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Update October 2016: The UC essay questions have changed!
Please read this post for more information about the new personal insight questions.
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Every year, many of my students have some difficulty with the UC essay prompts. I decided to make a video to talk about some of the most common questions my students have about the UC prompts and how I answer them.
Answering UC Essay Prompts 1 & 2
How to Answer UC Essay Prompts Transcript
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my name is danielle bianchi
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and for more than a decade
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i’ve been helping students achieve their college admission dreams
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i’ve created a series of free
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video tutorials
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to help students write better personal statements for the college applications
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for more free tutorials
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please visit personalstatementblueprint.com/tutorials/
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this is responding to the university of California essay prompts
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Many of my students are interested in applying to one
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or many of the campuses within the university of california system which we
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call the UC system for short
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this is not surprizing as six of the nine UC campuses:
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university of california berkeley, UCLA,
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UC san diego,
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UC santa barbara, UC davis, and UC Irvine
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are ranked in the top forty of the US News and World Report’s
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best national universities
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The UC system has always had one main application that all of the campuses share.
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Incoming freshmen must respond to two essay prompts on the UC application
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in order to apply for undergraduate admissions.
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each applicant must respond to both essay questions with a maximum of one
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thousand words total.
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So these words can be allocated as the student wishes as long as the shorter one
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is greater than two hundred and fifty words.
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Assuming this all makes sense to you,
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I’d like to discuss the two prompts, what their asking the students, and how best
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to respond to them.
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So i’ll read the two questions you here:
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UC prompt number one:
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Describe the world you come from.
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For example your family, community, or school, and tell us how you world has
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shaped your dreams and aspirations.
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UC prompt number two:
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says…
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tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution, or
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experience that is important to you.
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What about this call your accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate
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to the person you are?
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When my students read these promts, they seem dumbfounded and then start to slowly
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ask all the questions that add up in their heads.
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Because these questions tend to be repeated each year with my new set of
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students,
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I thought you might benefit from some of the answers.
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So I’ve written all of the questions that students have asked over the past and
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then i’m going to comment on them
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One main question I get
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is
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“there too many words in this essay.”
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Any time in essay question confuses you
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just just break it down into parts so that you understand everything it’s
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asking.
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the writers of these essay questions usually add words and ideas that they
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think will help you start brainstorming.
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Another question I get usually about the UC
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is, “what’s a prompt?”
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and a prompt is just simply an essay question
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then they get into
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the the actually UC prompts they say
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What is number one really asking? What is this, “describe my world?”
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So to summarize number one is really asking who will you become.
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Prompt number one really wants to know how your surroundings as they state, the
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people or the environment
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have helped shape who you want to become?
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Often students can relate to this one by thinking about
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why they’ve chosen a certain path in their potential college major or
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potential career.
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Why they decided to study a certain major or why they want become an
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engineer, a doctor, a psychologist, a social worker,
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a business executive,
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english teacher, maybe a politician, or a church leader.
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What or who
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made them want to become an athlete or artist or a singer or a cook or a
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journalistl
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Then they say well Danielle, what’s number two really asking then?
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So, to summarize UC prompt number 2,
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I tell them it is really asking,
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who are you now?
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The other one is who will you become? What’s your future like? This one really
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is who are you now.
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It wants to know how some experience a quality or characteristic really
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describes who you are.
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So, here you want to a show a personality trait through an anecdote,
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a story, an experience.
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This one will
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be more related to your personal statement on your other applications.
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Then a student of mine has asked
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tell us about talent I thought I am not supposed to tell anything danielle you say to show
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it
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Technically they are correct
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they are right, you don’t want to spend time in an essay, telling anyone who you
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are.
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this is why they usually follow up the questions with more details
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and this one does. it says
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how does this quality, talent, or accomplishment relate to the person you
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are?
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They want you to describe the type of person you are by showing them through
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an example through an
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experience, through a story through an anecdote.
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this status commonly said it after this question of saying
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well quality talent to call the sender sounds like they want a laundry list of
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things
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And i will respond to this
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for the UC or for any application,
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no they do not want a laundry list of your extra curricular activities. You want to
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save that for the right section on the application where they do ask you for a
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list of your activities.
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Another common question of my students,
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“how am I supposed to choose which one is longer and which one shorter?”
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Generally speaking, one essay can become your personal statement for other
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applications.
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Since almost all your personal statements on your other applications
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give you about a five to six hundred word count limit,
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make this one your longer one and the other one will be
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the one that’s closer to three hundred to four hundred words.
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And then commonly I’ll get questions what about you know should i write two,
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five hundred word essays or one long and one short
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and as i said before you can allocate these words as you wish, they’ve
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told you that in the directions.
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But in my experience I have to say students have chosen one to be five to
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six hundred words in one to be closer to three to four hundred
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but again you can’t do it
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whichever way you’d like you have your choice to do uh… allocate 1,000
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words as you wish
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I would just advise using one as a longer essay and one as a shorter one.
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And then some students of mine have
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brought up
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the question,
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“If I’ve already written my personal statement, can I use it for one
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of these answers?” And of course I say this is probably the best thing you can
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do but make sure it properly answers the UC prompt you might have to switch
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around some words here and there you have said that
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make sure it answers it properly.
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one last comment I want to
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tell you is
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in the past the UC application has been really difficult to navigate and
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even more difficult to locate the essay questions.
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But in the last few years the UC has really turned this around and you’ll notice on
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their website you can
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read their essay questions easily,
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you can find a page about the prompts, review tips for writing, and even watch
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YouTubes on what the
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UC experts expect on their essays
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and i’ve noted at the bottom here the website that’s best for that
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thanks for watching
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for more free personal statement tutorials
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visit personalstatementblueprint.com/tutorials/
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to learn more about how the personal statement blueprint can help you create
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your perfect personal statement
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visit personal statementblueprint.com
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for more general college admission invites you can visit daniellebianchi.com
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End of, “How to Respond to the UC Essay Prompts – Applying to the University of California”