<p>For stanford i gave kind of a more loose / personality revealing essay, but for berkeley do they want more concrete details on your achievments or what?
basically what should i focus on</p>
<p>I have the same question....</p>
<p>I'd appreciate it if someone could answer this for me as well.</p>
<p>Oy, people assume just that because Berkeley is a large public school and reviews 30,000 applications means that they can't deal with creativity and that applicants should hand in a to the point, straightforward essay that they would never hand in to any other university. While I too occasionally felt this way last year, I never understood why.</p>
<p>Anyway, no, there is no reason to not hand in your loose/personality revealing essay to a UC. That's what I did, and here I am writing from a dorm in Cal.</p>
<p>bumppp anyone else?</p>
<p>I agree with sweetdreams. My essay to Cal and UCLA was loose like Paris Hilton. </p>
<p>Okay, not quite THAT loose. :-P</p>
<p>I'm actually quite curious to find out what do people actually write for their open-ended question. Obviously its always good to write about overcoming some kinda hardship/family problem..but what if that's not the case for me? Do everyone really strive to write about "overcoming adversity" or is anything under the sun just fine?</p>
<p>why is it "obviously . . . always good to write about overcoming some kinda hardship/family problem"?</p>
<p>I wrote about books...how I've always been a bookworm but I found myself reading and loving chick lit which made me doubt my intellectualism blahblah but then I came to terms with it etc...</p>
<p>Well, chick lit is a fairly big hardship . . . </p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>hell yes... especially if ur a guy and u wanna read that stuff... ( i admit i find myself reading it just to see what its about )</p>
<p>i think sweetdreams answered my q pretty well... i wanted to know if they wanted more open ended type answers</p>
<p>How can anyone possibly know? They probably do. Do your best and best of luck.</p>
<p>The application justifies why they ask the questions they do. From that, you should be able to deduce just what they're looking for in an answer. If the content is all there, why not make it uniquely yours in the presentation? There's a chance the adcom reading your essay won't like it, but you <em>always</em> run that risk when applying. You run a greater risk of boring the adcom if you do a run-of-the-mill facts-only essay.</p>
<p>For some reason, the prompts are so straight-forward. Why can't they be more like Stanford with prompts that encourage creativity.</p>
<p>Eh, if you want real creativity, check out Chicago's application. Feel free to treat these creativly, or not. Just do your best.</p>
<p>chochocho: maybe cuz some people have no sense of creativity (like me)</p>
<p>my open-ended was about the two different cultures (american and french) i have lived under and how it has shaped me into a better person.</p>
<p>pipeline, seems like so many pple write about cultural diversity. I almost feel like I should not write about it.</p>
<p>Not really. I didn't write about cultural diversity, considering I come from a hickish state.</p>
<p>Just write something ordinary, not "cliche."</p>
<p>delicatess, lol, i'm from a hick state too. Go us!</p>