<p>Mostly the first prompt. Describe the world where I came from and explain how my family, community, and school shaped my dreams and aspirations.</p>
<p>The world I came from is not pretty at all. As a child I have countless problems and I'm not exactly "attached" too much to society, culture, or any communities. I've moved many times in my life, and because of my numerous "issues" my relationship with my family is not that great (and I only live my mom. I don't see my other relatives often because there's all in China lol). There's also really nothing interesting to say about my family either. The same applies to my community; I have nothing to say about that either. As for school, I hated it until like this year. =/ And I'm not social either. Finally, I don't really know how all those factors SHAPED my dreams/aspirations... </p>
<p>Help? </p>
<p>I seriously ******* hate writing essays like these.</p>
<p>■■■■■? ■■■■■?! The last thing I need is a post such as ^. Sometime the ignorance of people really worries me. What, you expect only people with good/moderate backgrounds to post on here? Why don’t you look at some of the posts I’ve made? You’ll notice that I said several times that I got ~2.5 GPA Freshman year and didn’t really care about academics until a year ago when I started taking school seriously. So please, ■■■■ of this thread.</p>
<p>I need serious advice, people. I’ve read an example of this essay but that one didn’t really help. I’m sure there are other people on here who don’t particularly have a nice background.</p>
<p>I urge you not to post your essays on public bulletin boards. This is not smart because you can’t delete it and you don’t want college admissions to plug in some words on the internet and find your early drafts or rude converstaions with others.</p>
<p>Instead, ask for volunteer readers and use PM to send your essay.</p>
<p>For your essay, it needs serious work. It doesn’t portray you in a good light, as an asset to the school community. Not that you have to make stuff up, but the negativity of attitude is not a plus for you. It is okay to talk about negative experiences, but not in such general and vague terms. ‘numerous issues’, ‘nothing interesting to say’ and ‘nothing to say’ is not worth the words on paper. Blank will convey the same thing, nearly. You have to dig deeper and find something meaningful to say.</p>
<p>ryanxing,
Relax, take a deep breath. It is only the beginning of summer. You are already ahead of the game by starting your essay early. You will get there.</p>
<p>Many students find the first prompt difficult. You are definitely not alone on this one. Remember, dreams and aspirations don’t have to be big. It is more important to be personal. After all, most of us are not going to save the world, cure cancer or anything even close to that.</p>
<p>UCs in general give credit to students that overcome difficulties. Check out the UCSD point system, many points are given to students with personal hardships, from low index school or low income family.</p>
<p>Take time to think about the details of your past. Without knowing much about you, here are some brainstorming ideas,
Talk about how you moved many times, describe specific event(s) on a move and how it affected you, perhaps you aspire to have a more stable life in the future.
Talk about how you didn’t like school and had bad grades, describe specific event(s) on how you turn your grades around and like school more, perhaps you aspire to continue to do well in college.</p>
<p>It is fine to talk about the issues in your life but don’t focus on the negatives. Focus on how you overcome them and how you grow from them.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help you two. For the “overcome my difficulties” part, I will use it as part of the other essay. I’m afraid that if I emphasize on that part for this essay, I might get off topics, which is what I deem as the worst thing that one can do while writing an essay.</p>
<p>It is good to keep each of the two essays with its own theme even though many of the same topics can fit both prompts. It all depends on how they are written. Start writing to expand on some of your ideas. You might need to write many revisions or start over with another idea. Just keep writing.</p>
<p>Is this your actual essay? Because if it is, then I would seriously recommend reading as many sample college essays as you can - it doesn’t necessarily have to answer the UC prompts. I’ve seen a video on YouTube by UC Admissions on the essay and they’ve stated that your essay need not be about all three backgrounds (family, community, and school).</p>
<p>More alarming than the negativity and grammar (the vernacular misuse of “like” can make one wince) is the use of lol and a smiley. Have you really incorporated these into formal essays?</p>
<p>I’m hardly surprised that reptil came to the conclusion that he did.</p>
<p>Well then, I apologize for the misunderstanding, but judging from the responses of others, it would seem that they have come to the same conclusion.</p>
<p>It is a little lengthy, but offers plenty of advice on the Personal Statement. Not only that, but it also reflects on how the Personal Statement relates to the application as a whole.</p>