How to Write Great UC Personal Insight Questions / Essays [CRASH COURSE]

hey friends what's up college essay guy here sometimes people call me ethan every once in a while this is my crash course in the uc personal insight questions i pause there because i wasn't sure exactly what to call it i've spent a lot of time thinking about the uc personal insight questions they're near and dear to my heart not only because i live in california and i have friends who work there but i've spent a lot of time thinking about their essays sorry the personal insight questions i'll explain to you in just a minute why we have to call them that but the main reason that i'm excited to talk to you about them is that i feel like the ucs really have their minds and hearts in the right place when it comes to access what do i mean by that i'm talking about i believe for the most part the school's values are aligned with their actions and that's what i'm all about in this guide i'm going to talk to you about what are these personal insight question prompts what are the uc's looking for they're really transparent really clear about it how do you pick your topics i'll give you some examples of some topics that past students have chosen i'll talk to you a little bit about common uc topics i'll give you six tips for assessing which of the prompts might be the right ones for you and then i'm to do a mini step-by-step guide for each one of these prompts you'll find examples and analysis below this video let's get it [Music] heads up this is basically the short version of my longer course which you can find linked below this video but it'd be really weird if i was talking to you about access and then suddenly i was like oh now you have to pay for this course you do not have to pay anything for the course if you want it's pay what you can which means it costs zero dollars so you can like get it for free really all right let's jump right in so first of all what are the uc personal insight question prompts now you can tell just by calling them you see personal insight question prompts instead of essays that they're gonna be a little different and they are that's by design the uc folks have asked counselors like me to not use the word essay because they don't want students to think of these as like an essay that you'd write for a class because that's not what these are about instead these are questions that are specifically crafted by the university of california to try and elicit specific information with a particular goal in mind which i'll share in just a second first what are the prompts you can find them all below this video rather than read them all to you let me give you the gist of each one number one you've got the leadership prompt number two is on creativity three asks what is your greatest talent or skill four you have two options you can talk about either a significant educational opportunity or how you've overcome an educational barrier five is on significant challenges you faced on your life in particular how have they affected your academic achievement you see six the prompt is about an academic subject the uc 7 prompt is about community service activities and i'll talk to you more about what they mean by that in a second and uc8 is all about what makes you stand out as an applicant and wow i just remembered all those that's that's pretty cool that's eight prompts but you'll only choose four of these and you can write up to 350 words for each prompt that's really important so what are the uc's looking for they've put them on their website they're called the points of comprehensive review and rather than read them all to you i'm just going to put them below this video but they cover things like did you take the hardest classes that you could did you challenge yourself uh what are some extracurricular activities stuff you've done outside of school what they call special projects so what's your goal on the uc application i think it's three things number one you want to stand out in a good way from other students applying to the uc's from your school okay because the ucs are comparing you to other students in your class number two you want to make sure that you show them that you've made the most of the opportunities available to you in other words if your school has you know six ap classes how many of those did you take did you take four or five of them or did you only take one third and most importantly are they connecting back to the points of comprehensive review in other words is the information you're giving them giving them enough information to understand that you're the kind of candidate they're looking for based on the stuff they're looking for which again is on their website and linked below this video so where do you find ideas for your personal insight question topics really simple create your uc activities list you'll find a link below this video that's going to walk you through how to create your uc activities list and i highly highly suggest that either you pause the video right now and do it or as soon as this video is done go ahead and create your uc activities list because that's where you're going to find your topics i i'm pausing because i'm hoping that you'll actually do this right now most of you probably won't but i hope you'll remember like write it down on a little post it like create uc activities less because it's the best place i think to find your topics all right here's a quick list of past topics that other students have chosen and i've just labeled them so you can pause the video if you want one student for prompt one which was on leadership wrote about significant family responsibilities and then prom two which was on creativity he wrote about a cappella singing and then for four which was like a significant educational opportunity he wrote about working as a teacher's assistant and then seven he was writing about advocating for workers rights in his community service essay so you can take a look at these these aren't you know they're like oh you should definitely write these just examples to get your mind going i mentioned earlier that i was going to give you a list of common uc topics here it is these are things that students write about a whole lot and it just gets a little bit harder to stand out with these so if you're writing about you know soccer for example or swimming you know common sports or you're writing about common instruments like basketball basketball is not an instrument or is it piano violin these are gonna be those topics that i'm not saying if you've even if you played violin for like 12 years don't like not write about it because that's like been like a tenth of your life in a separate video which i'll link below this i'll talk to you about how to stand out with common topics but if you're writing about one of these common topics the gist of it is you're going to want to make sure you're making some uncommon connections which is to say you're going to say some things in there that are going to surprise us in other words in the basketball let's say you're not going to talk about discipline hard work and perseverance more on that in a separate video you can write on these topics if you want it just might be a little bit harder to stand out but again if this is what you've spent your time doing write on those topics having said that there are some topics that are so common i wouldn't recommend them for your personal insight question the first one is the big performance essay which basically involves someone like waiting in the wings getting ready to go on stage and they're nervous knees weak arms are heavy there's vomit on their sweater already mom's spaghetti my friend laura who works the ucs this is like her number one i wouldn't say pet peeve but it's the most common one that she sees i wouldn't recommend it you have other options for the creativity piq which when i say paq i mean personal insight question which i'll share in just a second the next is the big game personal insight question which is like we were down three runs the bottom of the ninth inning and i was up to bat you know bases loaded and then you either win the game or you lose the game but you win in life related to this is the sports injury essay where there's like some moment in the game where you're running and then suddenly pop or crack or snap or something happens and you lose the season and you end up not being able to and this happened to me by the way where you end up not being able to participate in sports you become like the team manager and you root for the sidelines and i don't want to like minimize your experience because i lost my whole basketball season in 10th grade because i broke my freaking kneecap but it's just because it's so common students write about it so much it's just not going to help you stand out the fourth example is the mission trip personal insight question where a student from relative privilege goes to a country and they meet some folks who have relatively less privilege and they like build a house and then they learn some valuable life lesson or they learn that they have so much to be grateful for and it totally revamps their instagram feed i wouldn't necessarily recommend this because a it's so common and b it basically just points at privilege all right that was a lot of don'ts and i'm not a huge fan of don'ts without following it up with some dues so here are some tips for each of the uc personal insight questions number one for the leadership one this is a strong way to start your application if you've got leadership that you want to show flex that by starting your application with a strong personal insight question and tip two you don't necessarily need to think about leadership in the conventional sense maybe you're a leader in your family for example if so that counts don't underestimate things like that for uc prompt 2 the creative side you can go a couple different ways with this you can talk about one way that you're creative so like maybe you talk about like your you know guitar playing skills or you can actually choose a few different ways that you're creative but maybe under the same umbrella so maybe you play a few different instruments and you do like a paragraph on guitar and a paragraph on piano and a paragraph on flute now i know i said don't necessarily write about these common topics but if that's what you got to write about that's what you've got to write about and by including three different things you can give a little variety to your application so for the uc3 greatest talent or skill prompt a few recommendations number one i wouldn't necessarily recommend focusing on a quality that's already clear in your application like if you've got really solid grades that shows your work ethic you don't need to necessarily focus on hard working and that quality in your uc3 prompts because that's going to be pretty redundant second if you've got a quality that you want to show like say flexibility don't just talk about the importance of flexibility in general show us how that flexibility manifests itself in your life so for example maybe you work a job and you want to talk about how your job has taught you to be really flexible or maybe in your home life you've had to be really flexible taking care of your siblings or whatever that looks like show me specifically with images or little story moments what flexibility looks like in your life the third tip is if you pick a sport for this prompt for the greatest talent or skill it can sometimes lead to a personal insight question that's kind of bland or basic so if your greatest talent or skill you say that it's like volleyball first of all is that actually your greatest talent or skill like you may be really good at it but come on like your greatest talent or skill what i would say instead is like pick some aspect of it like i mentioned for example the quality being flexible like could you show that quality through your participation in volleyball so then your personal insight question is about that quality of flexibility and oh by the way it manifests itself through volleyball you tell us a little about that and then maybe at the end you give us a little bit about oh this flexibility is also manifested itself in my job or in this other place so i wouldn't necessarily recommend focusing on a sport for this one for the fourth one like i said you can choose between a significant educational opportunity or how you've overcome an educational barrier now before you decide to commit 350 words and one of your four personal insight questions to this prompt there's another section of the application called the additional comments section which is basically the additional information section that you'll find in the common app and what that is is it's a 650 word space where you can basically put pretty much anything you want so my question to you before you write a whole personal insight question on whatever it is you want to describe could you potentially write it in a pretty short straightforward way and put that in your additional comment section that way you don't have to waste one of your four opportunities by describing what that is and you use more of your application for the uc5 which is the most significant challenge you've faced i've seen that some topics work better than others so if you've experienced for example like really strong like family challenges or you've experienced you know sexism or racism like those could potentially be interesting compelling topics i find this works less well it's really hard to do well if you're writing about things like a bad grade you got in a class or like a romantic breakup like it's really really hard to do that well i've in fact never seen a breakup essay done well if you've got one put it in the comments below i'd love to see it but i feel like with the uc5 it's important to also if you can connect to that second part of the prompt which is like how it's affected your academic achievement so if you're thinking about writing for this one ask yourself did this affect my academic achievement if so maybe it's a good topic if not there are so many other options for this that you could choose if you're considering writing about this one ask yourself could it be that writing about one of the other seven prompts could more clearly connect back to those points of comprehensive review and that's a really great question to ask about whatever topic you're considering is like is there a way to somehow connect it back to the points of comprehensive review could i score points essentially in one of those categories another quick tip is if you're considering writing about a challenge you can use a simple three-part structure which is number one what was the challenge you faced keep that relatively short then get into what did you do about it and three what did you learn so one third of your personal insight question about 100 120 words is about the challenge 120 words on what you did about it and 120 words on how it impacted you what you learned from the experience the uc6 academic subject is one of my favorite favorite prompts why because it gives you a chance to show your intellectual or academic side now if you're applying for engineering or one of the sciences and you're applying to berkeley i would strongly recommend writing for this prompt because you really have to show them that you've got what it takes to do berkeley level engineering and oh by the way if you're applying as a transfer student then you have to write for this one because they really want to know what is your focus now that you've spent a year say in community college or wherever else for the uc7 which is on community service this is again one of my favorite prompts you can tell which ones are kind of my favorites because i feel like it gives you a chance to demonstrate how you've given back now quick note that if you don't end up choosing the uc7 it's not the end of the world you can probably show how you've given back how you've done community service through one of the other prompts for example it could be that it's the way you've shown leadership or it could be that something you've done that is a significant educational opportunity is also something that was community service related so you can get some community service points by writing for one of the other prompts if you want for the uc8 what else makes you stand out this is kind of like the common app's topic of your choice but it's a kind of a hard one to do because most of the stuff that you want to write about can probably fit into one of the other seven prompts but my biggest advice on this is something i've already said to you twice i'm going to say it again whatever you choose to write about make sure you're coming back to the points of comprehensive review i sold that down because you knew what i was going to say here are a few quick tips for assessing which of the topics is right for you so one of the things you can do is what i call the buckets approach and you can think of each of these prompts that you choose as kind of like a bucket for different sides of you so let's say for example you've got the creative side arts let's call that the you know uc2 you can pack in a few creative things you do into that particular personal insight question and let's say you've got your community service side you could decide okay i'm going to write for the uc7 and i'm going to focus on this one particular opportunity and that's going to show my community service side or maybe you decide you want to primarily show this one side of you and then at the end you want to say and that has helped me in these other areas and these other community service projects so you kind of do like a little combo but then you go okay i've got my creative side here i've got my community service side in here what's missing oh you know what i do tons of sports and that's not really in there so which of those other prompts could that go for and as you're sussing through this you can kind of go okay how do i get basically all the different sides of me and again i think it's a really good idea to go back to your uc activities list and if you haven't created that now is a great time to do it so that by the end of the personal insight questions they can see how these different sides of you are manifesting in the world part of the job of these personal insight questions is to help them connect the dots in your application which brings me to the next tip think of these as kind of like a playlist that you're creating for your reader so imagine you're creating a playlist on spotify maybe you're doing like an old school cd i don't even know if they have cds if you can even do that but imagine that your first track you got to start strong right if you want to get people dancing at the wedding or wherever you got to start strong so maybe that's the leadership one or maybe you've got you know strong creativity that's a strong one so you start with that then you segue into your second track whatever your second topic is and then you know based on your preference you want to put your weakest one third or you want to put that one second you've got to finish strong right so think of each of these hopefully they're all strong tracks because you really just got four tracks but that's kind of a fun way to think about it two other good questions to ask are number one am i repeating myself in other words have i you know checked the box firmly on like my sports involvement because maybe you've got sports on your activities list and you've even put something in your additional comments section and now here you've written two essays or two personal insight questions rather on sports it's like you know what i feel like they pretty much got that i play sports so ask yourself am i repeating myself the second thing to ask yourself is am i showing variety right so yeah maybe they've got your sports side and they've got your artistic side well how could you bring some other thing that's going to be like oh wow here's the third thing that they've got maybe it's that academic side because i feel like rather than writing a second or third thing on the same topic even writing like a weak personal insight question on another topic is gonna demonstrate some other side to you another good one to ask is have i worked in at least one of my activities to each of my personal insight questions because if not it could be a sign to you that the way you've written about it is like too abstract or vague writing about activities is going to help ground and like i said give some visual representation of how you've manifested that quality whatever it is leadership service in the world the last tip before we get into the step-by-step guide for each one of these is are you connecting back to the points of comprehensive review that's maybe the last time i'll say it but maybe not all right so now let's get into a short step-by-step guide for writing each one of these prompts if you're enjoying this content i'll just say hit me up with a quick like or a subscribe to get more videos that tells youtube that somebody out there likes me which i sometimes wonder about no i'm playing so the uc one leadership how do you write it like i said it's a strong way to start your application and i think the best way to brainstorm it is through something you've never heard about before it's something i call the bb's exercise and that's a silly name i know but it stands for the best extracurricular activity brainstorm i've ever seen why because you're probably writing about an extracurricular activity so what is this bb's exercise take a look so it's a simple chart which you'll find below this video and you'll walk through all of these columns should take you like 15-20 minutes start with what did you do you can basically put in terms of like active verbs what did you do so if you're writing about let's say you know being involved in like i don't know a job that you had let's say you worked at uh you know i worked at a video store which by the way you probably didn't work at a video store because video stores don't exist anymore but let's say you worked a job at an ice cream store so what did you do you can put specifically you know attend it to customers needs you know managed uh the money at the end of the night you put verbs to actually explain what you did problems i solved you know organize the schedule uh and you just list whatever all the problems were now you might not think of like problems you solved related to a sport but hey think about you know team dynamics were there any problems that you had to resolve there next column lessons learned or skills i gained you'll find a link below this video to something called the values exercise that'll help you think through what are some different lessons you learned or skills you gained impact i had so what is the impact that you had on other people if you did a fundraiser how much money did you raise if someone came up to you and was like man i really i feel like i understand physics now like that's an impact that you had or you could think about what impact did it have on you and finally how did you apply what you learned in other areas so let's say for example i mentioned that you know earlier about flexibility let's say you gain more flexibility through this thing how did you apply that elsewhere in your life that could create some really interesting content next you're going to want to decide on a structure so you can either go narrative structure if you're talking about a challenge that you faced related to leadership or you could go montage structure which is if you're not talking about a challenge so if you are talking about a challenge due to a narrative structure again that three-part structure of what was the challenge you faced what did you do about it what did you learn like one-third for each one is going to work really well the other option if you're running a montage is just to take your bb's exercise and flip it sideways and you're basically gonna have an outline for your personal insight question starting with what i did at the top and then how i applied what i learned at the bottom pretty rad below this video you'll find an awesome example from a student who took leadership in an unconventional way he talked about a restaurant that he worked at with his family in this example there are a few things that i just want to point out you'll notice that he sets it up in the intro here was the thing that i did made it super clear second paragraph he's using specific verbs i've highlighted them in bold for you developed taught acquired dialogue so we really see what he did then in the third paragraph he talks about what he's learned from that how he's developed the empathy and vision of a leader and then in the fourth paragraph he talks about how he's applied those lessons beyond the walls of the restaurant for example he says in school you'll see me managing and organizing one-on-one mediations with peer counselors below this video you can see the whole personal insight question and read my brief analysis this is an amazing student from mexico he got into all the uc's that he applied to for the uc2 the creativity personal insight question first step is obviously you're going to want to choose a topic but then i want you to step two ask yourself what's everybody else gonna be saying about this topic if it's an uncommon topic it's gonna be easier to stand out so if you're writing about like medieval blacksmithing chances are you're gonna stand out a little bit easier but if you're writing about something really common like let's say swimming what is everybody gonna say about swimming they're gonna talk about leadership hard work discipline perseverance right so what i want you to do is i want you to brainstorm the cliche version of your personal insight question and you can do this using the values exercise below this video and then mentally i want you to cross out those values and not write about those things then you have to brainstorm what are some uncommon connections so someone might not say about swimming for example this really taught me about the value of democracy or swimming really taught me about you know healthy boundaries or swimming taught me about fill in the blank right and it's not easy to find these uncommon connections but i believe these are key to standing out in this creativity personal insight question now if you look at the example personal insight question for this one which is on drumming which is a somewhat uncommon topic you'll notice that he's connecting to some uncommon values so normally with drumming we'd think hard work perseverance those kinds of things but he connects it to freedom he also connects it to technology and some other really cool things you can check it out on the analysis again below this video my advice for uc 3 the greatest talent or skill personal insight question is to like i said don't focus on some kind of sport and be like i'm the best at this sport instead choose a quality and then give us a sense of how that quality manifests itself in your life so like i said with the uc2 pick a topic see if you can make some uncommon connections or if you want see if you can come up with a few different examples of how that quality manifests itself in your life and then just create a simple outline so take a look at this outline for the personal insight question below paragraph one she sets up her topic which is basically the greatest talent or skill is finding connections among the dissimilar and she gives the example in the first paragraph of how she was interested in games and puzzles as a kid in the second paragraph she talks about how her math and academic side developed in high school but again it's sort of underneath that theme of like finding connections among the dissimilar third paragraph she develops other sides of herself and she finds computer science which is like an aha moment for her and then she wraps it up with how it all comes together and again below this video you'll find an example with analysis and i'll stop saying that because there are examples analysis for basically all of these for the uc-4 i just want to again remind you that you don't have to talk about a significant educational opportunity and how you've overcome an educational barrier just pick one and the advice that i'm going to give on this one is going to be kind of similar to what i've said to you already so if you're writing about a significant educational opportunity you can use that bb's exercise to essentially brainstorm all your content and then again you spend like 20 minutes doing that you should have a lot to say you just turn it sideways and then if you're writing about the sort of challenges one again the challenge what you did about it and what you learned from the experience is going to be a great way to go now i mentioned earlier that in some cases you can think of these in sort of unconventional ways so in the example below you'll see a student who wrote about construction as a significant educational opportunity and you wouldn't normally connect those but he shows in his personal insight question how he learned a whole lot from it so thus a significant educational opportunity for the uc5 on significant challenges i'm going to ask you to do a specific exercise called the feelings and needs exercise now it's going to take you maybe like 15-20 minutes if you want to pause the video as you do it and spend 25 that's great in that exercise i'm gonna basically ask you six different questions and i want you to spend some time thinking about each one but by the end of it you should have all the content you need in order to write your personal insight question for the uc6 academic subject i'd recommend going up and looking at that bb's exercise and essentially just put your subject in as the activity and then answering what did you do you know what did you do inside the classroom what did you do outside the classroom to explore that subject what did you learn how did you apply what you learned elsewhere in life you should have a bunch of content for that once you do like i said you can turn that sideways and you should have the pieces if not you could just pick like what are the three to six chunks of your essay so it's maybe like oh for me history really came alive when i was a kid and this experience and then later i leveled up with this other experience but then really when i did this internship last year that's when things were awesome so maybe it's like three chunks the uc7 is basically the community service prompt and there's a particular exercise that i think works super well for this it's called the elon musk exercise and the way it goes is basically this first i want you to identify a problem that you either face or are currently facing related to your activity so for example let's say your community service project was all about recycling it could be the problem you faced is like we didn't have recycling in our school or here's why recycling is important on a global scale okay so once you've identified what the problem is then i'm going to say go in there and raise the stakes tell us why this is such a big deal step three and this is kind of optional is you can kind of envision another possibility like what if the world looked different and maybe paint a little picture for that or you can skip that part step four is tell us what you did to solve this problem now this is gonna be the most important part give us the active steps that you took give us strong verbs to tell us here's what i did and then step five why were you essential to the success of this project like maybe you were the you know the numbers person who helped you know figure out you know maybe you're the treasurer and helped figure out hey are we going to be on budget or maybe you were like the sort of the task master making sure to organize the spreadsheets and keeping everybody you know on point making sure that things happen on time once you've articulated specifically what your role was then finally what did you learn from this experience or what impact did you have you'll see an example of this below this video i said i wasn't going to say that i totally did but whatever for the uc topic 8 which is like what's the one thing that sets you apart i'd recommend with your topic if you're not writing about a challenge go ahead and use that bb's exercise to brainstorm your content if you're not sure what that is or you skip to this part in the video you'll find it below the video or you can rewind and then if you are writing about a challenge i'd recommend trying that elon musk exercise which i just talked about in the uc7 but most importantly make sure that whatever you're choosing for the uc8 it comes back is the last time i'm going to say it to one of those points of comprehensive review below this video you'll find a link to my pay which you can course on the ucs again it's pay what you can so i'm not trying to sell you anything it's literally zero dollars just click zero dollars and you're good to go it's got all the next steps so once you've written your drafts how do you then revise how do you get feedback on the drafts who should you ask how do you make sure each part of it is really showing the best parts of who you are how do you show insight which is one of the most crucial parts of this application process and finally how do you know that your ucp iqs are actually doing the job doing the thing that you said you wanted to be doing at college essayguy.com you'll find a bunch more resources on everything from scholarship essays to resources for you know all kinds of students whether you identify as undocumented or lgbtq or an artist or an athlete if you've got any questions or things you'd like me to cover in future videos just put it below in the comments section and um yeah i wish you all the best in this process see you soon [Applause]

Channel: College Essay Guy

Views: 66,893

Keywords: personal statement, college essay, personal statement examples, how to pick a college, college interview, college admissions, college essay topics, personal statement samples, why this college essay, how to write a college essay, factors in choosing a college, uc essay, uc personal insight questions, personal insight prompts, uc essay prompts, university of california, personal insight essay, personal insight essay prompts, uc prompts, best uc essay prompt

Id: e_OmI6Nhd00

Length: 27min 34sec (1654 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021