After switching to a holistic admissions system, has UC San Diego taken much greater consideration for the personal statements then?
Very Shameless Bump.
I would like to think that they would, hopefully someone else has some more info on this…
I don’t think anyone outside of the admissions committee at UCSD can really answer this.
I’m sure they do consider personal statements, but I don’t know if it’s weighted more heavily than anything else, could make up for other significant deficiencies in the rest of the application, or if it’s given much greater consideration than it previously was. All I can say is that you can look at what UCSD says they consider when reviewing applications (http://admissions.ucsd.edu/freshmen/eval-process.html), and I think it might mean something (all though I don’t know how much) that the first four items listed are academic (GPA, test scores, achievement in A-G courses, and ELC). Personal qualities are considered, and this is likely where the personal statement is considered. So I don’t think it’s more important than any of the other things they list, but I think it is still considered, just like everything else. My gut feeling is that the personal statement might become more important in borderline applicants. In applicants who are stellar (in academics, extracurriculars), the personal statement might be less important (unless it’s really bad or alarming in someway), and likewise, in applicants who have shown very poor academic achievement and seem like they might really struggle at UCSD, the personal statement is probably considered but is unlikely to “save” an applicant. But that could be completely and totally wrong.
I can’t say for certain, but I was always under the assumption (as well as my classmates) that the personal statement is really only closely looked at as a tiebreaker when there are multiple applicants with similar stats.
Please don’t quote me on this! I’m just speaking from whispers but I figured it’s better than nothing?
I heard from a UCSD admission officers that they really don’t even look at the personal statement if the applicant has very good numbers. But if not they look at it.