This is just one of the UCLA accepted essays in our archives. But what made this essay particularly interesting isn’t the fact that it got our applicant accepted, no.

What makes this UCLA essay special is that it was peppered in mistakes.

Nonetheless, they got in! Now, that doesn’t mean that you get to butcher the quality of your application essay. Why? Because this is actually a pretty good essay!

Don’t believe that one or two grammar mistakes are just fine? Take a look at MIT’s perspective on the issue. One or two spelling mistakes are fine, but anything more makes them question the amount of time they dedicated to their essays.

Here’s the thing: this application essay isn’t good because it is exempt of mistakes; in fact, schools will look down on mistakes, but they aren’t the primary concern. The essay is good because, despite its mistakes, it has one very powerful attribute –promise.

Not the “get-on-your-knees-and-pray” promise. Our applicant displayed promise in what she could provide for the school. UCLA knew that accepting her would pay off a lot.

Our applicant also made sure to write her extracurricular section especially well and pay it close attention. Had they not, we can’t be so sure her essay would have been successful.

Now, this is one of the core lessons of our entire list of articles on application essay writing. Do you have a good essay topic to write about? Do you have good extracurriculars to show for? What value will that ultimately give you and prove that you can’t be rejected? You can find our articles on those here.

1. Choosing an essay topic.
2. Good extracurriculars.  

Without further ado, let’s take a look and dissect the workings of this essay. Let’s see what makes your regular everyday application into one of the coveted, successful UCLA accepted essays.

UCLA Accepted Essays: Prompt 8

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?
(350 words max)

Note: This successful UCLA accepted essay was submitted by a very generous accomplice of PenningPapers. They had not had their essay optimized by our services (unfortunately) but had offered to provide their accepted essay to us to use as an example of what good extracurriculars can do.

Below we have underlined the section of the essay in question that we know had helped our applicant get accepted into UCLA.

“As a potential student looking in, I believe that diversity, openness, and responsibility is part of my core principles that are well-aligned with the principles of the University of California. Even before evaluating my academic strengths for admission, I believe that the admissions office should also consider my desire to belong to a University system, such as the UC, that shares in my values of fairness in resolution, inclusiveness of different backgrounds, and intolerance to discrimination. Beyond these basic cultural synergies, I strive to belong to an environment of innovation, across boundaries and disciplines, to improve my abilities to become an effective leader and entrepreneur.

Already, I have started a skincare company, “Attravere” (pending FDA approval), that will apply scientifically-sound principles to a new line of products that I helped design to be more honest, accessible, and innovative than major store brands. I created this company to not only tell my own story, but share the story of others that seek more personalized skincare products that have been developed from timeless techniques derived from and not limited to Chinese, Egyptian, Italian, African, and South American traditions. Using only honest ingredients, sourced locally and globally, my products will connect my potential customers to a more global perspective through skin care products that can be universally appreciated.

However, in order for me to realize this venture to its fullest capacity, I will need to dive into an educational system that can help support me in developing a world-class knowledge base and strong interpersonal skills with professors and fellow students who can openly embrace the best aspects of different cultures, working together to “attraversiamo” (cross over) cultural boundaries. Thus, I hope to continue my strong academic performance history in the UC while aligning myself to continue to represent their core mission now and beyond.”

Okay. There are a few key things to note here. We are going to first talk about the primary positive and negative attributes of this application essay. After that, we will weigh the Pros and Cons and describe why said Pros outweigh the Cons.

Pros:

1. Our applicant had her own company.
2. Our applicant had average scores for acceptance.
3. They broke gender norms.

Cons:

1. Weak Introduction.
2. Weak transition into main topic
3. Under-optimized extracurricular emphasis/gravity.

So, with so many moving parts and so many positive and negative attributes to take into consideration, how do we know that this application essay was going to be successful? How would we know that this would have made it into the “UCLA accepted essays” list?Well, here’s the truth. First, to clarify the Pros.

1. For one, this applicant had a company. It isn’t particularly hard for high school/ college students looking to transfer to start their own company. They even said themselves that the company is yet to be FDA approved. Yet, and we emphasize this yet, this application had a lot of weight in it because the applicant had gone out of their way to start their venture. Starting a venture is no simple task, and is actually one of the very rare extracurriculars that are weighed heavily yet underappreciated by students. It demonstrates individuality and head-strong determination; though, our applicant was female. Thus, her breaking female stereotypes may have helped as well.
2. Their scores were rather average for the general application pool trying to get accepted into UCLA. This doesn’t mean that they had a low chance, it meant that they had a similar chance of acceptance compared to others in the GPA department.
3. Being female, our applicant would also have received a few brownie points for having already started her own entrepreneurial venture.

So why are these attributes overshadowing the Cons? Well, it’s mostly for point one and three.

Our applicant may have had a weak introduction, but the admissions officers are obligated to look through all of the essay. A good introduction would have increased her admissions chances significantly, but that doesn’t mean a lack of a good one would exempt the admissions officers from seeing her significantly overpowering extracurriculars. In short, her powerful extracurriculars made up for a weak introduction. Though, we will say that is one of her most weakest spots.

The lack of transitions in this essay also made this writing weak. Having a better transition into her own company would have made a bigger impact on the admissions officers, as it would have given it more value. She could have done this by separating her paragraphs into one intro and one body paragraph about her company. She could have also made the intro paragraph more curt with shorter sentences at the end to hint at the next paragraph.

This didn’t have as negative impact as it would have, however; if you look at the underlined section concerning her business, it takes up most of the entire essay. Thusly so, the parts that have weak transitions are small compared to the “good stuff.”

Her extracurriculars were also not as optimized for the emphasis and gravity that it could have achieved. This means that she could have changed her word choice and sentence structure to get into even higher schools such as UC Berkeley. However, this is understandable because the prompt simply asks “what makes you stand out as a strong candidate.” The nature of the question is phrased as a sort of “extra information” question that does not demand fancy prose.

Sure, had we had our hands on this application we most probably would have optimized it for fancy prose to maximize admission chances. But this essay question was not demanding fancy prose. In fact, having a more “matter-of-fact” essay to contrast with fancier prose is actually a smarter thing to do when writing multiple essays for one school. This is exactly what we do when we consult our own applicants on admissions essays to UC schools for multiple personal insight questions.

Speaking of our own applicants, that brings us to you, dear reader. Have any questions about UCLA accepted essays? Is UCLA your dream school? Looking to have our expert admissions advisers and essay editors polish your application? If you said yes to any of these (or all three, we won’t judge) shoot us a message and we’ll talk to your about your application!