The UC essay prompt 7 asks you to describe your contributions to your community or school. That’s why it’s also called the “community service” essay. Chances are, if you attend a high school that requires community service hours for graduation, you qualify for this prompt!
But, don’t let that fool you!
PIQ 7 goes through a lot more competition compared to other prompts like 2 and 5. We’ll discuss this more in the sections below. Oh, and if you’re looking for an example of a successful UC essay prompt 7 essay, check out our sister article here.
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What Everyone Forgets About UC Essay Prompt 7
Before you start answering the UC PIQ 7 prompt, you need to consider your competition. Think about what kind of students you’ll be competing against in the admissions pool.
When it comes to prompt 7, you’ll be competing against the most competitive students. This is because compared to the other UC PIQs, prompt 7 attracts the most competitive and impressive students.
Now, why is this?
Well, it’s something called the Big-Fish-Little-Pond-effect. Let’s explore this more below.
UC PIQ 7 Suffers From the BFLPE Effect.
The Big-Fish-Little-Pond-effect —also hideously abbreviated as the BFLPE effect for short— explains the distribution of gifted students in a given academic setting.
Specifically, gifted kids look good in regular classes. But, gifted kids in gifted classrooms just become average.
So, how does this impact competitiveness in the UC PIQ 7?
Well, what kind of students do you think would want to write about how they contributed or reshaped their community? That’s right! It’s the top 1% of the 1% of students! While practically everyone has endured hardship (UC essay prompt 5) and many have academic interests (UC essay prompt 6), not everyone has contributed to their community.
UC essay prompt 7 by its prompt alone invites competitive students, making you compete against more challenging students.
Those brave enough to venture into UC PIQ 7 are likely your hard hitters. These are your future astronauts and space surgeons. Your competitive R/A2C users. Your average Bay Area kids who started 3 non-profits to get into Harvard.
Yikes.
Speaking of competitive students flocking to UC PIQ 7, let’s talk about how said students have diluted the value of UC Essays
How Fake Projects and ECs Ruined UC PIQ 7
Let’s talk a bit about the distribution of students answering UC PIQ 7. By virtue of the prompt, you’re going to be competing against students who have some level of community service or project working with their local area.
It’s become more common now than ever before for students to lie about their achievements or extracurriculars. In fact, Intelligent ran a study that revealed about 34% of students fabricated stories in their essays.
Falsehoods like these inexorably increase the competitiveness of the application pool. For, admissions officers are further exposed to more outlandishly impressive topics that raise expectations. We’ve even seen this in some of the students we’ve worked with who were endorsed by teachers and admin to create false clubs with no value to boost numbers.
In other words, fake projects and ECs are causing an academic inflation. Specifically, it’s a devaluing of regular community service topics. This further raises expectations for students.
You NEED to Think Laterally to be Competitive
In order to stay competitive in the admissions pool, you need to find other ways to demonstrate contribution to your community.
Most competitive students will show they’re impressive by sharing how many homeless people they’ve helped. Or, they’ll talk about how much money they raised in their non-profit. If you want to stand out but you don’t have an enormously impressive topic, you can’t win the numbers game. Instead, you’ll need to find other ways to demonstrate value to your community.
Think about how you can provide value to the community. Don’t just think about money or clothes donated. Think laterally. Think about the metaphysical contributions such as the inclusion of minorities or the soft force you contribute to de-pathologizing your society.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you run a nerdy Anime Club. Your school has a large population of students who like anime; but, you live in an area where it’s looked down upon to appreciate “weird Asian stuff.” You’re inexorably providing a safe space for students who want to explore their creative pursuits free of prejudice from an overarching culture that dissuades different culture. This is a major contribution to the community because it taps into an unknown market desire that yearns to be fulfilled.
Is Anime Club a hyper-competitive or groundbreaking act of community service? Well, most people won’t say so. But, you can think laterally to find perspectives and angles that show it as such!
How to Answer UC Essay Prompt 7.
“What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?
Things to consider: Think of community as a term that can encompass a group, team or a place — like your high school, hometown or home. You can define community as you see fit, just make sure you talk about your role in that community. Was there a problem that you wanted to fix in your community?
Why were you inspired to act? What did you learn from your effort? How did your actions benefit others, the wider community or both? Did you work alone or with others to initiate change in your community?”
University of California Website
Before we get to a list of advice on how to approach the UC essay prompt 7, we thought it would be useful for you to know this: Personal Insight Question Freshman Guide. This is an official guide by the University of California themselves, so be sure to give that a good read!
Alright, here’s how to write the UC essay prompt 7!
- Explain the Problem.
- Explain the Significance of the Problem.
- Define HOW You Helped Your Community.
- Circle Back to What Your Topic Says About Your Character.
- Don’t Forget to Temper Your Achievement With Humility!
Explain the Problem.
This is straightforward enough. Every contribution to the community starts with solving a problem. Start your UC essay prompt 7 essay discussing the problem you’re trying to solve.
Students who are planting trees in their community may say their area suffers from a lack of beauty and green that revivifies the region.
Students who are doing tutoring in computer science may notice that their region is best served by teaching applicable STEM skills to underrepresented community members.
Identify the problem that your contribution to the school or community is trying to solve. Then, write about it.
Hint: sometimes you can solve multiple problems at once. Take the planting trees example. You may be both healing the community air quality whilst beautifying the city simultaneously.
Explain the Significance of the Problem.
Next, talk about the significance of the problem. That is, why is the problem you’re trying to solve in your contribution to the community something people should care about?
Adding this to your UC essay prompt 7 essay is very strong because it adds weight to the work that you’re doing. It demonstrates to admissions officers that you’re not just contributing to the community in a surface level way. For, you’re actually focusing your efforts on something of importance at multiple layers of analysis.
Additionally, you can be creative with this.
Think about the many different angles your problem may be significant. Chances are, there are many perspectives you can take that illuminate the importance of your problem.
For instance, planting trees may be a important in beautifying the region. But, when you drill in deeper levels of analysis, you can argue that the beautification of your community is conducive of helping uplift your hometown’s base emotional state via aesthetic improvement. Additionally, you may be increasing the “tourism-friendliness” of your area; thus, your impact in the long term may bring new generations of residents into the region.
On the flip side, not planting trees may perpetuate the existing “dreariness” of the community; ultimately, this may set a precedent of negativity which has rippling effects on your hometown’s politics, social attitude, and even individual personal mood.
Think of creative angles to argue the significance of the problem you’re solving. That way, you’ll be comprehensive in your depth.
Define HOW You Helped Your Community.
Okay, this is a hard one. But, most people writing the UC PIQ 7 essay don’t actually define how they’re helping the community. It’s absolutely crucial you show admissions officers HOW exactly you’re helping or contributing to your community or school.
That doesn’t mean ONLY talking about what you did in your activity. The activity can’t stand on it’s own. Write the logical connections between your action and how it helps the community.
By doing this, you’ll fully parse your answer to admissions officers.
While they can sometimes (…keyword sometimes) extrapolate how you’re helping the community, it’s crucial to spell out the HOW for them. After all, they’re reading your essays fast. So it’s good to be thorough!
Circle Back to What Your Topic Says About Your Character.
This is an important rule for practically all UC essay prompts. And, UC PIQ 7 is no exception.
It’s crucial for admissions officers to be able to determine your characteristics and personality traits based on your writing. When they read from start to finish, they should be capable of determining whether you’re conscientious, kind, a team player, a deep thinker, etc.
Now, in this case, admissions officers can sometimes infer personality traits and characteristics based on your writing without overly direct statements. This is the one exception where you don’t need to directly feed admissions officers what you want them to think of you.
So, if you want to show your altruism, don’t just say, “this is why I’m altruistic.”
Instead, make sure admissions officers can infer based on your writing that you’re altruistic. Essentially, your readers should be able to extrapolate from your writing the characteristics you want to depict.
Don’t Forget to Temper Your Achievement With Humility!
The last step to writing a solid UC essay prompt 7 is a subtle one, but nonetheless very important. You must temper your achievement and contribution to your community with humility.
Let’s face it: this prompt is going to be filled with a lot of competitive “try hard” students. And, many of them worked themselves to the bone for their accomplishments. Standing out in the sun protesting for civil liberties. Dedicating countless hours to tutoring students. Sacrificing weekend naps to help the homeless and disaffected.
Frankly, they deserve to brag. And, from what we’ve seen during our college admissions consulting sessions, most students are very braggy.
Bragging is not intrinsically a bad thing. But, it’s important to demonstrate maturity through humility. Show admissions officers that you’re not narcissistic. Temper your pride with humility.
Humility can come in the form of admitting you still have much to learn (hence the importance of learning at the University of California.) Or, it can come in the form of giving credit to fellow team members and showing pride in other fellow members. Remember: talking about others in an essay about you isn’t always a bad thing. It sometimes shows your readers you care and are aware of others’ success; and, as a leader, you graciously reward their work.
Conclusion
Ultimately, UC essay prompt 7 sounds like a straightforward prompt. But, due to the BFLPE effect, students answering this prompt inevitably place themselves in a more competitive admissions pool. This means answering UC PIQ 7 requires lateral thinking to truly stand out.
To answer the UC essay prompt 7 question, do these 5 things.
- Explain the Problem.
- Explain the Significance of the Problem.
- Define HOW You Helped Your Community.
- Circle Back to What Your Topic Says About Your Character.
- Don’t Forget to Temper Your Achievement With Humility!
Are you still struggling to come up with what to write? Already finished with the UC essay prompt 7 but just need feedback? We’re here to help! When you schedule a free consultation with us, we’ll look at your essays and give some constructive criticism on how to improve them!
Hi! I’ve been told that PIQs are supposed to “get to the point” without all the fluf and extra stuff that comes along with a hook. Thoughts?
Hi Lark! That’s a good question.
The PIQs are brutally short. Most applicants struggle fitting any sort of color into their essays and intros because of the severe limitations. The problem with this is that it’s not unusual for students to write curtly in response. This can give the essay much less impact. What I would suggest is to “get to the point” just enough that the readers know what you’re going on about without knowing the full story.
Remember: the hook should be interesting and compelling enough to reel readers in. You’re right that you shouldn’t have any “fluff”, but don’t make it dull either!