Hey guys please let me know if you think my appeal is decent. I know they most likely won’t still accept me but it was worth a shot. Also do you guys know when they might get back to me? In May or June hopefully?
To Whom it May Concern,
I acknowledge UCLA’s department of admissions has received over one hundred thousand applications but with only space for eleven percent. I respect and admire UCLA immensely.
With UCLA’s outstanding reputation and position as one of the highest ranking UC schools, the task of the Admissions officers was exceptionally difficult and the applicants for the class of 2022 were comprised of passionate and highly qualified individuals. For that reason, I understand the decision made by officers when they evaluated my application in comparison to others with credentials alike and higher than mine. My reason for writing this letter is to attempt one last try at achieving one of my most prominent childhood dreams: to be accepted to UCLA. I understand that the response might be contradicting, but I want to bring up both personal and educational barriers I have faced that have resulted in some of my grades not being as high as they could have been.
I have had to deal with extensive verbal and physical abuse from my father since childhood. I deeply despise the man as he takes pleasure from my misfortune. My earliest memories as a toddler are of him hitting me and screaming at me for the smallest of mistakes. Making errors on my Algebra homework would land me with a slap in the face. No matter how much I tried to convince my mother, she was stubborn and would not separate from him. For that reason, I have had to endure this abuse for my entire childhood. It eventually carried into high school, where it seriously conflicted with studying for my various classes. The worst was freshman year. You might have seen evidence of this in my transcript, involving Honors Biology. It was a vicious cycle. I would fail a test, my father would scream and hit me, which caused me so much stress and anxiety, that I end up failing the next test. This went on for a whole semester, and even though I worked my hardest, I still ended up with a C in the class for the fall semester. This happened three years ago, but the indent it has made will never go away.
On top of the abuse from my father, my family lives in a run-down apartment surrounded by inconsiderate neighbors who smoke marijuana nonstop, scream, and throw loud parties 24/7. I also have to share a room with my sister who is eight years younger than me. She goes to bed very early and I often have to study in the dark with a flashlight. I know that most may think that I should go and study in another room. However, in fear of my father yelling at me over something, I would rather just stay in the dark. Another complication I face is the long drive home from school. My mother got me into an economically advantaged school nine miles away from where I live. Freshman year, I had to endure my father driving me, but he would scream at me almost everyday on the way there or back, and I would often arrive at school on the verge of tears. Sophomore year, I refused to let him drive me, but that meant I had to take the bus and it included a mile of walking to the bus stop and then another hour before I got home. The long trip caused a decrease in my energy, which would make it extremely hard to study, but I managed with great difficulty.
Perhaps why I am so different from a lot of my peers is that I am a first generation American. Both my parents are Eastern-European immigrants. My abusive father never likes me to have any friends over because in his country, it was not common to do so. Whenever I did, however, he became grumpy and after my friends left, he would beat me. I enjoy going out to Starbucks to study on Sundays, to get away from all the terror at home, but sometimes my father would scream at me for leaving because he believes “the family should stay home on Sundays”. I would just shrug it off and try not to let his abusive personality affect my studying. With immigrant parents, I am the first person in my family going to college in America, so I have had to learn to understand the college system alone. I was not brought up understanding it like other children were.
Another contributing factor to my difficulties in school is the fact that I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). It is an intestinal disorder with side effects of painful flatulence, nausea, constipation and diarrhea. The causes of it are unknown, but one factor may have been the induced stress let on by my abusive father. I am deeply affected by this disorder at school, having to always watch what I eat. I sometimes go without eating for hours on end, which significantly lowers my productivity and attention levels. These flare-ups have occurred on several occasions, causing me to miss some tests, which brings me to my next conflict- my Physics teacher.
I decided to take AP Physics because I thought it would be a good idea in if I took all three types of sciences- Biology, Chemistry and Physics. However, I ended up making such a terrible mistake and I would do anything in my power to reverse it. Not only is the class extremely difficult, but the Physics teacher at my school is by far the worst teacher I have had in all my twelve years of grade school. First of all, he cannot teach properly at all. He wastes valuable class time on topics not related to the class, and the small amount of time he does teach, he is incredibly lazy and will not write out the solutions to the problems completely. On top of that, the class has a calculus foundation and he was teaching topics that my Calculus class had not learned yet. To make it even worse, he is sexist, telling my friend “not to compare herself to the smart boys in the class”. Overall, his terrible teaching styles and personality ruined my fall semester transcript because I ended up with a C in his class, and the situation was like knocking over dominos- my Calculus grade was affected as well. This was all because I spent so much time teaching myself all the material on my own with the textbook, which took over six hours per chapter to take notes on.
Lastly, I faced a terrible educational barrier with the ACT. Not financially able to afford a tutor or to enroll in an ACT class, I did what I could to study, which involved taking past ACT tests I found online, because I knew these would be the most accurate. My best friend was studying the same exact way. We both took over 30 ACT tests from previous years and it worked out for her- she got a 35. I, on the other hand, was not the same. No matter how hard I tried, I could not manage to get a composite score higher than a 25. Still, I did what I could, and took the ACT five times, but I was devastated that my composite could never even reach a 30.
In summation, I understand and respect your decision to deny me admission, however, I hope that with the new information I have implemented, that you will reopen my file and understand some of the grades I have received. Thank you so much for allowing me this opportunity to appeal.
