how i got into ucla 🐻 grades, extracurriculars, essays, etc

this video is sponsored by Squarespace hey guys before we start let's talk about what this video is not meant to be this video is not to be a comparison tool to make yourself feel worse about yourself or to make yourself feel superior this video is also not meant to be some sort of flex or branding video in fact here is a list of all the schools that I was rejected from of course to add some more context to this video here's another list of schools that I was accepted to secondly this video is also not meant to be seen as advice because this whole college admissions process is just so random I guarantee you if you submitted exactly what I wrote in my application letter for a letter the next cycle around that application would probably get rejected I'm not an expert I have never been in the room where it happens and actually found out to watch admissions officers are thinking when they make decisions I'll never know whether I got in because of one of these components or in spite of one what this video is meant for is some sort of transparency since this admissions process is such a black book a lot of people me included have that sort of nosy curiosity of what kind of applicant profile gets searching results secondly hopefully this gets like a decent number of you so I can use ad revenue to help me pay my tuition third of all I'm going to be kind of complaining about why the college admissions system is unfair but I'm not really gonna be presenting up the SIS about how the college admissions system is rigged in favor of rich people if you'd like a better educated rant about that I recommend you check out Conan Gray's video about how he got into UCLA same topic he expressed in a very eloquent way that I could never live up to so with that in mind let us get started on all of the juicy details I'm sure you're here to hear about I'm going to be presenting different parts of my application along with the stated admissions criteria that is on the UCLA website I applied to the College of Letters and Sciences which is like the traditional academic subjects not the engineering school or the film school and I applied under a pre sociology major although it doesn't really matter because for the College of Letters and Sciences they don't consider your major when making admissions decisions so the first factor we're going to talk about is opportunities all achievements are considered in context of the opportunities that an applicant has had this includes the resources available in the school and when appropriate and feasible readers will look comparatively at achievements of applicants in the same pool who attended the same high school and to me this basically means demographic factors so as may be able to tell by my face I'm Asian to be specific I am chinese-american all of us didn't really play much of a role because you see admissions are designed to be race blind the socio-economic part my parents were the first generation of immigrants to come from China I was born in the US and we are currently upper-middle class legacy doesn't play a role in UC admissions but if it's helpful to the context of the other schools I don't really have helpful legacy anywhere because my parents went to undergrad in China and then their grad schools were all California public schools which again do not consider a legacy my location is a very competitive location I'm from the Silicon Valley area and I attended a fairly competitive public high school you might think that being at state is an advantage for UCLA but actually admissions rate for in-state students is lower than for out-of-state students so we love that for me one thing I found really interesting in this description that they stated is that you are compared to the opportunities available to you by comparing you to applicants from your high school and that's not really something I had ever taken into account I never realized how much I'd be essentially in competition with the people I'm surrounded by in class and at school I'm aware of the fact that thanks to my socioeconomic status and my location I've had a lot of opportunities available to me but I don't think I fully took advantage of them because I've always been so fiercely independent I didn't spend my parents money to prepare for the SAT I did it all for free through Khan Academy I do all my internet art stuff with equipment that I bought myself for my youtube earnings I got an internship through my own merit and not through networking through my parents or my friends at school or people I know and I guess maybe I could have used more of my parents money or use more of the networking and connection opportunities available to me where I am basically what I was trying to say here is that my application was considered in the context of someone who had considerable privilege and access to resources I personally felt that I didn't fully take advantage of the full range of opportunities and privileges that comes with being upper-middle class and being in a wealthy area because I wanted to be so independent and do things on my own and that's not necessarily a bad thing like it is what it is maybe it cost me a couple of college up bonus points but like it's not the end of the world I am still however very cognizant and grateful of the privileges I do have and I did take advantage of to get where I am I didn't have to work to support my family or constantly worry about putting food on the table or deal with any of the other traumas that tend to come with being in a position with less privilege which allowed me to focus on school and extracurriculars and all that other stuff I hope that you can be aware that your context matters a lot in how you're evaluated and therefore you might want to like think about that but that's for you to decide we're gonna discuss the cold hard facts which are the numbers you see elia considers the applicants full record of achievement in college preparatory work in high school which basically means the classes that you take and how hard they are my school doesn't calculate a weighted GPA just the unweighted one so my unweighted GPA is three point nine eight and my weighted GPA according to Roger Hub is four point five so you see in particular consider a different GPA which is the capped 11 to 12 GPA and that's just the class as you took in a sophomore and junior year and be waiting you can get from honors and AP classes is capped and my UC capped GPA is four point two nine if you're in the top nine percent of your graduating class you're considered eligible in the local context and that means you're guaranteed to be admitted to at least one UC school usually that means UC Merced I was in the top percent of my graduating class and identified as eligible in the local context I don't know what my actual ranking was because my school doesn't publicize that one of the biggest weaknesses I'd say in my application was the literal number of AP classes I took as I mentioned my school is very competitive and although we can't really take that many aps and freshman in sophomore year a lot of people find ways to finesse the system or just load up a ton in junior year and I didn't really do either of those I'll show my whole class codes all here but basically I only took three APs before I submitted my applications which is basically nothing compared to some of the top students at my high school UC considers the a CT plus writing or SAT with essays and AP or IB scores so the scores I submitted were for the SAT I had a 1580 I had 800 on math and 780 on their English reading writing portion I also submitted to SAT Subject Tests scores I had a 760 in French and an 800 in math level to then I submitted all three of my AP test scores I had a 5 on all of them and the tests I took were at European history Calculus BC and US history I guess you always seem to know the next criteria we're going to go over is personal qualities of the applicant and the traits they say they're looking for our leadership ability character motivation tenacity initiative originality creativity intellectual independence responsibility insight maturity and demonstrated concern for others and for the community I sound like an infomercial and I believe that these traits can be shown through your extracurricular activities and through your personal essays for this portion I'm going to discuss my essays and for the UCS you write these questions called personal insight questions and this means you write for short ish essays each one is 350 words I honestly found this part really hard not to like pity monger or anything but I fundamentally believe myself to be a crippling ly mediocre on interesting individual so we love that when the literal purpose of a college essay is to try to make yourself sound interesting and good mmm but we are working on that positive self-talk I effectively pretended that I have self-esteem so go me we love a creative writer the prompts that I answered and the topics I discussed were prompt number two which is about expressing your creativity what I talked about in this section was starting my youtube channel study quilt I talked about why I started the channel my creative process with video making and what I've learned about making videos and how I hope to impact the world then I answered prompt number four which was taking advantage of an academic opportunity for that one I talked about what I learned from my process of writing a book in case you didn't know I wrote a book about bullet journaling and I'll link it in the description if you want to check it out it wasn't just like vague general life lessons I talked about how I got the opportunity what I learned about writing and the publishing industry and specifically about asking for help and advocating for myself next I answered problem number six which is effectively an extended version of what is your favorite subject and for this one I talked about my experiences with digital art like the volunteer work I've done a summer program that I went to at UCLA and some of my personal projects honestly I feel like this essay didn't say much about me it was kind of just a rehash of my resume slash extracurricular sections so I don't really recommend writing one in this style but I guess I finessed my way into making this work somehow but moving on we're going to end with the essay I genuinely think was my best one that one was in response to prompt number seven about how have you made your community a better place and for this one I talked about starting a calligraphy Club at my high school I talked about the club itself and what I've learned about how to make an impact on the world how you can't really save the whole world but trying to save a little bit is more than enough and I wrote this one in the very creative way that I really liked I incorporated a kind of extended metaphor about using calligraphy as magic in a very Harry Potter asked way as I mentioned earlier as another way to demonstrate good character traits extracurriculars and awards and for this one I also wanted to bring up another criteria they mentioned which is achievement in academic enrichment programs and this focus is on exemplary sustained achievement in intellectual or creative endeavors such as performing arts athletics employment leadership in school or community organisations or activities and community service it is way too warm in my Northern California home for me to be wearing a sweatshirt we're gonna power through got a rep a school that I used to clickbait this video I appreciate that the UC application gives you space for 20 extracurriculars or awards because my personal resume wasn't a very super super strong accomplishment in one area I kind of had a lot of jumbled up things that all summed up into one general direction I know it's conventional wisdom to have a spike in your application as in one area or achievement that you're absolutely spectacular at and I didn't really have that cuz I just had too many interests in high school and I didn't end up narrowing them down until very very late in my high school years as in after college opps we're already over but you know high school is not about tailoring your life to college apps it's about figuring out what you like and I definitely did that even if it didn't line up perfectly with the College app schedule my first category of extracurriculars are artistic person as I mentioned I'm a published author of a book called study with me which is about bullet journaling for students and I mentioned how I wrote the book and took a lot of the photos next I was also the editor-in-chief of my school yearbook in my senior year I was the design editor for my junior year and I was a regular staff designer for my tenth and ninth grade years I've been in choir outside of school for 11 years and in my sophomore and senior years I was the section leader for Alto two I co-founded the calligraphy Club at my high school in my sophomore year and then I was the president in my junior year my next category of extracurriculars is social media / marketing and one of the main ones is study quill my youtube channel the main things I mentioned in my application were the scale of the YouTube channel as in the quantity of subscribers and the level of involvement I have in it along with the creative video making skills I've learned next I was also a marketing intern at jetpens the pen company that I am often mentioning on my channel I entering there for two summers and I mostly did photography and video making for their marketing materials I was in the GSA Club down my school and I helped with designing posters and making videos for the news and I mentioned that I helped some of my friend with her a Girl Scout Gold Award project which included a lot of social media and website initiatives so I designed pretty much the entire brand identity for that whole project next category we're going to move on to is summer camps in the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school I went to a design media art summer camp at UCLA and then the summer after my junior year I went to the school of the New York Times summer camp next we have sports I was on varsity cross country from 10th to 12th grade I'm decent across country but not like a d1 level athlete I've been recruited at d3 schools didn't apply to any d2 so I don't know how I stand there but I'm okay not spectacular same goes for track I was in JV track in 9th grade and then varsity for a 10th to 12th [Music] and lastly let's do awards at the time of submitting my applications I was a National Merit semifinalist and I wann quite a few Awards in the Grand Concourse national French contest in ninth grade I had a first award in 10th I got a gold award I forgot the place so I just said gold and then in eleventh grade I got a second as I mentioned earlier this video is sponsored by Squarespace the all-in-one website building platform as a self identifying graphic design nerd I really like how aesthetically pleasing all of their design options are and thanks to all of their pre-made font and color pairings even if you're not really into graphic design it's almost impossible for you to go wrong and your website will still end up looking amazing besides the fonts and colors you can customize your website down to the most minut details such as the animations that are used when the elements of the page are loading in to start customizing everything from your animations to your browser icon on your very own Squarespace website visit the link in the description for 10% off your first website or domain I hope you found this video helpful and just providing a bit of a peek into this black box that is the college admissions process and getting to know a bit more about me if you are curious about that by uploading new videos every week maybe more college app content if you'd be into that along with more college blogs about my time that I will be spending at UCLA in the fall also if you want to see pictures of my notes and bullet journal I post them on Instagram at study quill see you next time you [Music]

Channel: studyquill

Views: 137,322

Rating: 4.9604707 out of 5

Keywords: studying, college, school, how i got into ucla, how to get into ucla, college apps, college application tips, my stats, uc irvine, uc san diego, scripps, mt holyoke, uc santa cruz, uc application advice, extracurriculars, high school advice, ucla, uc los angeles, university, college application hacks, high school senior tips, stats, college essays, college personal statements, extracurricular ideas, awards, studyquill

Id: 9DUemFhlx5Y

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020