<p>I met a UCLA admissions officer last month, and she agreed to leave some feedback on my essays. Right now I’m done with them and I feel that they’re the very best they can be. However, her response (from several days ago) worries me:</p>
<p>“…you have a very unique writing style that I truly enjoy. However, you want to be careful that you’re really using these statements to answer the questions about yourself. Think of these personal statements as an interview. If I were to ask you these questions in person, how would you answer them? That’s how you want to write them.”</p>
<p>The way I understood what she said is that applicants should be answering the prompts directly. For example, one would respond to prompt #1 (tell us about a talent/experience/etc and how it makes you the person you are) like…</p>
<p>Ever since I was little, I have loved music/math/science/languages/sport/etc. X has taught me the importance of Y. I am who I am today because of how X affected me. <em>gives examples</em></p>
<p>The problem is, I wrote my UC essays in an extremely unconventional way. I feel like the way I write sort of represents the kind of person I am, and I don’t think I could bring myself to write a generic essay that answers the question directly when I can use my real style instead. Plus, I know that it’s insane to completely rewrite my essays in less than a day, but I’m just wondering if it’ll hurt me if I didn’t answer the personal statements as an interview and tried a non-cliched approach.</p>
Probably. The UC essays are not like essays at most colleges where a novel tack or story can capture the heart of the adcom poring thru a thick stack of applications and bring your app to the top of her/his list. The classic standard is whether those essays make the adcom think “I want to meet this kid”.</p>
<p>The UCs are different. They have adopted “holistic review” as an end-run around affirmative action which is banned, at least officially. It doesn’t matter a whit whether the reader wants to meet you or not after reading your essays. What they are looking for are stories of hardship and obstacles overcome, etc. that lets them skirt the ban on AA. As the LA Times reported at the start of this year
Your essays, whatever they were, have already been described by a person who is in a position to know as not doing as much for you as they could. Knowing that, its your decision about whether you keep them the same or rewrite them.</p>
<p>Doesn’t that mainly apply to the lower UC campuses where the readers only glimpse at essays to see if the student faced any hardships? In the UCLA common data set, the personal statement is regarded as “very important” along with SAT and GPA, so I doubt that it’s only used to see if adversity was present in a student’s life. </p>
<p>Also, I followed the admissions officer’s specific advice she gave me for both essays, and I feel that my essays answer the prompts completely and give a good picture of what I’m like. Still, do you think the UCs will hold it against me if I use an unconventional approach that fully answers the prompts?</p>
<p>You don’t say what feature of your essays is “creative,” but as I read your quote of the the UCLA rep, I wonder if she’s telling you that your essay is too flowery and philosophical, and not personal enough. She may be suggesting that you use more informal diction, as you would in an interview setting (i.e. don’t use slang or contractions, but don’t use overly long words or complicated sentence constructions).</p>
<p>If you want to get accepted to UCLA, you should probably accept whatever advice the rep gives you. The college essay is an instrumental document written for her and people like her. It doesn’t need to be your magnum opus or life manifesto.</p>
<p>This. You ignore the prompt at your own peril. (Do you really want to the adcom to think that you can’t follow directions?) But more importantly, a big impersonal University has to follow its own guidelines, which state to app readers that students should address the prompt. </p>
<p>Can you address the prompt creatively? Sure. But make sure that you address it.</p>
<p>You asked for essay feedback from a person uniquely able to give advice, and now you would like to ignore it. The UC essay is different than other college admissions essays…you want to make sure that you get all of the points you can during the holistic review. The essay is the place to put whatever isn’t obvious from the other portions of the application.</p>
<p>**I did follow the admissions officer’s tips about talking more about myself, and I now feel that my essays answer the prompt. I’m just worried that it’ll hurt me if I answer it with my own genuine voice instead of a generic and robotic-sounding one. **</p>
<p>(I wrote that in bold because some people missed the part where I said that I followed her advice to answer the prompts more)</p>
<p>FYI - Similar to story posted above about where the essays came from and what they want . . . the UDub adopted the essays as an “end around” to replace the former point system of admissions. They had been awarding a standard number of points for URM etc. and that was banned (I forget if it was State court or Federal). There were complaints because admissions was completely numbers based plus affirmative action points so higher scoring kids were potentially being bumped at the margins. The diversity prompt allows this information to be accessed and considered without assigning raw points up front.</p>
<p>Your plight resonated with me! My son decided two days ago to apply to UC Berkeley for engineering. Being out of state and clueless about the UCs we didn’t realize that Nov. 30th was the deadline. Nevertheless we figured he could fill out the app and just take his common app essay and his Princeton Supplement (he applied SCEA) and stick it in there.</p>
<p>So he fills the whole thing out and gets to the personal statement and by golly…it seems like they are looking for something more direct. His Princeton essays were great…creative and thoughtful but not really a “personal statement” of any sort.</p>
<p>So he tried to tweak them to make them work and stuck them in there anyway but I am hoping these essays are more of a tie breaker thing because he didn’t answer the prompt real well.</p>
<p>^“Your personal statement should be exactly that — personal. This is your opportunity to tell us about yourself — your hopes, ambitions, life experiences, inspirations. We encourage you to take your time on this assignment. Be open. Be reflective. Find your individual voice and express it honestly.”</p>
<p>These are the instructions for the essays on the UC website. Since it does encourage us to use our individual voice, which doesn’t have to be robotic and cookie-cutter, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal if our essays aren’t conventional, as long as we answer the prompt.</p>
<p>With all due respect: The problem with the essay isn’t that it’s unconventional, it’s that it isn’t very self-reflective. What does the reader learn about you beyond the fact you’ve got a quirky sense of humor and a great junior year GPA.</p>
<p>I’ve battled with the same question and ultimately went with my heart. I used my voice in my personal statement, while still answering the prompt, rather than just monotonously stating facts.</p>
<p>If I answered the essay boringly and got rejected, I know I would regret it a lot. </p>
<p>NerdyAsianKid- we’re on the same boat. If they reject us simply for trying to entertain them, well then, I hope they’re cursed with reading miserable essays for the rest of their lives! </p>
<p>^I absolutely agree. I’ve read several UC essays on this site, and they were all tell-not-show style and pretty boring in my opinion. Anyway, I still took a risk by making my essays creative while answering the prompts as well as I could. Hopefully the risk will be worth it. Good luck!</p>