<p>Is it mandatory to include something about interest in Engineering in your personal statement?</p>
<p>How important would it be?</p>
<p>My son’s personal statement had nothing to do with Engineering whatsoever, but he did write about Engineering on one of the prompts that was directly asking about his more specific interests and/or major. It is definitely not mandatory and probably not even expected.</p>
<p>In a way, it is recommended. Even if you can demonstrate interest elsewhere on your application, it’s not a bad idea to write an essay about it.</p>
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<p>Source: [Freshman</a> Admission FAQ — UC Berkeley College of Engineering](<a href=“http://coe.berkeley.edu/students/prospective-students/admissions/freshman-faq.html]Freshman”>Prospective freshman FAQs - Berkeley Engineering)</p>
<p>^^^supernaut is absolutely correct on this! </p>
<p>I got the USC application personal statement confused with the UC application, since my son submitted them almost simultaneously.</p>
<p>Definitely necessary (note I didn’t say ‘required’) to allude to it, although the prompts don’t specifically ask you to elaborate on why you chose your intended major. “Dreams and aspirations” can be taken several ways.</p>
<p>I just submitted my UC app this morning. I don’t know whether it has to be a very straightforward “x and y made me realize I wanted to do engineering so I can do z”. I made quite a few references to my dedication to CS but ended up with a slightly more generalized essay.</p>
<p>We’ll see how that turns out.</p>
<p>I mentioned this somewhere else, but my son’s personal statement did not include anything about engineering. He was accepted for Undeclared Engineering so it seems to me that it’s not absolutely necessary.</p>