@Gumbymom So I know this is super late considering decisions come out in less than a week but I was hoping to gain some insight as to why I received this supplemental questionnaire request in late January. I was given two prompts: the talent and hardship ones. I didn’t undergo a hardship during high school nor did I mention anything about one, however, I did have a massive upward trend between freshman and junior year (2.67 to 4.0 unweighted), something I simply attributed to an eye-opening volunteering experience I had teaching impoverished children. But even this didn’t exactly affect my UC GPA, which is still decent: 4.2. My SAT is in the mid to high 1400s and I have 800s in both the Math 2 and Physics subject tests, and imho, really good ECs: own a business with ~25k in revenue, varsity sport all 4 years, couple of jobs, an app on the google play store, tutor, etc.
I poured my heart out in my talent essay (prob my best college essay), but only wrote a little over a paragraph for the hardship prompt (referring back to some of my PIQs) because I didn’t want to force anything. Could my upward trend be the reason I got this prompt? Or maybe because they thought I had undergone some hardship but was able to perform well after? I really want to get into UCLA and this request sort of made me think I had a chance but the fact that I go to a very competitive school (in-state) and my race (take a wild guess) make me think otherwise.