The New UC Essays

The New UC Essays
It is turning out to be a season of change for students applying to college next year as new businesses attempt to offer simpler alternatives to the challenging process of college application.  For now, The Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success as well as ZeeMee.com both claim to introduce greater flexibility and interaction to the traditional application approach of the Common Application. Both sites offer a space for student applicants to upload any academic or creative projects that uniquely portray them. The Coalition also portends to create a space where students can interact directly with their high school counselors and admissions representatives.

Additionally, the University of California has changed the essay prompts in their application. Students interested in any number of the ten UC campuses will be required to choose four out of eight prompts and write a single essay response to each question in no more than 350 words. Below I have included the prompts and highlighted the key words that underscore the central topic of each question.


UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA  350 word limit. Choose 4 of 8.

• 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? 
• Describe your favorite academic subject and explain how it has influenced you. 
• What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?  
• What is the one thing that you think sets you apart from other candidates applying to the University of California?  

The change of topics is due and better reflects the specific, pragmatic qualities that the UCs seek in their students. In this sense the essay prompts are more straightforward and to the point, and eliminate the space for those elements of storytelling that admissions readers deem un-useful. If the old prompts confused students by asking them to share their experience and background yet avoid too much creative language–setting the scene, for example–the new prompts don’t offer the space or direction that might lead students down the rabbit hole of creative expression. It falls upon the student, however, to find a unique and creative way to answer these questions so as to avoid the dry pragmatic response to which these questions point.

In past years, students could re-use or re-purpose one of their UC essays for the Common Application essays. The new prompts still overlap nicely with the Common Application essay prompts. The UC questions offer a great first step in brainstorming various possibility. Students can then choose one of their UC essay and expand it by 300 words for the Common Application limit of 650 words. The UC essays might also be repurposed for the other many supplement essays that students will write for each of the private or out of state, state applications. All in all, it is not clear that students will have to prepare more this year if they carefully think about how they can focus and apply their writing. The UC essays may offer an opportunity in disguise. We’ll soon see!