UC Essay Prompt 1 Example Essay That Worked

We are fortunate enough to have a UC essay example that has helped our client get accepted into UC San Diego. So, for all the applicants whose dream school is at UC San Diego, listen closely.

First, a few stats.

Applicant Stats

1. UC GPA: 3.5
2. SAT: 1250/1600
3. Major-Related AP Courses: 4
4. Major-Unrelated AP Courses: 1
5. Awards / Honorable Mentions: none
6. Extracurriculars: Fashion Club President
7. Accepted Schools: UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, and UC San Diego.

Please also note that the University of California will no longer use the SATs or ACTs in their admissions decisions. You can find more information here.

As you can see, our client’s GPA and SAT scores didn’t make them very competitive. They also didn’t have outstanding extracurriculars that would put them at the top percentile of students. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t use the personal insight essays to get into their dream schools.

Without further ado, let’s look at our successful UC essay prompt 1 example essay.

Table of Contents

1. UC Essay Prompt 1
2. UC Essay Prompt 1 Example Essay: The Fashion Club
3. Things That Worked
4. Final Thoughts

“Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time. (350 words or fewer)”

UC Essay Example: The Fashion Club

“My president’s eyes swelled; mine were lost, and our advisor’s were filled with pity. The clock ticked unusually loud to chase away the silence and fill the room with its impatience at our indecisiveness.

It was after our final meeting before summer break, when club attendees bolted for the door to enjoy their vacation, that we hosted a private cabinet meeting.

“Unless we conjure a brilliant plan,” our advisor finally sighed, “You guys will either make one last promotional campaign, or let the club die by attrition.”

Though the club had the trademark signs of deterioration like dwindling membership, fluctuating meeting times, it was like a second home to me. I made most of my first friends in the club and it was one of the few places my nerdy niche was accepted; unsurprisingly, I felt the waterworks open through my eyes and I had to resist the building feeling behind my nose when I cried. But I had to reach for the last ray of hope, I went to China.

The next few weeks of my plan were nothing less of laborious. “It’s pointless.” “Why stretch your neck so far?” These doubtful demons visited me whenever I worked, but I didn’t give in. Every day was spent scrapping designs and meeting with factory owners in China until I fabricated the right one. Nonetheless, I was pleased to know our orders of custom-made clothes would arrive.
 
And fashionably arrive it did. The design sported a fancy “A” at the front and a modified Renaissance-Era sun and moon in the back. It was stylish and unique, but just unassuming enough to avoid the being obnoxious. It was the glistening watch on a man’s hands when he reaches to his lady to brush her hair away, only for her to notice it’s sophisticated design.

My taking the lead in the Fashion Design Club flipped our entire script: the phalanx of new members who poured in for our “new trend” reinvented our club’s vision: to be elegant yet subtle. We finally worked together again, and looked good while doing it.”

Things That Worked

We were quite proud of our client getting accepted into so many UC schools with his stats. If your writing is strong enough, and your essays can stand out amongst the rest of the applicant pool, you may achieve the same results or better. With that said, we want to point out a few key ideas and attributes about their provided UC Essay Prompt 1 Example Essay that may inspire you.

1. Good and Dynamic Intro: You can’t get noticed in the college application process in this day and age without a dynamic and interesting intro. This is the nature of the college app climate. Without a strong introduction, it is next to impossible to get your essays noticed amongst the sea of thousands of other students. With new applicants flooding into University of California campuses every year, you must have something in your essay that will bewitch your readers and admissions officers. Here is some more information on how to write a strong college essay introduction.
2. Intense Imagery: Keep this in mind. Very few high school students are good enough to write intense imagery that doesn’t sound strange or unusual. There are some, but for the most part, it requires a lot of editing, a lot of ideas, and a lot of experience. For the UC essay prompt 1, writing about your leadership experience would not be complete without imagery. When you imagine leadership, think of how it should manifest in your head. Is it in charismatic strength amongst peers? Is it the ability to calm your team during times of duress? Think of how your leaderships manifests in action and use strong language and intense imagery to paint a good picture of how it would look to admissions officers.
3. Sentence structure diversity and flow: You can’t ignore this one. This is probably about as important as knowing how to pick out the right words in the Personal Insight essay. We recommend making the semicolon your best friend. Also, make use of your commas, dashes, and colons to diversify punctuation. As long as your sentence length and structure are diversified, it’ll flow better when the admissions officers are reading your admissions essay. This also helps admissions officers understand what you are trying to say better as well. Often, the UC essay prompt 1 demands a narrative format detailing your leadership experience; so, you’ll need proper flow and sentence structure to make it easy for people to understand your story.

Final Thoughts

Here are a few final thoughts you should consider when you get to writing your own essay.

• Revise. Revise. Revise. Get a few people to check your admissions essays. We recommend having at least a one expert revise this essay for you, especially since leadership is a vital topic for UC admissions.
• The UC application committee tells its applicants what they’re looking for in the “things to consider section.”
• A leadership role doesn’t have to be a title. It can mean being a mentor to others, acting as the person in charge of a specific task, or taking the lead role in organizing an event or project. Think about what you accomplished and what you learned from the experience. What were your responsibilities? 
• Did you lead a team? How did your experience change your perspective on leading others? Did you help to resolve an important dispute at your school, church, in your community or an organization? And your leadership role doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to school activities. For example, do you help or take care of your family?
• Also, consider that the UC essay prompt 1 wants you to write about a leadership role that made a tangible difference to your community.
• A good topic we recommend our students pursue is planting trees for a community service-based club. It’s good-willed, it demonstrates initiative, but most importantly, it is living proof that you made your city quite literally a better place to live in. You can find more information about extracurriculars worth talking about in our other article here.

Want to know how you can maximize your chances of getting into the UC schools of your dreams such as our clients? Do schools such as UC San Diego call to you with their Comic-Con, Karl Strauss, heavy traffic, and Los Angeles emigrants? Schedule a free consultation with us; our college admissions experts and consultants will help you with your UCSD application!