Webinar Transcript: Breaking Down the UC PIQs
Anna Lu
(This is a transcript of a webinar from June 2026, a recording of which you can find on our YouTube channel.)
Anna Lu: Alright, hello, hello, everybody. Welcome in. I'm just gonna give everyone a second to get comfortable, as it were. Thanks so much for joining us at 5pm on this lovely day.
All right, so today we're going to be taking a look at the University of California system, or more specifically, their college essays: the UC Personal Insight Questions. If you're a rising senior, this is going to be top of mind for you as college essays and applications come up for you. If you're a younger student, then this should be a great preview of what awaits you during your upcoming application cycle.
So whether you've started drafting your PIQs already, or you haven't even started looking at the prompts yet, this webinar should be valuable to you. And the UC PIQs require a particular approach that my colleagues will break down for you all today.
Speaking of my colleagues, I'm joined today by Kyra and Mary. And you guys have the floor!
Oh, wait, before I say that—sorry, I just remembered—if you have any questions throughout any of this presentation, feel free to drop that in the Q&A box. We will have about fifteen, maybe, minutes at the end of this webinar to just kind of go over any questions you may have, so feel free to shoot them in the box, and we'll readdress them later. Thanks so much.
Kyra Jee: All right, thank you so much, Anna, and hello, everyone. Welcome to our “Breaking Down the UC Personal Insight Questions”! My name is Kyra, I am the Director of Essay Services here at ILUMIN Education, and I lead writing workshops throughout the year as we help our seniors tackle their college application essays.
I am so excited to talk about the UC PIQs with you all today, because we know that there can be a lot of noise and pressure for our students to try and get these right. But if you just give yourself enough time to reflect and brainstorm and revise, we think that writing these PIQs can really help you realize that you have so much to be proud of. So, we will be looking at some ways to show that off today.
Mary Royal (she/her): Hi, my name's Mary, and I work with ILUMIN as an essay specialist. The PIQs are such a special opportunity to showcase your unique accomplishments. I'm so excited to have everyone here.
Agenda
About the UC Application
What are UC readers looking for?
About the PIQs
How do I choose which prompts to write about?
Which topics should I avoid?
How do I fit my story into 350 words?
How ILUMIN can help!
Kyra Jee: Yes, the UC Apps are due December 1st this year, which means summer is the time to be working on them before you go back to being a senior, so here's our agenda for today.
This webinar, as Anna mentioned earlier, is primarily directed at seniors who are applying this fall, but if you're a junior or a younger student, it's good to know what's coming down the road as you think about what are some of the things that you might want to do this year before you are asked to write about them.
So, we will ease in with more of a basic overview, talking about what the UC application includes and what UC readers are looking for. Then we will focus on best strategies for actually approaching your own UC PIQs, selecting the most effective topics, and then nailing your writing style and tone. And then lastly, Mary and I will be reviewing a real student's essay as a sample to show you how our essay team can help you take a first draft all the way through to a strong, well-revised final draft that you feel confident submitting to our application readers.
We'll close today with 15 to 20 minutes of Q&A and talking a little bit more about how we might be able to help you this summer beyond our webinar.
Alright.
Quick Facts about the UC App
1 platform for all 9 UC schools
All selected campuses see the same app components
Personal Info, Transcripts, Activity List, 4 PIQ essays, Additional Info
You can change your major by campus
1st and 2nd choice major
Mary Royal: Alright. So to get going, some quick facts about the UC app.
What is the UC application? So there are 9 schools in the UC system. Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, UCLA, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Riverside, and Merced.
They all operate using the same admissions platform, which means you only have to create one application, and then just check off which campuses you want to send it to. So all of those schools will see the same application components and materials. Your transcripts, your courses, your activity lists, your essays, they all stay the same.
The only thing you can change between campuses is your major. So, if you want, you can strategically select your first and second choice majors based on what each individual school offers.
About the PIQs
Choose 4 of the 8 prompts to write about
All campuses see all 4 essays
350 words maximum per essay
Prompts will be read in order from #1-8, so be mindful of repetition
No prompt is favored more than the others, so select prompts that best fit your own story!
Kyra Jee: The writing component—the essays—of the UC app, we call the PIQs, which is just short for Personal Insight Questions.
We'll take a brief scan at the 8 possible prompts today, and then go into a little bit more detail about strategies you can use to determine which of those you would want to choose for your four essays. It's no more, no less, just four.
You get 350 words in each essay, which is about a single page, single-spaced, and even though the content and style of an effective UC PIQ is pretty different from what you might be writing in your English class, there are a couple of similarities that can make it feel like our classic five-paragraph essay structure.
So, for example, even though you definitely should be writing in first-person for your UC PIQs, and you probably won't be quoting anyone, you will want to use a strong thesis to act as a roadmap for your paragraphs. You'll want to use transition phrases. You'll definitely want to use multiple paragraphs to help organize the flow of your ideas.
And this leads me to our first big takeaway for today.
What are UC readers looking for?
Given the obstacles and opportunities in your life, how have you spent your time? (Takeaway!)
Kyra Jee: What are the UC readers looking for? Why are they asking us all of these different questions?
Everything in your application, from what classes you've taken to your community engagement, your household responsibilities, we can all boil it down to just this one question here: Given the obstacles in your way, and the opportunities around you, how have you chosen to spend your time in high school?
Our essays are a good place to take control of that narrative and shine a light on those obstacles or those opportunities to give readers context for how you have gotten to the person you are today, and what you could do with just a chance to do more for each of those different activities.
Mary, will you break this down even further for us?
What are UC readers looking for?
Your specific, quantified accomplishments
Numbers, details, proper nouns
Value clarity over creativity
Be clear, concise, and straightforward!
Highlight the ways you stand out from other students
Mary Royal: Okay, what are the UC readers looking for? When writing your PIQs, you only have 350 words each, as Kyra mentioned, so that means every word counts.
We want to share two key elements to a strong PIQ.
First, quantify your accomplishments with practical and clear examples, specific details—look for numbers. In your club, how many people did you lead? If you're writing about scientific research, explain what steps you took to conduct your experiments.
Second, readers value clarity over creativity with these. On average, an admissions reader may spend anywhere from 2 to 8 minutes on your entire application—the whole thing! Like a resume, you need to help your reader understand exactly what you worked on and why it was meaningful.
So save the creative writing for the Common App Personal Statement—that's where you might include dialogue or figurative language—but on a PIQ, we're going to be clear, concise, and straightforward.
Chances are good that for any club, sport, or major that you're interested in, other kids did them too. So focusing on specific and numerical details about your individual responsibilities will help you stand out and highlight what was so meaningful about this activity to you.
What are the PIQ prompts?
Leadership
Creativity and Problem-Solving
Talent or Skill
Educational Opportunity or Barrier
Significant Challenge
Academic Interest
Community
Supernova
These topics are indicative of the qualities the UCs value!
Kyra Jee: Let's take a look at our prompts. So, if you've never seen them before, then you can find the full official prompts on the UC's official website. What I'm going to do here for the sake of our webinar is just summarize each of those 8 prompts with a key word, or maybe more specifically, a key value that your essay would be focusing on.
So, I would like all of you in the audience today to grab a sticky note, or an index card, or the back of a notepad, and jot down, as we go, which of these key values resonate with you, or something that you have done in your recent high school experience that you'd want to highlight. And you can also take notes to cross off any of the prompts that you do not need, and make the process of narrowing down your selection a little bit easier!
So, Prompt 1 asks us to describe a leadership experience, whether you had a title or whether you didn't have a title. They want to know how you have helped a group move forward in something.
Prompt 2 gives you a chance to talk about how you use creativity, problem solving, and innovative thinking in your life that could be related to your major, but it also could be related to an extracurricular or volunteering. Creativity, as it sounds, gives you a lot of freedom.
Prompt 3 asks if you have a great talent or a great skill that you have been developing over a long period of time that you might want to highlight some accolades from in your high school career.
Prompt 4 is an either-or question. So, you can either use this prompt to describe an educational opportunity that you took advantage of—an educational opportunity would be anything that textured your life as a student outside of the norm, so a summer program, an internship, a really cool volunteering experience, anything that was beyond your normal daily scope as a student could count as an educational opportunity.
And then on the flip side, an educational barrier could also be talked about here. If there was something that impeded your ability to perform at your best, academically, and you would like to give them some context, you could do so with Prompt 4.
That is actually also true of Prompt 5, with a slightly different angle of a significant personal challenge. So, not everyone has a significant personal challenge that has happened to them in high school, but if you did have an academic crisis, a family emergency, a natural disaster, something that really impacted your ability to perform at your best as a student, or took away from the normal amount of time that you think you would have had otherwise that year, you could use Prompt 5 to give the reader some context that, “not only are these all the things I managed to accomplish in high school, but I did it while also enduring a significant challenge!”
Okay. Prompt 6 is a chance to talk about your academic interest. I like to call this the “Why major?” prompt for the UC PIQs. Ideally, you might use this as a chance to describe how you have fallen in love with your major of choice, or what some of your shiniest accolades related to developing that interest might have looked like.
Prompt 7 we call the Community Essay. It is thematically pretty similar to PIQ 1, because it also asks you what are some ways that you have positively impacted people around you, and the word “community” really opens us up to the chance to talk about any group of people you're part of. This could be a neighborhood, this could be, like, a cultural awareness or advocacy group, it could be a club… a lot of possibilities here.
And then lastly, we also have prompt 8, which we call the Supernova Prompt. The wording is something more like, “Outside of everything in your application that you have already shared with us, is there anything you want to tell us?” If you are jotting down Prompt 8 Supernova right now, I do want you to add a little asterisk next to it, a little bit of a caution; Mary will talk about this in a couple of minutes. We know that it sounds open-ended, but just be careful.
But by and large, those are our eight possible choices, and I want you to notice how open-ended all of those prompts were. None of these prompts is better than the others; it's really about which four you choose.
How do I choose which PIQs to write about?
What are your biggest activities, in and out of school?
If you could only tell the readers 4 things about your last 4 years, which are the most “telling” about what kind of student or person you are?
Offer multiple aspects of yourself instead of telling the same story.
Use the prompts creatively!
Mary Royal: So, speaking of that, how do I choose which PIQs to write about?
The good thing is that you are not starting from scratch. So instead of starting with the prompts, you can actually start with your own activities, in and out of school. Start by asking yourself what clubs, service projects, research papers, tough classes, or even responsibilities at home take up the most of your time.
It's good to have a variety of examples. You should offer multiple aspects of yourself with these PIQs, instead of telling the same story. So, even if you spent 3 years in Mock Trial, we're not going to spend three essays describing it over and over again. Use one essay to talk about Mock Trial. Then talk about different activities or qualities in the other PIQs.
So, let's look at some ways to use these prompts creatively.
Use the Prompts Creatively
Consider different ways you could write about the same topic! (Example: DECA could demonstrate #1 Leadership, #2 Problem-Solving, or #6 Academic Interest!)
What are your main personal qualities, character traits, and values? What story can you tell to demonstrate these?
Kyra Jee: Yes. The truth is that most of your activities and your stories could actually belong to more than one prompt. So, here's a quick example.
Let's say that you have been competing in DECA—you know, business and econ competitions. You could use Prompt 1, which is about leadership, to talk about that entrepreneurship and pitching ideas on behalf of your team. That would be a solid, excellent PIQ 1.
Let's say you already have another idea for PIQ 1, and you feel like those are already the perfect match, but we still need to put DECA somewhere in this application. Good news? Let's be creative. So, we could also use Prompt 2, which asks us to describe instances of problem solving and innovative thinking to tell the same stories. Still entrepreneurship, still pitching ideas, still improvising on the fly, talking to judges, but we're doing it from a different angle.
And same thing. Let's say DECA is your biggest major-related interest, because you are hoping to major in business admin or finance or econ or something like that. You could use PIQ 6, that “Why Major?” or academic interest essay, to describe how your experiences outside of the classroom have helped you kind of build your understanding of what the business world might look like and what you feel like your place might be there.
That's three different ways you can tell the same story. The prompts themselves are just window dressing. It's the stories you choose to tell and how you choose to tell them that matter the most.
So instead of feeling restrained by the wording, we want you to take full advantage of their flexibility. Notice how many follow-up questions and lists of definitions there are embedded in the official prompts for you to take inspiration from, and make sure that you are imbuing what you want to say in your essays, not the other way around.
How do I choose which PIQs to write?
Start by making two lists:
Obstacles
Opportunities
Which have had the biggest impact on you?
Which ones helped you make the biggest impact on others?
Which prompts could apply?
Takeaway!
Kyra Jee: That… brings us to big takeaway number two!
So, kind of to echo a little bit of what Mary said, but to give it to you as an assignment now, I would want you to start by making two lists: make a list of the obstacles that have been in your way, if any, and the opportunities you have taken advantage of inside and outside of the classroom.
And then, for each of those columns, we would want you to go down the line and take notes: which have had the biggest impact on you, and how; which ones helped you make the biggest impact on others, and how.
And then finally, which prompts could apply to your essays, so that you can balance out all four of your PIQs.
Balancing out your PIQs
No matter which prompts you choose, try to address all four of these qualities:
Passion for your future major
Having positively impacted your community
Leadership and initiative
Extracurriculars and special skills
Mary Royal: Speaking of balancing out your PIQs, even with all this flexibility, we have some wisdom to share with you about fundamental elements in the PIQs. No matter the prompts that you choose, you absolutely need at least one PIQ about your intended major, and one about making a positive impact on people around you.
For example, a future computer science major might use PIQ 6 to share the coding challenges they completed, or the hackathons they've won, to demonstrate their interest in computer science. Then, looking at PIQ 7, the comp-sci major might share that they've been in a computer science club, like Girls Who Code, but they'd want to make sure that they're focusing on the community impact and the service aspects of that participation, rather than the relationship to computer science itself.
After you've addressed these things, some other great themes include leadership—always love leadership—any special skills or accomplishments, and of course, any significant challenges or obstacles.
Which topics should I…
Avoid
Discussing other people
Discussing distant accomplishments
Prompt 8: Supernova
Highlight
Personal and Academic Growth
Resume items
Contributions to your community
Quantifiable achievements
Mary Royal: There are some topics that we would advise you to avoid.
Don't get caught up discussing other people. Focus on yourself and your awesome accomplishments. We know you have them. Not just the person who inspired you, or the person who hindered you.
Another thing to avoid is discussing distant accomplishments. Focus on things that happened in high school for these PIQs. Your middle school piano recital is, in most cases, probably too young to be totally relevant to who you are as an applicant today. You've done other great things since then.
Finally, if you put an asterisk beside prompt number 8 a few minutes ago when Kyra was going over all the prompts, be careful. Prompt number 8, which is what we call Supernova—it asks, “what makes you stand out?”
We typically suggest students to avoid this prompt, because its simple wording often leads students to answer with things like, “oh, I'm really perseverant, or I really want to be admitted to your school.”
Prompt 8 is not asking if you're 1 in 100. It's really asking if you are 1 in a million.
So, while these things may be true, ask yourself, “are the circumstances of my perseverance really different from my classmates' perseverance? Is there a better prompt?” Like, maybe prompt 3, your greatest talent or skill—that would be stronger.
Topics you should highlight in your PIQ include resume items—again, contributions to your community, and quantifiable achievements.
How do I fit my story into 350 words?
Be straightforward, not poetic or metaphorical
Answer the prompt
Write your thesis first, then cling to it for dear life!
Every sentence, without exception, must advance your thesis! Toss out unrelated exposition!
Get clear on the “So what?” What did your actions accomplish? Why do your future pursuits in this field matter?
Kyra Jee: Finally, we're gonna give you a couple more writing tips, specifically, before we move on to a sample essay review, where we hope you'll be able to spot some of the things that Mary and I have been talking about in action.
So, as we talked about earlier, the UC readers go fast. Unlike schools that might have a smaller application pool, they have a lot of content to get through accurately, very quickly, and we want to make it easy for them to see what your best highlights were. So we want to think about this like a resume.
In order to match that speed-reading approach, we're going to be straightforward! We're going to start our essay with a clear thesis statement that answers the prompt directly. We are going to avoid hooks, figurative language, extended metaphors, sensory details, dialogue.
These are great aspects of creative writing in general, and if you are also going to write the Common App Personal Statement—which we will probably do a webinar on in a couple of weeks—you can bring that all back.
But UC PIQs, I want you to think about it more like a newspaper headline. They give you the good stuff right at the top, so that way you can go into the rest of the… or the readers can go into the rest of your essay knowing, “these are the highlights I'm looking for, these are what they want me to pay attention to, this is what I should remember.”
We also want to make sure to answer the “So what?”, or a reflection at the end of your essay. So, say you have just written an essay, like, call it a PIQ 4 on educational opportunities about a prestigious summer program or a prestigious research opportunity. You are doing this a couple of months before senior year picks up—that's great! But remember to also include: What did you learn from that experience? What soft skills? What technical skills? What did it inspire you to do next? If it's related to your major, how might you build on that experience in college?
That's our silhouette.
Let’s look at a sample essay.
Before and after!
Mary Royal: Alright, so let's switch gears. We're going to take a look at a sample essay together, one that went from a first to a final draft, with guidance from our essay team.
Prompt #2: Creativity & Problem-Solving
Mary Royal: So, prompt number two: Creativity and Problem-Solving.
“Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.”
Prompt #2: Creativity (Draft 1)
Mary Royal: So, this is a real essay from a real student. They chose PIQ 2. Here we are.
“The way I demonstrate my creativity is through art. I have loved art since I was very young, with drawing and painting being two of my specialties. Whenever we had an assignment where you could either write an essay or design an art project, I would choose to make presentations, dioramas, or posters. In 8th grade, my diorama of a particular scene in a book we were reading for class won a competition at my local library. In college, I hope to major in art or maybe illustration if they have that in particular.
During high school, I have learned more about art to improve my abilities, especially in drawing and painting. For example, I took art classes both in school and outside of school, where we practiced basic skills. Attending art classes has been my favorite activity because it allows me to use my imagination to make meaningful messages to other people and experiment with different colors.
Last year, I decided to learn about a new form of art, digital art. I had never used digital art before because I didn’t have the software for it or interest in it. But I entered a contest to design a logo for a team at school and my design won. This experience inspired me to learn more about apps and other digital tools that artists use in marketing and advertising to create eye-catching effects. I started practicing every day, learning the different brush strokes and color palettes.
After college, I would like to apply for a job in marketing or advertising where I can use my creativity to help businesses communicate and grow.”
This is a really solid first draft for a PIQ. Kyra, what advice would you give to help this student improve their draft?
Kyra Jee: Okay, I also agree that it is a solid first draft.
I think my favorite thing about this essay is that the student shows growth over time. So we start with art classes, and then we transition to digital art. And I think that is advice that would hold up for any of the prompts that you might be writing for. So, whether you're writing about Prompt 1 leadership, or especially Prompt 3, which is that talent or skill that you have developed over time, we want to see how you have improved since you first started. And so, I like that this essay does kind of carry us through time.
I also like that each paragraph focuses on something different. I have seen a couple of first drafts where a student just gives me all of the story in one monster paragraph—a little bit hard to read, and not as well organized as it could be. So I like that we have a couple of body paragraphs and a conclusion, even a short one.
That being said, I also have some things I would want to advise this student on.
So, I think the four biggest things—and some of this language will be familiar to what Mary and I have been talking about earlier—but first of all, let's keep the anecdotes more recent. So, that 8th grade… “in 8th grade, my diorama of a particular scene in a book” is a good memory, and it probably was a pretty important turning point in the student's personal history and relationship with art, but from an admissions standpoint, it's a little bit too young. Hopefully, you have had a couple more realizations or accomplishments since middle school that we could use to replace that anecdote.
Advice number two: if you remember the obstacles and opportunities activity that we took a look at together—if the student hadn't done so already, I would probably say it's time to pull out that exercise and do it together for a few minutes, because I want to see more specific examples in this essay. So, you know, diorama is a good example, attending art classes is an example, digital art—like, we have the bones of it, but I feel like we could get more specific. What kinds of art skills? Again, soft skills, technical skills, both. What kinds of projects might be… what might we be able to point to?
Mmm. Let's see… okay, my third suggestion for this student would have been to open with a more clear thesis statement that wraps around to set us up for the rest of your body paragraphs, just like an essay that you might write for English in kind of like a book analysis, where your thesis is going to highlight your three main topics. We want to do the same thing here, like a roadmap. So, we don't want to hide important information all the way at the end of this essay.
If you take a look at the conclusion with me, you'll see, “after college, I would like to apply for a job in marketing or advertising.” That's pretty important to me!
So, in the student's defense, maybe they didn't realize that's where their essay was going until they got there, but now that we are revising from a draft one into, like, a draft two or three, I would say, let's bring that up at the start. That will help the reader know, “okay, we're not just learning about a hobby, we're actually learning about one of the main paths that led the student down to their major,” which is pretty important as far as the four UC PIQs are concerned.
Okay, and then the last piece of advice I would give? This essay's a little short. If I remember correctly, I think it's… 275 words, or something like that, and they had a whole 350 words. So, again, perfect for a draft one, but as we move forward, I would love to see you use more of that space, and maybe fit one more example in here, or get a little bit into more depth on the examples that you give us.
Those would be my… those would be my first takeaways.
Prompt #2: Creativity (Draft 3)
Mary Royal: Okay, now that the student has had a chance to brainstorm with their essay specialist, let's read their new and improved version. I always like to revisit what prompt they're addressing. So again, this is PIQ 2.
“By studying different techniques, exploring digital arts software, and setting personal design challenges for myself, I’ve discovered a passion for design and marketing.
I have taken art classes every year in school to build a good foundation of basic skills. For example, I practiced realism and human anatomy in Advanced Drawing II and studied editing software in Digital Photography. Focusing on how an emotion looks on someone’s face reminds me that art does not always have to be beautiful, and it is more important to me to convey a message. Practicing regularly allows me to combine my imagination and knowledge to create something new.
However, it wasn’t until last year that I realized my passion for digital art. I entered a contest to create a new logo for my school’s field hockey team. I incorporated our mascot and colors, which was required, and tried to design a logo that looked professional instead of youthful, like many of our other sports teams. When my design received the most votes, I was excited to see I could use my creativity to communicate someone else’s message as well as my own.
This summer, inspired by artists I’d seen on social media, I began designing imaginary book covers and movie posters. I wanted to practice applying my skills to more real-life projects. After noticing that posters from major film companies tend to use may of the same color palettes and effects, such as Marvel overlaying collages of main characters with red and blue lighting, I wanted to create posters that looked more distinctive, Experimenting with color, composition, and even changing font size and placement, I designed 12 new posters for my favorite movies. I even posted my art to social media and began receiving requests from strangers. Through Coursera, I plan to learn about other software platforms professional artists use in marketing and advertising to create eye-catching effects.
Expressing my creativity through art and design has not only helped me gain confidence as an artist but also encouraged me to pursue the world of marketing.”
Good, good, good. The student’s draft of the essay includes more specific and concrete examples of their creativity and action. Just look at how that “12 new posters” pops. That's that numerical data we're looking for.
We also now have more context for their journey from art to marketing. That strong thesis statement not only answers the prompt, but just sets up the upcoming paragraph so that our reader knows exactly what's coming.
Also, they realized that they had a whole other opportunity to write about. There were already lots of good transition phrases in this. Of course, we proofread for commas and verb tense, too. This one reads much better than the first draft.
Kyra Jee: There you have it!
I just want to reiterate that this is a real essay. That was, you know… we knew what the essays were looking like coming into our meeting with you today, but this was the real feedback that we gave to our kiddo, who was generous enough to let us share their progress with you.
And we hope that by walking you through that feedback session, hopefully you can see more about how our essay team helped the student revise their work in two meetings, or two drafts. We focus not only on what the student wanted to emphasize about their application, about their proficiency and readiness towards their major, but also the other side, which is what the UC readers are looking for on their metaphorical side of the table, too.
So that way, our student can feel very confident and prepared to submit their application.
How ILUMIN can help!
Hourly Essay Consulting
1:1 meetings + feedback with your Essay Specialist
Support with brainstorming, editing, and polishing any and all essays
5 and 10 Hour Packages
Access to our Bootcamp curriculum
Common App and UC PIQs
Flexible online scheduling
Kyra Jee: So, at ILUMIN—a little bit more about our hourly essay consulting program—we match students with a member from our wonderful essay team, like Mary, to go through any essays from any school at any point in the process.
So, whether you are working on your UC PIQs right now—which is a good time to do it if you're a senior!—or the Common App Personal Statement, the school-specific supplemental essays, Honors Program Essays, activity lists, all of these different things… we really love to help students develop and grow, at any stage.
Questions?
Contact us at essays@ilumineducation.com!
Kyra Jee: And… let's see, I think those are some of the biggest things that we wanted to share with you, at least as far as introducing you to the UC PIQs. And I think we have a lot of good time for some questions today, so if you have questions or are struggling to get started on what topics of yours might make sense with which prompts.
I encourage you to reach out to us, whether it's right now in the chat or through our website.
And I'll turn it over to you, Anna. How much time do you think we have for questions today?
Anna Lu: We have plenty of time for questions, so we have… we do have a handful of really great questions. If you have any more at this stage, feel free to shoot them into the Q&A box, but we'll start out with some of the ones who have already kind of gotten ahead of the game.
So, just to start, we have, I think, some questions that really highlight the difference, or the different approach that's required between the UC PIQs and perhaps a personal statement, or even a supplemental essay.
I think one person has asked that… basically, they've heard from a lot of different sources that you don't need to include activities and awards that don't show, maybe, the applicant's personality, and that there's no need to brag in essays, because a lot of these things are already in, for example, the activity and awards section of the application, and so you should show your personality, your values, and kind of who you are as a person.
So, would you say that's true for the PIQs too? Is that more for the personal statement? Is it kind of a little bit of both? What do you guys think?
Kyra Jee: That is a good one. Anna, can you take us to slide 13, just while we talk about this?
Okay, so just some context for this question—and I think we'll just talk about the UC PIQs, just given the nature of our webinar today—but if you don't know, you will have up to 20 different items in your activity list, which functions kind of like a streamlined resume.
So in that activities list, you'll get—it's a character count, not a word count, but you'll get about, like, 4 or 5 sentences worth to describe what your activity was and what your role was. So, if you volunteered with an organization, you would get, you know, two or three sentences to talk about what the organization does, and then maybe, two or three good sentences to describe what your role was. But that's it.
So, I would say that the difference between what you can do in a PIQ and what you can do in the activities list is that your PIQ is meant to give more about the how of your journey and the whys of your journey. Both why you decided to engage with that activity and what you have learned from it since then.
So you can absolutely, one-hundred percent, talk about your resume accolades in the UC PIQs, but in order to take advantage of both your activities list and your PIQs, you want to give us, like, the meat of the story, all the things that wouldn't fit into resume bullet points that, if we look at it as an analogy of a job application, the things you would want to talk about in an interview to go further into more detail.
Anna Lu: Great! Another question that's sort of related, again, to this difference between the UC PIQs and maybe other forms of essays: How do you know if doing… writing your essay in montage or narrative style is better for this or not?
Kyra Jee: Montage or narrative style. So, again, just focusing on the UC PIQs today—if I am to understand your question correctly, then I would say, if you're asking about a narrative essay, then maybe we're asking, should I tell one story within my PIQ, or a montage, should I talk about multiple things in my PIQ?
I would say, in general, it is typically better to go into more detail about one or two things than to cram too many activities into one PIQ. Because, like we just said, you've got a 20-item activities list that you will give everything you can possibly think of—awards, honors, volunteering, you know, all of these different things, you'll get your sentences, and you don't want to provide only the same basic information in both. You should probably… your most important activities are the ones that go into the PIQs, and so hopefully you'll have more to say about those activities, and can go into more depth.
I think it would be okay to have one or two of your PIQs talk about more than one experience, if it builds on the same question.
So, if I take PIQ 6, which is our “Why major?” essay, as an example; the question asks, “What is your favorite academic subject, and how have you developed your interest in it in and outside of the classroom?” If you wanted to pair a summer program plus a community college class, you could definitely do that in one essay, as long as they're still writing on the same topic. So we're staying focused, we're staying streamlined.
Anna Lu: For sure, it seems very much like a… also, a case-by-case basis, I think, for what the student has to offer in their essay.
We have another question about essay topics and how to basically keep them unique. “Is it too cliched or boring to talk about specific topics?”
I think we touched a little bit on this in, like, kind of this avoid/highlight thing, but that's not all-encompassing, of course.
Like, how do you, with your students, know if they've reached the point where it's unique enough? And is there anything that's too common to talk about? For example, I think the sample essay with the creativity prompt talked about art, and [the person asking the question] asked, “oh, is art too cliche for PIQ 2?” … How do you recommend students parse that?
Mary Royal: That's a great question.
One of my favorite parts about working as an essay specialist with ILUMIN is getting to know the student, and so through your meetings with your essay specialist, you'll talk about what you've done, and how you've spent your time, what your passion is.
Your essay specialist is just meeting you, and so they may see things about you, or they may ask questions and dig deeper into an area that you haven't explored yet. You may have done some amazing things that you haven't been able to put pen to paper on just yet.
And so, through these conversations with your essay specialist, I think that what really rises to the top is what makes you unique. By the time you're writing these essays, so much of what your content is is already done. You've already been in these clubs, you've already been on that team, right? You've already done that volunteering, and it's up to us to help you creatively present this material so that you really showcase yourself in the PIQs, and we can help you discern what goes on the activity list versus the PIQs.
But in terms of being too cliche, we're representing you! We're representing you, so what you did—well, you're not cliche. What you did, we just want to bring it to the forefront and help you present it in a way that really showcases your resume.
Anna Lu: Something that may seem very cliche to you, I think, at the heart of it—especially if you're working with an essay specialist or an expert—you're really able to draw out what makes it more unique to you. So even something that's very… that you might think is very common, could be very unique to you at the heart of it.
All right, we have a question about, kind of—we touched upon this as well, but—how recent does something have to be to be able to write about it in your UC PIQ? Is it really only high school? What if you connect it back to, you know, things that are more lifelong interests or lifelong personality traits?
Kyra Jee: I like that question, because I suspect that whoever answered it has been doing a cool activity for a long time. Like, maybe you've been in martial arts since you were in elementary school, or maybe it was in seventh grade that you realized your passion for robotics on the baby team, and then you went to high school and did more robotics. So there's a question of, is it okay to mention that I've been doing this for longer than high school?
In which case, the answer is yes! Of course you can mention that you've had a longer relationship with the topic than just in high school.
But generally, with those activities, if there have been more recent milestones that you've hit, I would say it's more important to give us the high school milestones than it is to give us the elementary or middle school milestones.
So… for example, if we were looking at… let's call it the PIQ 3 for the greatest talent or skill, that asks you to describe how you've demonstrated your interest in it over time. If we were going to do this essay on a martial arts commitment, and you've been doing it since elementary or middle school, you can definitely say in your thesis or in your first paragraph, like, “in the 7 years that I have been attending karate at my studio, I have had opportunities to compete nationally, to help train younger members of my studio who are just coming in for the first time, and to practice my artistry.”
So, in that example, you are able to say, “I've been doing this for 7 years, it's been longer than just high school,” but in your three paragraphs, or your three anecdotes, maybe you can talk to us a little bit about what you are proudest of, or what you've spent the most time on since going to high school itself.
Anna Lu: And then, kind of branching into that, sort of this, how to handle this word economy—is it worthwhile adding the inciting incident, as it were, or, like, the moment of discovery in your essay?
Mary Royal: I've had students find creative ways to weave that into their essay. So… for example, let's say you play a musical instrument, and the majority of your essay is about a major accomplishment, maybe instructing others, things you're doing now, things that are very current, right?
I had a student once say that as she was instructing younger students in this instrument, she remembered walking in with her pink shoes, with white ribbons on, and feeling so proud of herself for mastering Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and she wants this girl to have that same feeling of accomplishment.
And so that was a really creative way to frame that you've been doing this ever since you wore pink shoes with little white ribbons on them, and trying to instill that sense of pride in people today. And I liked that, because it took it all the way back to when she was little, and kind of her inciting incident.
Anna Lu: That’s a really lovely story. Sorry, go on.
Kyra Jee: I would… And I would append onto this good example that I like that anchor of a specific experience; I would probably keep it to just a sentence. If we get too deep into our imagery, we might lose the opportunity to hit some of our deeper resume-related items and kind of be able to talk about different aspects of our experience if there is too much imagery, so I'd be very careful with it just at the beginning of your inciting incident.
Anna Lu: We have sort of a follow-up question! So although we did touch upon this, “wouldn't an admissions officer want to read about something vastly different? For example, an essay on construction as an educational opportunity, rather than just yet another essay on club leadership?”
Kyra Jee: That's cool! I would love to… well, I would love to read an essay on construction.
I'll also give the context as we talk about more things that are cliche or not cliche, to just say that I… for us at ILUMIN, we work with maybe 250 to 300 students a year, and we've… and almost all of them are writing UC Personal Insight Questions, as a company that's based in California, and a lot of our students are California kids writing to the UCs. So, we've seen a lot of UC PIQs.
I would say, with that regard that I would… I would say that this is, again, a question that it does depend on the rest of your application. If you feel like, of your 20 activity list items, there are immediately a few of them that stand out to you as more important to you, or that you have spent a longer time with, then follow your instinct, and those should probably be your PIQs, because you're going to write about them for 350 words, and they will carry the weight of being in those essays.
But if you are maybe saying, “I have 10 great things I'd like to write about; four of them are clubs, two of them are sports, one of them is a leadership role, and one is a job at a construction site.” Then maybe you will have a chance to pick and choose from those activities, like, what you feel is the most memorable or the most interesting collection of four.
So, if you were asking me to guide two different students who might be asking me that same question, I would probably want to look at their resume first before assessing them. But if I was just talking to one kiddo, and one kiddo was asking me, “should I write two essays about two different clubs, or maybe, like, one club, and then one completely different activity,” that might be a good case for the totally different activity, so that you can show a different side of yourself throughout your four PIQs.
Anna Lu: We do have 4 different prompts to choose from, so there's a lot of stuff to cover with that.
We have a question: “A consultant expert on the UCs stated that the applications can be seen by more than a single application. Is this true for only the majors, or is it true for other aspects of the application, and which ones?”
I'm thinking this might be in concern to being seen across different UCs.
Kyra Jee: That's my interpretation of your question, too, here in the chat.
So, if your question is, “Can more than one campus see the application?” Then the answer is yes. So, your essays are all going to be identical when you submit them. Your activities list will all be identical. There is no “Dear UC Berkeley” in your essay. There is no “Why us, UC Santa Cruz?” It's just, “who are you, and what are some of the things that you've been part of?”
So your grades, your transcripts, your test scores, all of those things go to the UCs. And all of the UCs have a slightly different way that they read applications, they have different institutional priorities, they… I think they might have different software, too, in just how they organize some things on the back end, but as far as your part for what you are submitting, that will all be the same—
—with the exception of a couple of very specific programs. So, if anyone has heard of UC Santa Barbara's College of Creative Studies, which is a beautiful, very interdisciplinary rad program at UCSB, that application does have a separate set of essays if you are applying to those, and those would only go to UC Santa Barbara's College of Creative Studies program.
Similarly, I think UC Merced is offering a BSMD program that also has separate application essays, and for those very unique opportunities, there might be individualism—but generally speaking, same activities, same essays, same majors.
Anna Lu: Alright, we have another question of… I guess this is, again, I'm going to emphasize, for the UC PIQs in particular, because again, the essays are very different approach-wise, but what are we trying to show the most in these essays? Is it activities, values, or personality?
Mary Royal: I never want to leave your personality out, because I think that's so valuable. We don't want something that reads as over-sterilized, that just leaves you out completely, right?
In terms of what we are trying to showcase, we definitely want—among the four PIQs—we want something that focuses on your intended major. We want something that focuses on leadership. And we want something that focuses on your impact to your community.
Through discussing the high points on your resume with your essay specialist, generally, these three things will rise to the top. And if they don't, we can help pull them out through conversation, and bring certain aspects of your amazing accomplishments to the top, and help match them to various PIQs.
But, by and large, we want those three things: major, leadership, your impact on your community.
Kyra Jee: I completely agree with all of that, 120%.
I would also say, and I really liked the wording of your question, which was “values or resume or personality.” I would call it showing values in action. So, it's what… it's not just, “I got first place, I'm amazing.” It's: “through my dedication to the careful craft of the bass guitar, this is how I show that determination over time, or this is how I show my creativity over time.”
So, I would call it values in action.
Anna Lu: It's not really a zero-sum game. I think all these parts will show up in a good essay.
Another question about how one can deal with essay-writing fatigue: so, the feeling that we can't produce or write anymore, how to stay motivated to continue to revise and edit—perhaps a form of writer's block, as it were.
Mary Royal: That question is so real. That is just the realest question. And the closer you get to your submission deadline, or scholarship deadline, or graduation date, that fatigue is just gonna set in.
So my advice to students—depending on the student, of course, right—my advice is to move away from it. Just set it down, move away from it. I'm working with a client who has already told me they're gonna get back to me in 2 weeks. They've already said, like, “I've put so much towards this already, let's get back together in two weeks, because I need to step away and then revisit it,” and I completely respect that. Go do something fun, right?
But also, I think that through this, your four PIQs are gonna just be so unique, they're gonna be so different from each other, ideally, right? They might have a little common thread, but we want four different topics.
I think that through discussing this with your essay specialist, and just through looking forward to your weekly meetings or biweekly meetings, you can help preserve some of that energy.
To the moms and dads out there listening, I think sometimes not asking about their essays helps relieve some essay fatigue—I'm trying to find such a beautiful, gentle way to say that, but I think sometimes easing up on the pressure at the kitchen table, just letting that space be can help relieve the essay fatigue. I might be wrong!
Kyra Jee: Oh, I think that might resonate with some of our kiddos. Sorry, my grown-up seniors in high school.
I will also throw in, along with taking some time to breathe, and know that if you're starting now… I also say, I think starting in the summer is really great, because it doesn't mean you have to work from 8 to 5 on your essays every day from June to December.
Starting early, doing that activity of opportunities and obstacles, chatting about it with your essay specialist, and then walking away to give yourself a couple days of breathing room means you have the time where you can afford to do that.
If you're starting in November, you might not have as much time to air the ideas and let them percolate. You might have to… you might feel like you have to go, go, go. And so, I think if you start in summer, it's good to take advantage of the open time, because you can do it a little bit more slowly than you would, perhaps, during the school year.
And then also, my favorite two ways to avoid essay burnout when I still want my students to get something done is: work on your activities list, which also will be submitted, but is not an essay, so there is less creativity involved in figuring out how to talk about your activities, but it still needs to get done.
And also, print out your essay on paper, grab a pen, and just start revising! I think that a lot of—especially with the SAT and the ACT going online, and sometimes our AP essays also going digital and things like that—we're spending less time with pen and paper, and you can kind of shock your brain into coming to new realizations, or connecting lines you weren't expecting, or finding a good way to swap paragraphs on paper that you just might not be able to do as easily on the computer.
Anna Lu: Alright, just a couple more questions while we still have time for that. Thank you so much for the questions so far, as well. You guys have great questions.
“Would you suggest writing the UC PIQ first, or the personal statement?” I don't know if there's a straightforward answer to this, but if you have any thoughts on the subject…
Kyra Jee: That's a fun question! Hmm. Okay, I have a practical answer, and then I have a writerly answer.
So, I guess one practical question is, if you're not applying to many schools that use the Common App, then it's not a bad idea to start with your UC PIQs, because there's four of them, and you know there's up to 9 schools that will be asking for them. And then, by contrast, if you're only applying to 2 of the UCs, it might be worthwhile to give yourself more time to think about the Common App.
So that's my pragmatic answer, but maybe I'll ask Mary for more of our holistic social-emotional answer. What do you think about this question?
Mary Royal: As always, I go back to the student.
I've worked with students before who are poetic and beautifully creative writers, so whenever they began this process, they wrote their Common App essay or their personal statement, and they felt great about it. And it was just, like, so quirky and unique and represented them so well, that at our first meeting, they already had that essay loaded into our Google Drive together, because they wanted me to read it as my way of getting to know them, and so that I could see their natural writing style, so that I could help coach them towards the appropriate PIQ writing style. It helped us kind of, add some bumpers in the gutters, in other words, so that I could see her poetically.
So I think go towards what you feel is natural.
But I really love what Kyra said: while you have that energy before the fatigue kicks in, right? Pack a big punch, and go where the money is. If you're applying to mostly UC schools, then knock those PIQs out while you have the fresh energy.
Anna Lu: All right. Well, we're almost running out of time, so I do just want to go ahead and go into… someone asked, “is Essay Specialist, or having an essay specialist, a separate service that ILUMIN provides?”
Kyra Jee: It is separate, although on the back end, we all work together pretty closely. But, ILUMIN Education, we offer a few different types of support to students who are navigating their application process.
So, on the one hand, if you feel like you would like help with every aspect: figuring out your first choice major, or what some other alternatives might be, building your college list and making sure it's balanced from reach to target to safety, mapping out your early decision and your early action and your ED2 and all of these different plans, looking at merit aid, financial aid, all of these different things—that would be our more holistic admissions package, which, if you're curious about, you can reach out to us after the webinar, and we'd be happy to talk more about it.
And… that does include absolutely everything that we've talked about today on essays, and it just also is all of these other different components. Also, test score advising, letters of recommendation—it all goes with admissions.
If you feel like, “I know what I want to major in. I have a pretty good idea what my college list is. The piece I do not quite know about is how to translate my activities through my essays to my readers”—that would be hourly essay consulting, which is what Mary and I have been talking about so far.
So, both cases, you would be paired one-on-one with a mentor from ILUMIN Education to meet with you over Zoom, to take a look at essays with you over Google Drive, to help you figure out how to tell your story amidst all of these beautiful possible permutations of what your application might look like. The difference is just in what parts of the application we focus on together.
Anna Lu: All right, and with that, thank you so much for coming through, everybody! I know we didn't get to get to all the different questions, but, this will be… if you want to look at any of the slides’ information, all of this will be uploaded on our YouTube channel and also sent out to all you lovely participants.
And also, if you have any questions about things, please feel free to reach out. Contact us, if it's essay-related at essays@ilumineducation.com. [If it’s] general college admissions-related, feel free to reach out—look at our website, we have also info@ilumineducation.com, and we will be happy to talk to you for general coaching and admissions questions.
We also offer free consultations, so you can even ask questions that are very specific to your own personal student. And you will have a one-on-one conversation with that.
But thank you so much for coming through! All right.
Kyra Jee: Thanks so much, everybody!
Anna Lu: Have a great one! Bye.