How the Write the UC School Application Essays 2015-2016

The University of California (UC) system comprises many of America’s best public universities. Indeed, schools from the UC system are six of Admissions Hero’s top 20 public colleges. All of the major UC schools have strong programs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields, and the flagship schools (UCLA and UC Berkeley) also have extremely competitive liberal arts, business, and arts majors. Luckily for high school seniors who already have ridiculous amounts of work on their plates, students can apply to every UC school with a single application consisting of only two essay questions (note that UCs don’t use the Common App). Because the application allows for 1000 shared words total between two prompts, there is a bit of strategy involved as to the length of each essay. If you have a stronger or more detailed answer for one of the prompts, it is okay to write more for that essay but ideally, you should devote roughly 550 words to that essay and 450 to the other one. Under no circumstances should you have one essay longer than 600 words and the other one shorter than 400 words—balance is key. Despite the fact that UC schools place a strong emphasis on students’ raw scores and quality of extracurricular activities, the essays are still important for students looking to study in the Golden State. Admissions Hero is here to help – let’s take a look at each prompt. Note: this year’s UC app is essentially identical to last year’s. We’ve updated this year’s post only slightly to reflect new trends in admissions. Read last year’s post here . Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations. (1000 words for both prompts combined) This essay addresses many of the themes that the prompts for the Common App do, and since the UC schools do not use the Common App, you don’t have to worry about any overlap with those essays. This prompt is really asking you to talk about some of your major influences and your interactions within a group. You can certainly use your family as the base for your essay, but you should be careful to really dive deep down into your personal feelings and motivations (as opposed to getting caught up talking mostly about your family members). Many applicants choose to write about their family, though, which means that your essay will have to be extremely well written or delve deeply into your unique personality in order to separate from all of the other applicants covering similar themes. Writing about your school can be a good strategy if you attend a school that has an economically and racially diverse student body. However, if you attend a competitive school with mostly affluent students, it might be difficult to write an essay that will play well with admissions counselors. Writing about a more nuanced and specialized community, perhaps related to some sort of hobby or extracurricular passion, gives you an opportunity to really show off unique and distinctive elements of your personality. For example, you could write an essay about how your participation in the Model United Nations officer corps inspired you to pursue an education and career in international relations. Alternatively, you could discuss how your participation in several online forums for World of Warcraft inspired you to study computer programming so that you can build a â€Å"crowdsourced† video game in the future. So long as you are able to write a detailed and distinctive essay, pretty muc h any type of â€Å"world† that you come from is fair game. The only exceptions are communities that are defined simply by personal traits (and not interaction) such as race or sexual orientation. Since these are personal qualities, an essay on these topics is best saved for the second prompt. Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are? (1000 words for both prompts combined) Unlike the first prompt, this essay can be far more personal, and you really shouldn’t detail your participation or membership in a group or community unless it you have achieved something substantial in it (save such topics for the first essay). As we mentioned before, this prompt could be a place to address intrinsic qualities such as challenges dealing with your race or sexual orientation. You have some leeway as to how you want to approach the discussion of the quality, but be sure to discuss why it makes you proud. That pride can result directly from the quality itself, or indirectly from actions that you have taken or experiences you have had as a result of a personal trait (such as dealing with racism or experiencing gender discrimination). You can also discuss an achievement in an extracurricular activity, however ideally you should write about a different one if you used an extracurricular activity for the first prompt. The â€Å"achievement† doesn’t be some sort of award or high achievement; it just has to be something that provides a compelling platform to discuss yourself. In fact, the most personalized descriptive stories often can arise from seemingly mundane achievements. For example, an essay written about your victory at the state tennis championships can obviously be impressive, but an essay discussing your pride at working for three years to rise from fifth to fourth singles on the tennis team and how the work you put into that made you value persistence can be just as good. The key is to make sure that you can point to specific character developments that arose from your achievement, no matter how small. With these tips, you should be well on your way to writing the perfect UC Supplement. Best of luck from the Admissions Hero team! For more help, feel free to check out last year’s post on How to Tackle the UC Essays or reach out to work 1-on-1 with one of Admissions Hero’s trained college essay specialists .

Current Concepts in Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Current Concepts in Leadership - Essay Example The mystery is how leaders whether good or bad can get others to follow them, in many cases even die and sacrifice what they hold most dear - their lives - in order not to let the leader down. Leadership therefore is the sum total of several personal qualities that a leader has, and it is the almost perfect combination of these qualities that spell "Leadership". Gardner (1989) listed down the following qualities of almost every leader: physical vitality and stamina, intelligence and action-oriented judgment, eagerness to accept responsibility, task competence, understanding of followers and their needs, skill in dealing with people, need for achievement, capacity to motivate people, courage and resolution, trustworthiness, decisiveness, self-confidence, assertiveness, and adaptability or flexibility. Think of every leader through history and most of them possess these qualities in spades. Leadership and management are often confused because they have similarities but, in reality, mean two different things. The most basic similarity is that both leaders and managers have most of the qualities listed above. Nevertheless, not all leaders are managers, and neither are all managers, leaders. There are difference in a few key areas, such as the way they get others to do things (leaders inspire people on the basis of what they are (their personality and charisma), while managers get others to do things based on their position of aut... In the traditional definitions of management, leadership is seen as just one aspect of management, the others being planning, organizing, and controlling or directing. So while the leader is followed willingly, at times even blindly, managers rule over their subordinates within the organization. Most companies are founded by leaders but it is managers who make them grow, although in many cases, such as the Marriott or Microsoft or Apple Computers, the leaders are able to work effectively as managers or they hire good managers to run the company and to put order into it. The best combination, of course, is having a manager who is also a leader, or being a leader with managerial qualities. Bennis (1998) best summed up the difference between leadership and management when he said that "managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing." Being a leader-manager is therefore a skill worth developing. Leadership Theories and Examples The human race has been grappling with the issue of leadership since time immemorial: elections, conquest, great battles, and the rise and fall of civilizations have been all determined by the presence, absence, or disappearance of leadership. This explains why leadership theories have multiplied like mushrooms over the last several years, especially with the growth of business corporations. We are so obsessed with what leadership can accomplish (power, wealth, success, and everything else that go with these) that we search for its secrets and its sources so we can either recognize or develop it in ourselves. Among these theories, we can give five that can be better understood with examples in a management setting. These theories have several similarities, and we can group them

Provide a critical analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Provide a critical analysis - Essay Example He apparently inhabits a stripped off office with an outdated laptop without internet connection as he had mutilated its Ethernet cable or even a single game (Grossman 2010). As with many other great poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge found a kindred spirit and a comrade in the arts through fellow English poet William Wordsworth. It was through their friendship and first attempt at collaboration that ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ was born. Final lines of the poem are attributed to Wordsworth and his sister at the time when their walk instigated its inspiration. Coleridge initiated writing the poem as they have planned when Wordsworth saw that he is better able to finish it completely and so the poem took on one of the major points the two had in mind for poetry. They were determined to demonstrate â€Å"two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination† (Coleridge 1908, 12). The previous being exemplified by Wordsworth and Coleridge for the latter. That there is the occasional possibility of being under the state of being that influences the yearning for the creation of something sublime and transcending the ephemeral. At the same time, there is also there is also moments wherein the most benign occurrences could induce creativity that propels writing. Such is the romantic undertone which instigated the Ancient Mariner as Coleridge himself expounds. Initiated with a plan he and Wordsworth had devised. Coleridge’s poetry took on a form of its own which is an intricacy of both ideas. This is where, though he may not have attained the parallel veneration as those enjoyed by his contemporaries, he remains a classic worthy of consideration and study. In his subsequent Bibliographia, we are presented with an identifiable Coleridge devoid of ill-feelings