<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>I plan on starting my own UC essays within a week or so. I'm particularly aiming for UC Berkeley, San Diego, and Davis. However, my stats are definitely a bit below average, especially for Berkeley:</p>
<p>UC GPA - 3.62
32 ACT
Solid EC's related to my major (Computer Science)</p>
<p>Anyways, I realize I have to make my essay extremely creative, but I know I have to also focus on the actual content of it. Any suggestions or examples of past extremely well written and creative essays so I can get an idea as to the feel of these well written, creative essays would be really helpful. </p>
<p>For the first UC Prompt, I plan on writing about my background - the conditions that my father struggled in to give my brother and I a better life in the USA, and how that impacted my way of thinking. </p>
<p>Second UC Prompt, I'm going to talk about my YouTube Channel. I'm a YouTube Partner with over 2,800 subscribers, and my video revolving around all sorts of technology have been watched over 1.1 million times to date. I want to highlight how I share my passion for tech with thousands of people daily through YouTube, and how I want to further my knowledge and aspire higher. </p>
<p>Basically, I'm kind of having a hard time starting especially since I know I need to make this essay spectacular, and I need some advice/help getting started. Seriously, any help would be appreciated.</p>
<p>George Orwell had some good advice for writers, here is one snippet:</p>
<p>Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.</p>
<p>One of the better and intensely personal pieces I came across recently was one done by Christopher Hitchens (for full text go to Richard Dawkins web site) describing the first symptoms of throat cancer:</p>
<p>“I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement. I could faintly hear myself breathe but could not manage to inflate my lungs. My heart was beating either much too much or much too little. Any movement, however slight, required forethought and planning. It took strenuous effort for me to cross the room of my New York hotel and summon the emergency services. They arrived with great dispatch and behaved with immense courtesy and professionalism. I had the time to wonder why they needed so many boots and helmets and so much heavy backup equipment, but now that I view the scene in retrospect I see it as a very gentle and firm deportation, taking me from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady. Within a few hours, having had to do quite a lot of emergency work on my heart and my lungs, the physicians at this sad border post had shown me a few other postcards from the interior and told me that my immediate next stop would have to be with an oncologist. Some kind of shadow was throwing itself across the negatives.”</p>
<p>Ryan650 -</p>
<p>That is an amazing paragraph. It’s so powerful, without one wasted word or letter. That is a fantastic example of what people should be writing like for their personal statements. Thanks for posting it!</p>
<p>^Sorry I’m being lazy and not looking this up myself but although that is indeed very well written and intriguing, it doesn’t seem like the type of thing Christopher Hitchens wrote during his teenage years (and I hope not because what he went through sounds terrible). Trying to emulate the maturity and control of the piece would be difficult for teens…</p>
<p>No that’s not his college essay and I’m not implying that it was. What I’m saying is that it is a prime example of how a college essay should be. It’s narrative, it uses NORMAL words, and wastes not! </p>
<p>Obviously the average teen couldn’t control the flow of a piece as well, but they could take a lesson from the word choice and style as well as the tone of the piece. I don’t actually mean for a student to write the exact way!</p>
<p>Wow, that’s an incredibly powerful piece of writing. I, honestly, don’t think I can implement that into my essay about the struggles my father faced and how I’m going to surprass not only his, but also my expectations.</p>
<p>OP, I’ve heard from numerous adcoms that the story about your parents’ struggles coming to America and how that affected you got old a long time ago. No offense, because I was thinking of writing on the same topic. Just a bit of forewarning :)</p>
<p>Really? Mine is genuine though. It’s actually the reason for my crazy upward trend of grades after sophmore year. Sophmore year I slacked off like crazy. That summer after soph year, my dad told me his life story. It opened my eyes and made me realize what a fortunate position I’m in, and how I’m wasting it away. It made me understand that I needed to make the most of my situation, so I got a 4.2 GPA junior year…</p>
<p>Mine is actually genuine and stuff. My dad often had to study outside due to so many power outages in his rural village. His father sold fish in a market, so my dad had to work part time to pay for his local (****ty) community college. I roll around in a BMW while my dad couldn’t even dream of driving a 4-wheeler. I was gonna write about how this changed me as a whole individual.</p>
<p>I wasn’t doubting the authenticity of your story, sorry if it came off that way. 
I definitely believe it, because my parents have a very similar story. I’m just saying though, a lot of immigrants to America have overcome huge obstacles. If you feel really strongly about it, you can still write about it, but I have just personally heard from admissions officers that the number of these types of essays they receive is almost overwhelming.</p>
<p>Ahhh gotcha. Defintitely something to take into consideration.</p>
<p>HeyImAlok -</p>
<p>Please remember one thing: there are no cliched topics, only cliched executions of topics! The topic is not even close to as important as the content!!! And I disagree with another point made - there’s no way writing about parents immigrating to America is overdone because I personally know VERY few people whose parents immigrated to America. Grandparents immigrating is a different story… </p>
<p>I say go for it! Try to write it in a way that is unique to only your app. I know that’s hard to know, but ask yourself of anyone else could have written your essay!</p>
<p>Best regards,
<p>I think your topics are not bad for the UC prompts. Just make the first sound very sensational.</p>
<p>Btw, how did you calculate your “UC GPA”. Is that the same as Cal grant GPA?</p>
<p>Oh and good luck! I’m on the same boat as you are.</p>
<p>Mike, appreciate your comments. I’ll definitely try to make my especially unique.</p>
<p>RiadaPaki - Look at your Sophmore and Junior year grades. Award yourself points for each a-g course - 4 points for an A, 3 for a B, 2 for a C, 1 for D, 0 for F. Then, award yourself 2 points for each AP/Honors weighted course you took soph/junior year, up to a max of 4 courses (between both years). That is your UC GPA, which is what UC’s calculate when considering your application.</p>