<p>Hey I was just wondering, regarding the Alumni scholarships (for Berk and LA), can we use the SAME (or a very similar) ESSAY from our personal statement FOR these alumni scholarship applications?</p>
<p>Additionally, can we use the SAME ESSAY for BOTH alumni scholarships?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>YES you CAN!
- Sammy Davis Jr</p>
<p>At least I think so.</p>
<p>lol that was totally what i was thinking! reuse essays</p>
<p>You can use the same essays and they will never know. First of all, the Berkeley and LA alumni people are completely different and won't even know if you did apply to the other scholarship. You can use the essays from your actual uc app. On FAQ page for Berkeley Alumni Scholarship, they say that they have no access to your UC App. For UCLA Alumni Scholarship, I talked to someone who had recieved it and he said that I could use the same essay from UC APP because they are completely different departments.</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>
<p>I reused more or less and got the Scholarship...now for a shameless plug for it.</p>
<p>If you become an Alumni Scholar, not only do you get countless connections through the Alumni network, and get to participate in fun committees, you get a membership card (new this semester!) that will give you a 20% DISCOUNT AT THE STUDENT STORE! It's the same card as Cal Alumni across the world! We're also working on getting more benefits for that membership card (food, stores, etc) so you don't want to miss the opportunity to be an Alumni Scholar! :-D :-D</p>
<p>The only thing is the UCLA essay really emphasizes the qualities of leadership, where berkeley just wants the experiences</p>
<p>pookdoog: what were your stats?</p>
<p>SAT I 1590
SAT II 2380
GPA 4.2</p>
<p>What needs to be said is that those didn't really affect my odds that much in receiving the Alumni Scholarship. Extracurriculars are important, of course, but I think how you come off in the interview will play a big role, despite what they may say to the contrary. Just FYI some leadership-based ECs I had were:</p>
<p>Senior Class President
Concertmaster of School and County Youth Orchestras
Mock Trial Lawyer
Internship with the Dept. of Defense
Varsity Golf
Rotary Leadership Camp Scholar
Co-founder of Ultimate Frisbee team at school
National Merit Scholar</p>
<p>how specific should our leadership experiences be? specific incidents? general activities??? Probably the more specific the better but in a lot of ecs, I just exercise daily leadership..</p>
<p>eh, I'm having serious troubles trying to express my leadership in words. Yeah, it does seem to me that the UCLA and UCB ones have different emphasis, so I don't know how someone can reuse it w/o tweaking it a bit.</p>
<p>I noticed that the UCLA Alumni Scholarship seems a lot more focused on interviews than Berkeley.</p>
<p>For Berkeley, the application decides whether you get to the final elimination round (ie interviews). For UCLA, your application and essay determines whether you get to the SECOND round, which is the first round of interviews, based in your county. If you pass that, then you have another interview to compete against other competitors in your general region. If you get through that, then they fly you down to UCLA where they treat you real nice but there are IQ test-like group exercises on top of individual exercises.</p>
<p>As you can imagine, the UCLA app obviously isn't as pivotal as the Berkeley app simply because there's more to base their judgment on for the UCLA Scholarship. Consequently, I don't suggest you reuse the same essays for both scholarships. However, I am not sure how similar the actual college app essays were to the Alumni Scholar essay, so you might reuse that?</p>
<p>stupid prompt wording...what exactly do they mean by "use" leadership? Like, I used it to save the world? To take over the world?</p>
<p>Well, the ASA (Alumni Scholars Assoc.) looks for people who go out of the way and/or take the initiative in situations where following orders or shuffling around in quiet desperation would have been much easier, ergo it's not about leadership EC's, per se.</p>
<p>Any old shmuck with a nice car and lots of friends can be a class president. Anyone can do charity work. In your essay you should demonstrate an instance in which you exhibited that initiative to go above and beyond what was necessary, especially in context of planning and motivating.</p>
<p>I think I wrote my essay about the art of motivating, communicating with, and performing with the orchestra as a concertmaster. A typical person would just show up to rehearsals, play all the right notes, give the right entrances, and follow the conductor. An Alumni Scholar should make himself available before/after rehearsals, network with the conductor and other section leaders, look over scores, etc.</p>
<p>Not to toot my own horn, of course. This is a pretty minor example, and I'm sure you can find something as good if not better than this little symphony number.</p>
<p>does the essay have to wildly creative and original? to be honest, mine is well-written grammatically and all that, but it's not that interesting</p>
<p>Well, if it's downright boring, then you might want to consider a rewrite (with what little time you have left!)...I wouldn't expect it to be groundbreaking or anything. It's not to show your originality or your writing prowess (although these are never bad traits to have in an essay)...they are simply to flesh out these cold bare EC's you have on your app.</p>
<p>should we focus on one topic in the essay or cover many? i have a variety of leadership positions but the biggest and the one where i've taken the most initiative and leadership is as CFO of a video production company my friends and I founded, so i was just going to write about that, and focus on how we started it and how we run it and do everything ourselves without any sort of advisors or adult participation etc.</p>
<p>One topic should be fine...you don't want to sound like you're just listing accomplishments. I think if you can flesh out one good example, they'll infer that you're a good leader for the rest.</p>
<p>to revive a very old thread...</p>
<p>pookdogg, I have already RSVP-ed for the "Alumni Scholarship Fall Reception". It sounds very nice, and I was wondering if you know anything about it? </p>
<p>Any others out there that will be attending this on Sept. 12?</p>
<p>wow, old thread!!!
We receive some sort of pin thing at the reception, as well as an Alumni Scholar card so that we can receive all our various discounts and such.
I'm definitely excited to go; just need to figure out what exactly counts as "formal" clothing</p>
<p>same here, sweetdreams!! I've been packing up my clothes to bring up to Berkeley this weekend and now I'm wondering what I need for "formal" wear. </p>
<p>Certainly exciting! :D</p>
<p>Oh, don't worry too much about the formal clothing business. As long as you don't walk in wearing torn up jeans and a Bad Religion t-shirt you'll be fine. Collared shirts and/or ties are always nice, of course.</p>
<p>Last year, we ran out of food (whoops :P) but I'm sure we've adjusted accordingly this year. Generally, the program goes something like this: you mingle for a while with ASA members and staff, eat dinner (which was surprisingly good, while it lasted), listen to a few speeches/infomercials from the higher-ups in the association, get your pins (which are purely decorative...I don't know where mine is anymore, unfortunately) and membership cards (hooray for discounts!), and go back home afterwards.</p>