<p>I know they say that they actually look at the personal statement closely and give importance to it, but let's be honest, how can a big state school with 50,000 apps an year have the time to read through each and every essay? Don't big state schools generally give more importance to GPA + SAT + ECs than essays?</p>
<p>Berkeley and UCLA hire outside readers every year to go through the freshman applications. Both campuses take the personal statement very seriously (National Merit Scholars have been rejected because of bad personal statements, true story told by an admission rep at Cal).</p>
<p>Irvine is switching to holistic review this year, so personal statement is going to play a major role in evaluation as well.</p>
<p>Other UC campuses use a combination of academic index and holistic review. Each campus does something a little bit different.</p>
<p>super duper</p>