My major is still undecided; therefore, how do you think I should approach this topic?
Prompt: All UC students complete a senior-year project that demonstrates proficiency of content and skills in their academic major. If you were to begin this project today, what would be the topic? Discuss why this topic is of particular interest to you and how being part of the UC community will help you successfully complete this project.
just choose your most probable major I guess idk. or take a completely different direction and tout how you have no idea but that UC will help you figure it out
Great prompt! All colleges want you to answer two questions, it is nice to see them be so direct about it (What will you add to the school; and what will the school add to you). Answer this question for yourself- why do you want to go to college? What do you want to accomplish? How can you accomplish this? Will attending a specific college reduce the cost, reduce the time, or increase the return/income to attain this accomplishment? Will it do so in excess of its cost (tuition, fees, room, & board)?
If you can’t answer these questions in some form, you should not be going to college. What UC wants to know is how UC is a better value proposition for you than another path. They also want to know that you have thought this through before walking through their gates.
So, TODAY (knowing it could change a thousand times in thinnest four years), what do you hope to accomplish through your studies? How will going to UC leverage that progress so you can achieve it sooner, cheaper than not going to UC?
As a side note, there are famous people who left their universities when they could no longer answer this question in the positive (Bill Gates, Elizabeth Holmes, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, etc…). They are asking you to tell them about your ‘fit’ with UC in specific detail.
I think the prompt is asking for something more specific than how the university will help you with your overall accomplishments. It seems to be asking the writer to imagine a specific senior project. Those interested in education policy, for example, might research the relationship between school mobility and high school graduation. Econ majors might try to understand how trade policies in different countries affect employment growth. Of course your senior project might actually be on something very different, but they want you to imagine what research or service ideas you might be interested in the future, how you would go putting together a senior project to investigate these issues, and how the resources at this university will be helpful to you.
CheddarcheeseMN - Okay! But, my major is undecided. I don’t know if I will be taking an engineering course, or an arts course. That’s the obstacle.
ItsJustSchool - Thank you!
But, should my senior project be field specific?
I think they are asking whether you plan to flounder around and then sputter and drift away, without graduating (or not). That is the fear you should address.
Pick a project to a detailed level. Say you intend to construct a giant Buckeye sculpture which will be placed at the river near the OSU football stadium in Columbus to commemorate the National Champion team of 2015. It will be 15 feet in diameter and made of bronze. You do not know how to do the lost wax process and the foundries at UC will provide the space as well as the expertise to help you learn this craft in a speedy way. The artistic aspects- the perspective, the balance between realism and representational, will be something you expect to learn in upper division courses, where UC excels, especially Prof. Smith, who has made penguin installations in Ecuador using similar processes at similar scales. In particular, tutelage from Prof. Smith, as well as using the very foundry he used for his installation, will greatly accelerate the project and improve its chances for success. UC is in the Buckeye state, and it’s location on the Cincinnati river will provide means for transporting the bulky and heavy sculpture to Columbus.
Get the idea? What will you do, and why is UC necessary to your plans (or at least convenient to them). Kind of like if you wanted to borrow a wheelbarrow from your neighbor. He may ask, why a wheelbarrow and what are you doing with it? Same question- why UC and what are you doing with it (Is UC really the best “tool for the job”?).
Thank you!
ItsJustSchool
But, because of my undeclared major, I cannot focus my senior project to any areas/programs. On this regard, how should I tackle the question. Should I provide a project as an example regardless of being undeclared?
Well, if you were to do a senior project right now in high school, what might it be? You are right that this is not a great prompt for someone who has no idea what they will study.
It sounds like it is narrowed down to Engineering or Arts. Choose a major. Look through the UC website- look at faculty, courses, facilities, and such. Based on picking one of the myriad things you have some token interest in, and looking at the courses you would take to complete the major, dream up a senior project that would showcase these new-found resources of knowledge etc. Describe that senior project.
They will not ever hold you to this. It is an exercise. They want to know that you have given some real thought to “why UC” other than “My parents need me out of the house and I want to hang out with my friends.” Don’t over-think this. Just show them one (of maybe MILLIONS) possibility of how you intend to be a student of the university and use their courses to your advantage to move forward in the world.
Really, don’t over-think it. Just give them a plausible path to show them that you are applying to UC to go to college, not to escape or to defer having to enter the real world.