I’m writing my responses to the UC prompts, and one of the ones I’m considering is about a challenge impacting academic achievement, and the other is about a talent or skill. As a Muslim/Arab/hijabi I wanted to write about my challenge being adapting my views and beliefs to both my cultural heritage and the society in which I was raised/live and how I’ve dealt with stereotypes and overcome them by working as hard as I can in school. For the talent/skill, I wanted to write about my talent in reading Arabic (kinda hard to describe, but like reading religious texts as “performance”). It’s not something I necessarily competed in, just something I picked up through Arabic school and daily practicing.
Is this overboard in showing how much my culture shapes me? For the other two I want to write about a volunteer experience at the hospital I volunteer at (how I’ve influenced my community) and I’m not certain about the last one (I want to do the “what’s unique about you” prompt but unsure on what to write about).
Thanks in advance.
I also wrote about the challenge adapting my views and beliefs to cultural heritage and the society in which i was raised
@mattlax27 How did you organize it? Did you start with an anecdote?
In general, the point of the UC insight questions is to see your profile from four DIFFERENT perspectives. This is why they deviated from one long personal statement in the first place. Talking about your heritage is fine for one essay, but not for two.
@CiteYourSources Thanks for the insight, that’s why I was feeling doubtful. I’ll probably go with the talent one and choose a different prompt for the fourth one.
OP, it might help if you think about everything you’d like the AO to know about you that isn’t reflected in the rest of the application, then figure out how to weave those into the 2 essays. Clearly, your culture has had a big impact on who you are, and you should communicate that in one of the essays, preferably in an anecdote (“show, don’t tell”). What else might they not know about you? It doesn’t have to be something you’ve done; it could be something you are. This is your chance to make your application human, not simply a bunch of facts and stats.
I think the topic is fine, it just all depends on how you write.
yes i did start with an anecdote