individual passions and interests. Allow yourself to think broadly about your own creativity and release any assumptions about what it means to be traditionally creative. Your UC essay prompts are a space for you to be yourself.

2. Pick a passion.

This prompt is designed to let you highlight personal passions. Maybe that passion is drawing or singing, or maybe it is solving math problems. Whatever you choose to describe, make sure it is a topic that matters deeply to you. 

3. Paint a picture.

Even if your chosen topic has nothing to do with art, use details that awaken the reader’s senses. Help us feel the joy behind your creative endeavor by giving us specific sensory details that excite you. Make your UC PIQs enjoyable and exciting to read.

Of all the UC essay prompts, this one is about creativity – so be creative and have fun writing! That will translate into an interesting response. If you’re feeling stuck, it might be helpful to review other UC PIQ examples. That way, you can get a sense of how different students respond to their UC essay prompts.

UC PIQ #2 Reflection Questions

As you finish drafting your UC Personal Insight Questions, use these questions to reflect upon your response:

• Does your topic reflect a unique way of thinking or creating?
• Does your response reflect your passion for a creative endeavor?
• Do you include sensory details that make your creativity come to life?

Whether you are working on a UC Irvine essay or a UC San Diego essay, ask yourself these questions. That way, you can feel confident you’ve done a comprehensive job responding to your UC prompts.

UC Essay Prompt #3: Talent

When choosing among the UC essay prompts, you might be drawn to one that allows you to talk about one of your strengths. This is your opportunity to brag about yourself, while also having self-awareness and reflecting upon your skills or talents. The third prompt on our list of the UC prompts is as follows:

UC Personal Insight Question #3

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill how have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time.

The key to answering this question well is to respond to all parts of the question. Start by reflecting on talents and skills that you have. A talent is anything you feel you can naturally do well, while a skill is something you’ve acquired over time. Both require work to hone. Sharing how you put work into your passions is important for any student including this talent prompt in their UC PIQs.

Again, keep an open mind as you reflect. We often associate talents and skills with huge accomplishments, like being a famous singer or an Olympic swimmer. In fact, talents can be seemingly small abilities, like memorizing difficult rap lyrics or putting together a stylish outfit. Skills can include everything from planning fun birthday parties to listening well to others. No talent or skill is too small to mention, so long as you provide engaging descriptions and meaningful reflections. (You might hear that caveat a lot when reviewing the UC prompts.)

Here are some tips for acing the third of the UC essay prompts:

Tips for approaching UC PIQ #3

1. brag a little..

As we mentioned, these UC prompts are designed to learn more about you. If you don’t tell UC admissions officers about your accomplishments, they won’t know about them. The strongest UC essay examples share achievements that may not be evident elsewhere on an application.

2. Be honest and vulnerable.

Just because you have a skill doesn’t mean you are perfect. Feel free to share what you find challenging about this activity or how you have sought to improve. Several UC PIQ examples highlight where students have struggled or failed in learning a new skill. Whether writing a UC Davis or UC San Diego essay, this vulnerability will stand out.

3. Focus on growth.

A strong response to UC prompts always includes self-reflection. Find the balance between bragging and highlighting weaknesses by finding the lessons you learned from this experience. Maybe you have always had a knack for predicting the weather, but one day predicted wrong and ended up soaked by a downpour. Perhaps your lesson is to be humble and always find secondary evidence to back up your predictions. 

As with all UC essay prompts, try to pick a topic you enjoy writing about. That genuine interest will come across, whether you’re writing a UCLA essay or UC Berkeley essay.

UC PIQ #3 Reflection Questions

After capturing your talent for one of your four UC PIQs, consider these reflection questions:

• Did you highlight a talent or skill that is important to you?
• Did you find a balance between bragging and reflecting upon your growth?
• Did you describe your talent or skill with descriptions that make it come to life?

Check out other UC essay examples in this guide for ideas of how other students approached their UC prompts. But for now, let’s continue our exploration of the UC prompts.

UC PIQ #4: Educational opportunities and barriers

Uc personal insight question #4, describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced..

The fourth of the UC essay prompts is a unique question that asks you to share an educational opportunity or barrier. Other UC prompts thus far have asked you to focus on experiences you chose. However, this question opens the door to discuss an experience that happened to you. But remember, your PIQs should always focus on you. Just as you would for other UC essay prompts, you must make a point to highlight your own growth or learnings.

Indeed, the UC school system is very aware of educational inequities across the state and country. This question acknowledges that disparity, providing space for UC admissions officers to consider a student’s educational experience in their evaluation. Students working on their UC Berkeley essay or UCLA essay might be worried about their grades not being strong enough. Those students may wish to choose this prompt if their grades or course choices don’t reflect their best abilities. 

On the flip side, applicants can also use this PIQ to share further details about an opportunity they took advantage of. For example, maybe your UCLA application includes your summer research experiences but doesn’t offer space to elaborate on them. In that case, you may want to choose PIQ #4 as one of your four UC essay prompts.

When writing about education barriers or opportunities, you should be cautious about how you explain your experience. Here is some guidance about responding to this question as one of your UC PIQs effectively:

Tips for approaching UC PIQ #4

1. choose a barrier or an opportunity that had significant impact on your academic career..

Your UC PIQs must highlight experiences which shaped you profoundly. Some UC PIQ examples highlight how students were accepted into programs that exposed them to a new career path. Other UC essay examples discuss how their school’s lack of classes for students with special needs prevented them from excelling. Use your UC essay prompts to your advantage by being strategic about which experiences to highlight. 

2. Remain an active participant in your story.

The goal of these UC prompts is to learn more about how you approach life. After describing the barrier or opportunity, share how it shaped you. What did you learn from the experience? What did you put into the experience to make sure you could succeed? A UC Davis essay passively complaining about a high school’s lack of advanced courses is unlikely to impress UC Admissions.

3. Focus on your growth and goals.

In many of the UC essay prompts, you have an opportunity to share your intentions for the future. Whether you grew up extremely privileged or lacking resources, UC Admissions wants to understand the quality of your character. Share how you have grown and what you hope to accomplish next.

No matter which UC prompts you select, give your full effort towards making sure they reflect your best qualities. 

UC PIQ #4 Reflection Questions

In contrast to other UC prompts, this response can be answered in two distinct ways. By focusing on an educational barrier or an educational opportunity. Regardless of which route you take, you’ll want to review your response to ensure it answers these reflection questions:

• Does your response highlight an opportunity or barrier that is academic in nature?
• Do you demonstrate how you played an active role in overcoming the barrier or making the most of the opportunity you chose?
• Does your response demonstrate how you grew or learned from your experience?  

As much as your UC essay prompts are about your experiences, they are ultimately about you. Make sure you demonstrate how you became who you are in your responses to the UC essay prompts.

Alright, we’re halfway through reviewing the UC essay prompts! If these first four UC prompts didn’t speak to you, there are four more you can choose from. Keep reading to learn about PIQ #5.

UC Essay Prompt #5: Significant Challenge

Next is the significant challenge prompt. Of the UC prompts, this UC PIQ is considered the challenge essay. This is a common topic – you’ve probably encountered similar prompts for supplemental essays on other applications. The prompt for #5 of the UC PIQS is as follows:

UC Personal Insight Question #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.

Like all the UC essay prompts, this requires some thought before diving in — what do successful UC essays cover here? Firstly, remember all of the UC PIQ prompts are very particular with their wording. Note “overcome” and “affected” in this UC PIQ. These are the “whats” of your essay.

The UC essay prompts ask for essays that reveal more about who you are as a person and a learner. Therefore, if you use this prompt for one of your UC PIQs, your challenge should be linked to your academics. That is to say, while not all successful UC essay examples for this prompt concern academic challenges, many do.

So, what topics are ideal for these UC essay prompts? Although you may have faced many academic challenges, the best UC Personal Insight Questions go above and beyond. Some UC PIQs discuss challenges that have little to do with academics but nevertheless have an effect. When brainstorming here, think about times that you struggled academically, and pinpoint the source. Common challenges are not off-limits, provided you tackle them with specificity and nuance in your UC PIQs.

Your responses to UC essay prompts should give your readers a better sense of who you are. Think of how many UC PIQs the UC Berkeley essay readers or UC Irvine essay review team see every year. The strongest UC PIQs will discuss a challenge and the writer’s reaction in a compelling way. Here are some tips to consider when answering #5 of the UC essay prompts:

Tips for approaching UC PIQ #5

1. consider your personal narrative..

Once you’ve decided on your topic, consider the most unique or interesting aspect of your journey with your challenge. Answering UC essay prompts starts with determining how your topic relates to your personal narrative . Let your writing capture something about your personality while highlighting certain aspects of your background.

2. Focus on the journey.

It may be tempting to get caught up in the what and the why of the challenge. While these are important details to include in your essay, be sure to detail what you did to overcome this challenge. Effective responses to UC essay prompts about challenges illustrate the writer’s character through their response to adversity. 

3. Connect back to academics.

Even if your challenge was not directly related to academics, it should connect back to some aspect of your education. Emphasize ways in which you continued to apply yourself academically, despite or in spite of this challenge. Successful UC essay examples demonstrate academic tenacity—not necessarily unbroken success—throughout hardship. 

Remember, this prompt is about overcoming a challenge. Frame the challenge as something you surmounted when drafting your UC PIQs. 

UC PIQ #5 Reflection Questions

Here are some reflection questions to consider if you choose to write about #5 of the UC PIQ prompts:

• Does your essay clearly define the challenge you overcame?
• Does your approach to the challenge highlight your unique and compelling traits?
• Do you describe the effect of the challenge on your academic achievement?

Keep these questions in mind to keep your response focused and continually engaged with the prompt.

UC PIQ #6: Academic Interests

Next on our list of UC essay prompts is the academic interests essay. Among the UC prompts, this is one of the most straightforward:

UC Personal Insight Question #6

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom..

Some of the UC essay prompts give a lot of room for interpretation and exploration. However, academic interest UC PIQs are rather simple. These UC essays should discuss the writer’s academic passion and their track record engaging with it. As with other UC essay prompts, look closely at the wording. Your focus may be “inside and/or outside of the classroom.” Let’s say you’ve researched astronomy on your own but your school doesn’t offer an astronomy class. If it inspires you, that’s still a great topic for this essay prompt!

Your topic can be any academic subject that you’ve pursued in a tangible way. Of course, if you’ve undertaken research or other work in that field, that experience is an excellent start. However, you could also write about personal research projects, or maybe school organizations and events you’ve been a part of. Like the other UC essay prompts, this PIQ asks not just what you like, but how you pursue your interests.

UC prompts invite you to showcase what makes you unique, from your academic passions to your creative drive. Consider these tips when writing your own responses to the UC essay prompts:

Tips for approaching UC PIQ #6

1. ground your essay in an anecdote..

Think about when you first engaged in this topic – what inspired you? How did you get involved? If it is directly aligned with your intended college major, when did you decide you wanted to continue your studies? Or make a career out of it? Grounding your essay in a specific moment can demonstrate your passion while bringing life to the person behind that passion.

2. Showcase your drive.

A strong UC PIQ essay for this prompt will be unambiguous in describing your interest and how you pursue it. But great UC essays will describe these in a way that leaves little doubt about your force of will. Learning, particularly at a college level, does not end in a classroom. A curious and driven student will take any chance to learn. Will a UC San Diego essay reader see you as a passionate, driven, inspired person? Strong responses to the UC prompts should leave the reader with no doubt that you will excel at a UC.

3. Tell a story.

Make sure there is movement in your essay. That means telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end, propelled forward through change and action. Is there a way your UC PIQ can demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for your topic through your actions? The best responses for UC essay prompts exhibit out-of-the-box thinking and a willingness to pursue—or make—opportunities.

When writing responses to the UC essay questions, reading UC essay examples may inspire you. If you’re unclear on ideal approaches for UC prompts, UC PIQ examples can steer you in the right direction. Since the UC PIQ prompts often overlap through UC application cycles, you may find guidance in past UC PIQs.

UC PIQ #6 Reflection Questions

Use these reflection questions to keep you on track during the writing process:

• Do you clearly identify your academic passion and ways you’ve pursued it?
• Do you highlight positive traits about yourself (persistence, creativity, curiosity, etc.) through your actions?
• Does your essay portray you as a flexible learner who goes beyond textbooks in pursuit of understanding?

This academic PIQ is one of the best opportunities you have to characterize yourself as a student and a learner.

UC Essay Prompt #7: Community

The next of the UC prompts asks a question common to college essays. Other UC essay prompts ask about you—your background and qualities, your leadership potential. In contrast to those UC Personal Insight Questions, this one asks about your contributions to a community. Here is the prompt:

UC Personal Insight Question #7

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place.

Like with the other UC Personal Insight Questions, the wording here matters. UC PIQ examples for community UC prompts, past and present, discuss a variety of communities, including school. Your community may be a religious or cultural community, or one centered on a particular identity. Your UC Davis essay or UC San Diego essay may even center around a hobby community, like a knitting circle.

In a similar vein, “a better place” is a key point here. Poorly thought-out UC PIQs may simply rehash a scenario where the writer exhibited leadership or initiated something. However, remember that responses to the UC prompts should address the prompt directly. Therefore, effective UC Personal Insight Questions will emphasize the positive impact the writers had on their community. Consider how your leadership or initiative improved the community and the experiences of its members and beyond.

Strong UC PIQ examples build on the personal narrative constructed elsewhere in the UC application. UC Personal Insight Questions should show the writer demonstrating core traits that they want UC admissions to know. Here are some tips to help you be clear about your contribution(s) to the community and your impact:

Tips for approaching UC PIQ #7

1. identify your community..

When responding to UC essay prompts about community, the obvious first step is to identify the community and its significance. Touch on how you got involved and what this community means to you.

2. Measure your impact.

Answering these UC essay prompts can feel somewhat similar to completing your Common App extracurriculars section. That is to say, strong UC essays often use concrete figures and details when discussing impact. Would the UC Irvine essay review team have a clear picture of your impact from your essay? Can a UC Berkeley essay reader understand exactly what you’ve accomplished from your UC essays?

3. Be honest and realistic.

Be honest about your efforts and the difference you’ve made, however large or small. The connection between action and effect should be logical. A shared calendar for your gardening club may not save lives, but organizing mutual aid through a community organization might. Don’t oversell the impact your actions have had. Of course, your UC application (and college applications in general) should portray you as an ideal candidate—but not through exaggeration. 

Finally, take pride in your contribution. Certainly, leadership tends to make for strong UC PIQs. However, you can improve your community even without being in an official leadership role. Think deeply about your community participation and how you can best highlight your impact in your UC Personal Insight Questions.

UC PIQ #7 Reflection Questions

Use these questions during the editing process to ensure you submit as strong an essay as possible to UC Admissions:

• Do you clearly identify your community and your contribution—with statistics where applicable?
• Does your UC PIQ showcase positive personal traits in the way you improved your community?
• Do you portray yourself as a helpful member of your community?

Next, we’ll review the final UC PIQ prompt.

UC PIQ #8: Beyond Your Application

The last of the UC essay prompts gives applicants carte blanche to cover anything not mentioned in other UC PIQs. Let’s look at the final item on the list of UC prompts:

UC Personal Insight Question #8

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the university of california.

This is distinct from other UC essay prompts in that it is very open-ended. While it may seem easy to write this essay, it can be much more challenging than the other UC PIQs. Whatever topic you choose, your essay should ultimately strengthen your case for admission. Particularly if this is a UC Berkeley essay or UCLA essay, this UC PIQ should be highly individualized and impressive.

Think carefully about your topic and whether it could be used for other UC essay prompts. A chronic health condition may be better suited for the challenge essay. Efforts in activism might be a better answer to the leadership, creativity, or community UC Personal Insight Questions. Of the UC prompts, this may lend itself best to preparation through reading UC PIQ examples. Successful UC essay examples can help you figure out what kinds of experiences you may have that fit this prompt.

So you’ve chosen your topic and decided it doesn’t fit any other UC essay prompts as well as this one. How can you approach this essay? Here are some tips to help you get started:

Tips for approaching UC PIQ #8

1. focus on character..

Like with other UC prompts, there’s a question that you need to answer: why are you an outstanding candidate? Strong candidates are curious, self-driven students whose values align with those of the institution to which they are applying. Consider the qualities that make you prepared to take on challenging coursework and enrich the campus community. 

2. Fill in the gaps.

Consider how your personality and character show in your other three UC essay prompts answers. Is there another trait that a UC Davis essay reviewer would miss if they read your UC Personal Insight Questions? Maybe you mentioned a non-academic interest that you could expand on to add depth to your UC Irvine or UCLA application. Either way, this UC PIQ should add additional, essential context that wouldn’t suit the other UC prompts.

3. Save it for last.

It may be best to finish the other UC Personal Insight Questions before this one. In doing so, you can review your responses to other UC prompts to see what’s missing from your application. And, you can be sure your response connects back and complements your other essays.

If, while writing, you find that your topic fits the other UC essay prompts better, roll with it! Unlike UC prompts 1 through 7, not everyone will have something to say for this prompt. Since you can choose four of the eight UC Personal Insight Questions, you’ll have ample opportunity to reflect elsewhere.

UC PIQ #8 Reflection Questions

Keep these questions in mind throughout the writing process, from choosing a topic to revising your drafts:

• Is your essay topic best suited to this topic out of the eight UC essay prompts?
• Does your essay introduce new information or context that bolsters the strength of your application?
• Does your essay build on the narrative you’ve built in your other UC Personal Insight Questions?

Now, we’ve covered all eight of the UC essay prompts. Next, let’s discuss how to choose the right UC prompts for you.

Choosing the Right UC PIQs for You

Of the eight UC essay prompts, you can only write four UC essays. So which ones should you pick? The first step to choosing your UC prompts is to read them thoroughly and see which ones stand out. Trust your gut and start brainstorming —you may even end up making ideas for all eight UC essay prompts. There are tons of writing exercises you can use when searching for essay topics, and you may need to try several.

Once you’ve thought of essay topics, figure out which ones are most viable. Which ideas could spark great UC PIQ examples, written with genuine enthusiasm and clarity? If you can’t avoid a somewhat cliche topic, can you write about it in a compelling way? What insights can you find in your experiences that nobody else would—and how do you show them? Choose the UC prompts that excite you and enable you to showcase the traits that make you a strong candidate. 

Every strong UC San Diego essay or UC Davis essay will be personally inspiring and aspirational. It may take a few brainstorming sessions for you to figure out which UC essay prompts inspire your best writing. Be flexible when planning your essays: ideas for one of the UC PIQ prompts may end up fitting other UC prompts. In those cases, be willing to change your chosen UC essay prompts to get the best fit for your ideas.

How to Make Your UC Essays Stand Out

Once you’ve chosen your UC essay prompts and drafted your UC essays, there’s still work to be done. Between writing a first draft and submitting an Irvine or UCLA application, you must revise your essays. Above, we gave you reflection questions for each of the UC prompts. Now, here are a few questions you should ask yourself about your responses to UC essay prompts as a whole.

Do your UC PIQs paint a vivid picture of who you are and what you’ll bring to the campus community?

At heart, the UC essay prompts ask you to explain who you are and how you navigate the world. Remember, every aspect of your application is evaluated holistically, whether it’s a UCLA application or a UC Davis application. And, since UC Apply doesn’t use standardized test scores for admission decisions, your essays must help make your case. Your UC Personal Insight Questions should explore key parts of your experience in an interesting, authentic fashion. After reviewing your PIQs, a reader should have no doubt that you’re a great fit for your UCs of choice.

Have you gotten feedback from a trusted peer or mentor about how well your essays describe you?

Getting a fresh pair of eyes on a UC PIQ is an often-underrated style of editing. After you’ve reviewed them on your own, ask someone you trust to review your responses to the UC essay prompts. They may have suggestions on ways to help your voice shine through. Or even notes on if you’ve misrepresented yourself in your writing. Before putting anything in UC Apply, try to have another person read your UC PIQs.

Are there any technical errors in your UC PIQs?

This is pretty obvious, but the last thing you want in your essays is a spelling or grammar mistake. This is another reason a second opinion can be helpful! Ensuring your essays are error-free is an easy way to help polish your UC Personal Insight Questions.

UC Application Deadlines

After all that effort you’ve put into your UC Personal Insight Questions, don’t let a missed deadline ruin your chances. Since all UC schools from UCLA to UC Davis use the UC Apply portal , they have the same deadline: November 30 . Note that UC Apply does not have early decision or early action application options .

Contrary to the Common Application, which can be submitted as early as September, UC Apply opens its filing period in October. Of course, just because you can’t submit your UC application before October 1 doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start early. Your UCSD or UCLA essay writing should start well before the deadline. That way, you can ensure you have time to plan, draft, revise, and make your application stand out . Especially in light of the competitiveness of top schools like Berkeley and UCLA , you don’t want to rush the process.

Another benefit of starting early is that you get plenty of time to research the UC Personal Insight Questions. You’ll have time to read the UC prompts, find UC PIQ examples, and learn what UC admissions officers look for. If you browse UC sites, you may even find additional tips for writing your UC Personal Insight Questions.

More Essay UC Resources from CollegeAdvisor

CollegeAdvisor has a lot of experience helping students through the UC admissions process. To help more students, we’ve put our wisdom into free resources. Our online resources are open to all, providing helpful advice from current and former students, as well as admissions officers.

We have an array of broad-scope “how to get into” guides for the UCs and beyond. Our UCLA guide covers everything from the ideal GPA to UCLA essay strategies. Other UC schools we’ve covered include UC Irvine , UC Berkeley , and UC Santa Barbara . If you’re interested in other UCs, search our website for other schools on your list!

Maybe you’re still focused on the UC essay prompts. In that case, we have other UC essay guides that may be helpful to your writing process. Since the UC prompts haven’t changed significantly in the past few years, a winning UC Irvine essay approach from 2020 still holds up. We have 2021-2022 UC essay examples to inspire you as you write your own. Another excellent resource is our article on common college essay questions , which covers challenge essays and unique essays.

As some of the best schools in California, the UC schools can be challenging to get into without excellent essays. But, with in-depth, free resources from CollegeAdvisor.com, you’ll be better equipped to craft knockout UC PIQs.

UC Essay Prompts 2024-2025 – Final Thoughts

With schools from UC Berkeley to UC Santa Barbara , the UC system serves thousands of students from across the world. Applying to the best UC schools can seem daunting, especially given the eight different UC essay prompts. Even if you have impressive extracurriculars, a high GPA, and California residency, UC essays can tip your admissions odds.

In this article, we took a deep dive into the UC essay prompts, also called the UC Personal Insight Questions. We discussed each of the UC PIQ prompts and what sorts of topics may be best suited for each. Then, we went into more detail about approaching each essay, from exploring ideas to putting them together. Additionally, we provided some advice on reflecting on your experiences and choosing your four UC essay prompts. Finally, we left you with a hearty helping of UC essay examples and guides.

Your UC Essay matter

Whether you’re applying to UC Santa Cruz or ticking off boxes from UCLA to UCSD, you need strong UC essays. We hope this article has given you a steady foundation from which to start your essay writing journey. With the tips and tricks we provided, you’re better prepared to write essays to wow UC Admissions.

Still looking for more support? CollegeAdvisor.com specializes in personalized, one-on-one college advising, even before senior year. If you’re looking for individual guidance for your UC essays, reach out for a consultation with our admissions experts.

This essay guide was written by Gina Goosby and senior advisor, Courtney Ng . Looking for more admissions support? Click here to schedule a free meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists. During your meeting, our team will discuss your profile and help you find targeted ways to increase your admissions odds at top schools. We’ll also answer any questions and discuss how CollegeAdvisor.com can support you in the college application process.

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How to Write the UC Application Essays: Step-by-Step Guide

Did you find this article by googling the words “How to write a UC application essay helphelphelp how will I ever get in”?

Regardless of what you typed into that search box, rest easy. If you’re trying to learn how to write a UC essay (and oh by the way we’re not supposed to call these essays because they are PERSONAL INSIGHT QUESTIONS--more on this in a moment), you’re totally in the right place. But before I share some of my best tips for writing these particular application essays (ahem, personal insight questions), some good news and bad news:

The good news: You can write a great UC personal insight question and the resources below will totally help.

The bad news: (Heads-up: old school meme coming)

Writing an amazing UC application essay--or an application essay for any college-- requires knowing what schools are looking for, some great exercises, and some example essays. And those are what you’ll find here.

• What are the 8 UC Personal Insight Questions?
• What Are Readers Looking For in a UC Application Essay?
• How to Find Your Four UC PIQ Topics
• How to Brainstorm Content for Your UC PIQs
• How to Structure Your UC Personal Insight Question

Using The Narrative Structure (for Challenges-Based Essays)

• Example of Narrative Structure in a UC Personal Statement

Using the Montage Structure to Write Your UC Essay

• Tips for Finding a Good Thematic Thread
• Example of Montage Structure in a UC Personal Statement Essay

WHAT ARE THE 8 UC PERSONAL INSIGHT QUESTIONS?

Anyone applying to the UCs will need to answer four of the UC personal insight questions, at 350 words each. You’ll choose from eight prompts. 

Heads up: these prompts are different from the Common App prompts .

The personal insight questions should admissions readers a glimpse (actually, four glimpses!) into the skills, qualities, values, interests and life challenges that have made you who you are beyond your grades and test scores. Quick examples: Did you play the role of “parent” for your younger siblings because your mom and dad had to work a lot? Did you explore your love of drama by starting a theater troupe? Are you obsessed with Calculus? These are the kinds of things the UC readers want to know. 

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves--and in case you haven’t seen them yet--here are... 

The UC Personal Insight Question Prompts

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time. 

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side. 

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time? 

Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

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?

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom. 

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?  

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admission to the University of California?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to choose four of these topics and write 350 words on each. 

Important: it’s essential that each of your personal insight questions correspond to the 13 things the UCs are looking for. 

Wait: the UCs are looking for 13 things? Yup. 

Can you tell me what those things are? I can!

What are readers looking for in a UC Application Essay?

Lucky for you (actually, because the UCs are a public university system), what they’re looking for is posted right on the UC website . 

THE 13 FACTORS OF COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW FOR THE UC SYSTEM ARE...

Grade-point average

Performance in and number of courses beyond minimum a-g requirements

UC-approved honors courses and advanced courses

Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) – CA residents only

Quality of senior-year program of study

Academic opportunities in California high schools

Outstanding performance in one or more academic subject areas

Achievements in special projects

Improvement in academic performance

Special talents, achievements and awards

Participation in educational preparation programs

Academic accomplishments in light of life experiences

Geographic location 

Note: No single factor determines admission, as your application is evaluated holistically.

Now that you know what they’re looking for, the obvious question is: How do you write your personal insight questions? First, let’s talk about how to pick your topics.

HOW TO WRITE A UC PERSONAL INSIGHT QUESTION

Now that you have some sense (but let’s be honest probably not a super clear idea yet) of what readers are looking for, let’s talk about WHAT to write about (i.e. your topics), as that’ll give you a clearer sense of what we’re up to here. After that, we’ll get into HOW to write your actual personal insight question (i.e. your structure).

HOW TO FIND YOUR UC PERSONAL INSIGHT QUESTION TOPICS

First, let’s make a GIANT LIST OF POSSIBLE UC TOPICS.

Start by listing out all your extracurricular activities . This preliminary list doesn’t have to take long--maybe spend 5-10 minutes on it. 

Feeling stuck and want some ideas on what to list as your activities? Check out this bunch of example extracurricular activities . (Heads up that the examples at that link were written for the Common App and you’ll need to write your UC Activities List in a different way, which is something I’ll discuss below.)

So maybe your GIANT LIST OF POSSIBLE UC TOPICS starts off looking something like this: 

Summer job as Assistant Manager, Blaze Pizza

Edit photos with Adobe Photoshop + edit videos with Final Cut Pro

Soccer (6 yrs)

Volleyball (2 yrs)

Childcare for my two younger siblings (yes, this counts!)

Beach clean-up, starting recycling program at school

But wait--are there any other possible topics you can think of?

Keep in mind that you’re not only writing about activities here… 

Look again at the UC personal insight question prompts above and see what else you could potentially write about. List any challenges you’ve faced--either in your education or family life--as those could make interesting content for prompt 5. And did you consider academic subjects you love and have explored outside school? That could work for prompt 6. Keep going.

Then maybe add a few more ideas to your list, like: 

Calculus (watch YouTube videos on it, took a summer course, connects to my future career)

Took all the science classes at my school, so I had to take extra classes at a nearby community college

Also, don’t forget the weird things that you think may not count… Click here to read a list of activities that you think may not count on your application, but that do (or might).

So maybe you add a few more, like: 

Self-taught language courses like Duolingo

Taking MOOCs to learn coding, 

Maintenance or set-up for high school sporting events

Book Club (outside of school)

Cosplay + designing costumes

Okay, once you’ve got a list of as many things as you can think of... ask yourself: 

Which of these possible topics would show four different sides of me? 

Quick example: maybe your job as assistant manager at Blaze Pizza could show your leadership abilities (for prompt 1), your design skills with Photoshop could show your creative side (for prompt 2), you could describe how you’ve made the best of things despite coming from a low-income household (for prompt 5), and then describe work you’ve done to improve the environment--either through a club or on your own (for prompt 7). 

Spend 5-10 minutes seeing if you can come up with four different topics. Keep in mind that if you use something for one prompt it’s a good idea to not re-use that same topic for another prompt. (In other words, if you wrote about your tutoring for prompt 1, maybe don’t write also write about your tutoring experience for prompt 7.) Aim for variety!

Note: it’s not a bad idea to come up with more than four topics, as the next exercise will help you discover which topics might yield the most content.

HOW TO BRAINSTORM CONTENT FOR YOUR UC PERSONAL INSIGHT QUESTIONS

Once you’ve got 4-5 ideas for topics, it’s time to brainstorm your content. How? 

Complete the BEABIES exercise that you’ll find at this link.

Step 1: Make a copy of the doc above by going to “File” and then selecting “Make a copy.” 

Step 2: Complete one BEABIES chart per topic you’re considering.

Get this: If done correctly (in other words, if you spend at least 15-20 min. per activity and really think about the questions listed at the link above), the BEABIES exercise will basically write your essay for you. Do it and see.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll have a ton of content. The next question is:

HOW TO STRUCTURE YOUR UC PERSONAL INSIGHT QUESTION

When it comes to structure, consider that you’re either writing about overcoming a challenge or you’re not.

If you are writing about a challenge, I recommend the Narrative Structure .

If you are not writing about a challenge, I recommend the Montage Structure .

I find the Narrative structure works best for prompts:  #1 Leadership  #4 Educational opportunity or educational barrier overcome #5 Significant challenge overcome #7 Improving community example

Why? Simply because I find the answers to those prompts tend to be (but aren’t always!) more challenges-based than other prompts.

If you’re debating, ask yourself: for each of my topics, did I overcome a challenge or not? And because it bears repeating: Writing about overcoming a challenge = narrative structure, Not writing about overcoming a challenge = montage structure. 

So how do you use the Narrative Structure for the UC insight questions?

Approach #1: The Elon Musk Exercise

What it’s best for: challenges related to extracurricular activities or community service projects

Click here for the Elon Musk Exercise.

Complete that exercise and you should be able to map out a personal insight question describing a challenge you overcame related to an extracurricular activity or community service project.

Approach #2: The Feelings and Needs Exercise

What it’s best for: challenges related to family or personal issues 

Click here for the Feelings and Needs Exercise.

Complete that exercise and you should be able to map out a personal insight question describing a challenge you overcame related to a family or personal issue.

But because the UC personal insight responses are so short, it can be useful to use this simpler structure: 

What challenge(s) did you face and what impact did they have on you?

What did you do about it?

What did you learn?

Important: the readers will be more interested in what you did about it and what you learned than the challenge itself.  So consider devoting one paragraph to answering each of the three questions above. The Feelings and Needs exercise will help you develop your ideas.

EXAMPLE OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN A UC PERSONAL STATEMENT ESSAY

Here’s an example of a solid narrative/challenges essay. 

WHAT HAD TO BE DONE

Written using Narrative Structure and adapted for the UC Application Essay could have worked for prompts 1, 5, 8, and perhaps others.  

At six years old, I stood locked away in the restroom. My dad was being put under arrest for domestic abuse. He’d hurt my mom physically and mentally, and my brother Jose and I had shared the mental strain. It’s what had to be done. For a few years the quality of our lives started to improve as our soon-to-be step-dad became part of our family. He paid attention to the needs of my mom, my brother, and me, but our prosperity was short-lived as my step dad’s chronic alcoholism became more recurrent. When I was eight, my younger brother Fernando’s birth complicated things even further. As my step-dad slipped away, Fernando’s care was left to Jose and me. I cooked, Jose cleaned, I dressed Fernando, Jose put him to bed. We did what we had to do. I grew determined to improve the quality of life for my family and myself.     Without a father figure to teach me the things a father could, I became my own teacher. I learned how to fix bikes, how to swim, and even how to talk to girls. I found a job to help pay bills. I became as independent as I could to lessen the time and money mom had to spend raising me. I worked hard to earn straight A’s, I shattered my school’s 100M breaststroke record, and I learned to play the oboe. I tutored kids, teens, and adults on a variety of subjects ranging from basic English to home improvement and even Calculus. As the captain of the water polo and swim team I’ve led practices, and I became the first student in my school to pass the AP Physics 1 exam. I’ve done tons, and I'm proud of it. But I’m excited to say there’s so much I have yet to do. I haven’t danced the tango, solved a Rubix Cube, or seen the World Trade Center. And I have yet to see how Fernando will grow.   I’ll do as much as I can from now on. Not because I have to. Because I choose to. 

Analysis: 

There’s so much to love about this essay.

Did you spot the elements of the Feelings and Needs Exercise ? If not, here they are: 

Challenges: Domestic abuse, alcoholic step-dad, third brother (Fernando’s) birth, family’s undocumented status

Effects: Author and his brother shared the mental strain, father was arrested, funds were tight, mom worked two jobs, brothers took care of one another, kept to themselves when dealing with financial and medical issues, avoided going on certain school trips, at times author was discouraged from meeting new people, grades started to slip

Feelings: Confused, Anxious, Worried, Relieved, Alone, Lost, Vulnerable, Lonely, Disconnected, Alone, Heartbroken, Ashamed, Disillusioned

Needs: Order, Autonomy, Reassurance, Growth, Safety, Understanding, Empathy, Hope, Support, Self-Acceptance

What He Did About It: He took care of his youngest brother, became his own teacher, learned how to fix a bike, to swim, socialize, found a job to help pay bills, improved his grades, broke a school swimming record, learned to play instruments, became the first student in his school to pass the AP Physics 1 exam, took a leadership role in clubs, tutored and counseled friends and peers (something he was able to work into the longer personal statement version but didn’t include here)

What He Learned: He’s proud of what he’s done, but wants to do more: dance the tango, solve a Rubix Cube, explore perpetual motion, see the World Trade Center, see his little brother grow up… he’ll do it not because he has to, but because he chooses to

That’s why I strongly recommend this exercise for this type of essay. With just 15-20 minutes of focused work, you can map out your whole story.

But you may be wondering… what if I’m NOT writing about challenge? 

BEHOLD: THE MONTAGE!

I find the Montage structure works particularly well for these prompts:  #1 Leadership #2 Creativity #3 A talent or skill #6 Favorite academic subject #7 Improving community example#8 What sets you apart? 

Reminder: this is a structure you might use if you’re no t writing about overcoming a challenge. 

But wait: What’s a montage?

Montage is a technique that involves creating a new whole from separate fragments. In filmmaking , the montage effect is used to condense space and time so that information can be delivered in a more efficient way. And you can use this technique for your essay. 

The key to making it work is finding two things: a thematic thread to connect everything you’re talking about and interesting “beads” (I’ll explain in a moment) that will make up the paragraphs of your essay. 

The “thread” and “beads” metaphor

Consider that your thematic thread (i.e. the thing that connects all the separate parts of your essay) is an actual thread on a bracelet. And each of the separate parts are “beads” on that bracelet. 

For the UC personal insight questions, your topic will give you your thematic thread. So if you’re writing about your drawing abilities for prompt #2, then “drawing” is your thematic thread. If you’re writing about soccer for prompt #3, then “soccer” is your thematic thread. Pretty simple.

TIPS FOR FINDING A GOOD THEMATIC THREAD

Make it visual. Storytelling is a visual medium. Use a thread that might help conjure images in the reader’s mind.

Write what you know. Know how to cook? Use food. Play chess? Use that! And if you’ve got something impressive, don’t leave money on the table! Use your impressive thing.

Here’s the next, essential step:

Brainstorm values that connect to the thematic thread you’ve chosen. How? Use this Values Exercise for ideas and see if you can identify 4-6 that you could connect back to your topic. Maybe you’re writing an essay about playing an instrument, for example, and identify that the instrument helped you connect with these values: 

Helping others (because you teach younger kids how to play) 

Balance (because you had to find time to play while keeping a full schedule)

Creativity (because it’s how you express yourself)

But then you look at those and think, “Wait a second; this is going to blend in with other essays.” So don’t stop there:

Push yourself to make several uncommon connections. Here’s what I mean:

Here’s a stand-out example essay that uses the Montage structure and is uncommon in a variety of ways.

EXAMPLE OF MONTAGE STRUCTURE IN A UC PERSONAL STATEMENT ESSAY

SANTUR 

Written using the Montage Structure for the UC Application essay. Could have worked for Prompts 2, 3, 7, 8 and even 1.

Do re fa mi, re do fa mi, re do sol fa mi re mi re. Have I completely lost it? Should I be locked up in a mental hospital chained to a chair? No. Then what are these utterances coming from my mouth? Music. I have devoted thousands of hours of my life to playing the santur, a classical Persian instrument that originated in the Middle East. Some people think I'm strange: a Persian redheaded Jewish teenager obsessed with an ancient musical instrument. But they don’t see what I see. My santur is King David’s lyre: it can soothe, enrapture, mesmerize. The santur also allows me to connect to my culture and Persian heritage, and to visit Iran of the past, a culture rich in artistic tradition. Sometimes I imagine performing for the king in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the santur sounds echoing through the Seven Hills of Jerusalem. Today, some Americans view Iran as a land of terrorists, but when I play the innocent of Iran, the educated, the artists, the innovators, come to life. Iran is not a country of savages; it’s Kubla Khan’s fountain, an abundant source of knowledge and creativity. Finally, the santur represents one of my remaining links to my grandfather. In the last few years of his life, Baba Joon did not know me as his grandson. Alzheimer’s slowly took over his brain, and eventually he could not recognize me. Baba Joon grew up with the music of the santur and my father plays it in his car every day, so when I play, the music connects all three generations. In December I’ll be releasing my first album, a collection of classical Persian pieces. Proceeds from the album will go toward Alzheimer's research, as I hope to play some small part in finding a cure for the disease. My teacher is one of only a handful of santur teachers from Iran, and I sometimes wonder if the santur will soon become extinct, like the seven thousand endangered languages which may soon be gone. Not if I have anything to say about it. (Length: 350 words)

Analysis: There is so much to love about this piece too. Here’s what the author does well (and what you can learn from it):

1. Choose a thematic thread (i.e. something that connects everything) and make sure it’s clear. In this piece, obviously, it’s the santur, but it could be anything: a talent or skill, a job, or a sport.

2. Brainstorm values that connect to this thing (whatever you’ve chosen). How? Use this Values Exercise . But don’t stop there:

3. Make several uncommon connections.  

A boring example:

Common topic: basketball   Common connections: hard work, perseverance, teamwork Common language: “Basketball has really influenced me and my life.”

A stand-out example:

Uncommon topic: santur Uncommon connections: culture/heritage, social change, family Uncommon language: “...the santur sounds echoing through the Seven Hills of Jerusalem.”

First, brainstorm the cliché version of your topic.

How? Yes, I’m going to tell you to look at the Values Exercise again. Ask yourself: What values would the typical response focus on?

Then agree not to focus on those values. Instead, brainstorm some uncommon connections. Ask, “What are some unusual values that someone else’s basketball/violin/mission trip essay might not focus on?” Then:

4. Use those uncommon connections (i.e. values) as the basis for your outline, and focus on one paragraph per value. 

Each paragraph should consist of a vignette, a value (quality or skill) and your insight. Using a table to brainstorm ideas might help organize your thoughts. Like this: 

Thematic thread example: Santur

A guiding question for writing your insight: How did the vignette and value you have chosen add to your growth and development?

Each paragraph should reflect the value you’ve chosen (remember: bonus points if the connection is uncommon). 

And I know this is one metric ton of information. There’s a reason why I started with the LOTR meme at the start! But if you follow these tips, you’ll be able to write an amazing UC essay and--even better--you’ll have tons of insights and writing you can use with other applications. 

Before I go, though…

5 More Tips for Your UC Personal Insight Questions

Tip #1: Don’t forget to connect your personal insight questions to one or more of the 13 points of comprehensive review.

How do I know you should do this? The UC directors have publicly said that the questions correlate directly to the review points. So as you’re brainstorming your four topics, ask yourself: How will this help me on the 13 points of comprehensive review? (Tip: Your essay/personal insight question responses could connect to several of the 13 points.)

Tip #2: Make use of the many resources the UCs have provided For some good contextual advice click here and for some basic writing advice click here .

Tip #3. Remember that it’s okay to answer your personal insight questions in a direct, straightforward way.

How do I know? Because at a recent conference, one of the UC directors said publicly, “It’s okay to answer the questions in a direct, straightforward way.” And the other UC directors nodded. 

In fact, another director said it’s okay to just write bullet points in your response. (A high school counselor raised her hand and asked, “Really? Bullet points? Like, really really?” and the UC Director was like, “Yup.”) 

Will you personally choose to provide bullet points? That’s up to you. It may feel a little weird. But just know that at least a few of the UC directors have said it’s cool.

Tip #4: Write in such a way that a UC reader could skim your responses to the personal insight questions and get your main points.

Why? Because the reader will probably be spending about six to eight minutes on your application. Not on each essay. ON YOUR WHOLE APPLICATION.

I just want to emphasize it’s cool--and smart--to get straight to the point. That being said…

Tip #5: If you’re applying to private schools via the Common App, it can be useful to write an essay that’s insightful, well-crafted and reveals your core values. 

Why take the time to write a stand-out essay?

You may be able to use your UC Personal Insight Question essay for other schools. Since many selective schools require supplemental essays (that is: essays you write in addition to your main, 650-word Common App personal statement), it can be useful to write an essay that works for BOTH the UCs AND one or more private schools. 

Quick example:

Michigan Supplement: Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. (250 word limit).

UC Personal Insight Question #7: What have you done to make your school or your community a better place? (350 words).

I call this writing a Super Essay. By answering both prompts at once, you get deeper with the answer for both. Plus it saves you so. Much. Time. 

And guess what: You can do this for multiple prompts (three, four, or seventeen). 

For more on how to write a Super-Essay, click here.  

BONUS TIME! How to brainstorm + write your UC Activities List