The University of California has changed their ways! That’s right! They have changed their essays! Actually, they no longer call them essays. They call them questions, and they want answers! This is the first revision to the application in 10 years. The UCs felt that they were not learning what they needed to know about their applicants and felt that part of the problem was due to their personal statement prompts.
So now, the old, two personal statements, totaling 1000 words is gone, and instead, freshman applicants will have 8 “personal insight questions” which will ask about leadership, creativity, special talents, educational opportunities, challenges, favorite subject, community involvement and unique qualities. The students will choose 4 of the eight questions to answer, with a maximum of 350 words each for a total of 1400 words. Each question will be weighed equally, so the student may choose the topics that are most relevant to their personal situation. (Transfer students have a slightly different requirement)
The good news about this is that students will be able to choose questions that are more personally applicable and the UCs will be able to learn more about the student. The two prompts from previous years often failed to reveal what the UCs were seeking to learn about the student. With more direct questions, they hope to get more direct answers about the student instead of a lengthy essay about the student’s grandfather (as the admissions officer stated at a recent conference I attended). With over 200,000 applicants to the UCs, the admissions office is looking for ways to get to know the students better as they make the “yay or nay” decision with students’ lives.
Although the variety of questions seems like an improvement, there are a couple of disadvantages as well. Students can no longer adapt their personal statement to other college application prompts. In the past, many essays could be “recycled” and adapted to various prompts. No more! So now, much to the angst of the applicants, they will have to come up with 4 topics that will likely be unusable for other college essays. For most students we work with, this seems to be the most challenging task when crafting the essays: “What shall I write about?” Besides requiring more topics, they will write up to 400 more total words.
And by the way; there is a new application beginning in 2016. It is the Coalition Application…a real different bird!
As the college application process becomes more and more competitive, the colleges are looking for ways to learn more about their applicants. It is hoped that these new questions (not essays, according to a UC panel) will draw out information about the student that relates closely to the UC comprehensive review criteria. Summer is a great time to get started on these new “Personal Insight Questions”, so if you have not started them yet and you plan to apply to the UCs, then you better get started!
