If you’ve found yourself at this article, you’ve probably realized that the University of California (UC) application system works a little differently than the Common App system. One of the biggest differences between these two is that where the Common App requests a personal statement, UC schools require you write responses to something called UC PIQs or personal insight questions. In this article, I’ll explain the UC PIQs, walk you through the dos and dont’s of writing them, and break down all eight of the UC PIQs one by one. Let’s get started!
What are UC PIQs?
Personal insight questions, or PIQs for short, are UC system’s way to get to know you on a, well, personal level. On the University of California Admissions website, they recommend imagining UC as a person. If you got a chance to talk to UC herself, what would you tell her? Over the course of answering four PIQs at 350 words each, the UC system imagines that you’ll paint a well-rounded picture, showcasing your greatest strengths and most considerable qualities.
While the Common App personal statement is a place for you to demonstrate your writing abilities and illustrate to an admissions reader why you’d make an exciting new addition to the school’s incoming class, the UC PIQs are designed to be more practical. As we’ll see in the UC PIQ prompts, UC provides its applicant the unique opportunity to demonstrate their personality, ambitions, interests, and achievements without exclusion.
At this point in the application process, you’ll recognize that 350 words may not give you as much space as you’d like to say everything you might want to. This reduced word count, apart from helping the admissions reader get through your application at an accelerated pace, is an exercise in brevity. Admissions readers will only spend a few minutes on your entire application.
How NOT to Approach the UC PIQs
Start by considering the PIQs in the same way you think about the Common App personal statement. Though the writing is meant to be more concise and to the point, all other general rules apply. Where the Common App personal statement has a 650-word cap, so do the PIQs at 350. Once you reach that magic number, you’ll need to have reached a solid conclusion. Do not assume that leaving your admissions reader at a narrative cliffhanger will be to your advantage.
UC asks students to write in their own voice, a sentiment that carries throughout the college admissions process. When writing any supplemental essay, always use your own voice. When admissions readers skim through your prose, they want to get a sense that they’re reading from a confident writer who unquestionably stands behind their words.
That being said, ‘your voice’ is not the one you use to talk to your classmates and friends. The language you use in your PIQs should be free from slang and colloquial language. Keep your voice professional, but don’t write your answer like a research paper either. Contractions, ‘I’ statements, and even the occasional rhetorical question are allowed and encouraged. When reading back your answers, imagine you’re talking to UC personified. Does your writing represent you in a way that you’re proud of?
Topics to avoid for the UC PIQs are the same ones you’d want to avoid for the Common App personal statement. These would be any topics having to do with a story that lacks action or agency, an overdone topic (like preparing for a big performance/game/test), a community service experience you took part in once, or COVID as an educational hurdle.
How to Approach the UC PIQs
Writing a good answer to a PIQ begins with picking the right prompts for you. Ask yourself: What do I want UC to know about me? How do you want to stand out? UC insists that there are no wrong questions to pick, and while it’s perfectly fine to take this at face value, you want to make sure you’re painting the most holistic picture possible with the prompts you select. For example, if you’re writing about your love of computer science for Prompt 6, avoid talking about coding as your creative outlet for Prompt 2. UC is giving you a chance to present yourself from four different angles. Make use of that opportunity!
As mentioned before, brevity is the name of the game when it comes to UC PIQs. While you want to be as to-the-point as possible, it never hurts to take a little time to construct a winning hook for your essay. Similar to the Common App personal statement, beginning the UC PIQs is about getting (and keeping) the reader engaged.
The way to “hook” the reader is to use sensory details to bring a small detail to the surface, make a brief insight, or concoct a sentence that sets the scene for the rest of your story. By utilizing your senses, deferring to the present tense when you can, and trusting your story-telling voice, the hook will draw in your reader. In an effort to leave room for the rest of your essay, limit yourself to 50-ish words for this part.
When writing the answer to the PIQ itself, pay attention to what UC is actually asking you. For example, Prompt 1 asks about leadership. At first glance, you may be tempted to talk about a leadership experience you had, what you learned from being a leader, how you hope to use those skills later in life (hopefully at a UC school!).
However, UC is actually asking how your leadership 1) positively influenced others, 2) helped resolve disputes, or 3) contributed to group efforts over time. Without answering what the UC PIQs are clearly spelling out for you, you start showing signs of poor reading comprehension. Unfortunately, there is no trick as for writing the most compelling answer to UC PIQs, but by starting with understanding the questions, you’re already off to a great start.
After identifying your prompts and understanding exactly what the UC PIQ wants from your response, it’s time to take a deeper look into how you’re going to talk about the topic you picked. The chances are that you’ve had a pretty normal high school experience—and that’s fine! You don’t need to have the most exciting life to write an essay that will keep your admissions reader intrigued.
When you think about the topic in front of you, what traits or characteristics do people usually associate with it? What do they expect? Once you’ve thought about that, try to dive deeper into your understanding of the topic—how is it unique to your personal experience? Why? What makes it so different? These are challenging questions to chew through but will be much easier if you pick the prompts that lend you the chance to go deeper on topics you already spend a lot of time thinking about anyway.
If you’re looking for personalized help selecting the right PIQ prompts for your story, check out our one-on-one essay coaching services or reach out to HelloCollege for a consultation.
Breaking Down the UC PIQs
In this section, I’ll break down the prompts one-by-one, giving general advice on how to tackle them. UC wants to know more about you through these prompts. For that reason, there are no right or wrong prompts to pick and no one knows which ones will work better than you.
1. Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time.
On the surface, this prompt appears to be asking about a formal leadership experience. For example, being a team captain, president of a club, chief fundraiser for an extracurricular event. If any of these titles describe you, please feel free to write on them! If not, it is still perfectly fine to talk about informal leadership, leadership that may not come with the same flashy title.
Consider the idea that you might have been a mentor to an underclassman, a guiding source for a group of unruly little siblings, or the designated leader for a group project that you had for AP Psych. All of these, and hundreds more that I haven’t mentioned, are meaningful leadership experiences that give you the room to talk about everything this UC PIQ is asking.
2. 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.
Similar to Prompt 1, this prompt may appear to be asking about typically creative endeavors: painting, drawing, writing, acting, designing, crocheting, etc. But that doesn’t have to be the case. The prompt invites you to also talk about “problem solving, [and] original and innovative thinking” as well. Consider starting at the very beginning and questioning exactly what “creativity” is. Once you answer that question for yourself, it may become clearer as to whether or not this UC PIQ prompt is for you and what you might write for it if it is.
3. What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?
This talent or skill can be anything. You may be noticing a recurring theme: that all of these prompts are potentially asking for more than they appear to be on a first glance. When this UC PIQ prompt asks you for your greatest talent or skill, they’re not necessarily asking you to brag about it or list all achievements and awards you’ve received because of this ability.
If there are awards and achievements you are itching to mention, please feel free to! This prompt is more so asking about the process behind developing this talent or skill. How can you tell the reader about the work ethic that you put toward the skill or talent? What does the time you put in say about who you are? Why did you put in so much effort? How has that all added to the person you are today?
4. Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.
For the first part of this prompt—educational opportunities—anything is fair game. If you feel it’s worthwhile to talk about AP or honors classes that you have taken that have seriously enhanced your interest in a given subject, led you to want to know more, or set you up for further exploration in higher education or in extracurricular learning, that would be a wonderful idea. Not only does this showcase your curiosity and work ethic, it lets UC see you from a different angle.
For the second half of the prompt—educational barrier—don’t focus too much on the barrier itself. When they ask this question, UC is more interested in the comeback story. What did you do as a result of your barrier and how did it make you stronger? What skills did you develop to combat the barrier?
5. Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?
If your significant challenge that affected your academic achievement is not unique (i.e. COVID and online classes), or cannot be made to sound unique, it may not be worth bringing up. That being said, there are significant challenges that affect your academic achievement that are not themselves academic in nature. A personal challenge—your family being significantly affected by COVID, for example—would be something worth talking about.
Personal challenges can extend to your home life, your social life, and even into your wider community. It can also be a challenge that you’re currently fighting your way through. Regardless of the challenge that you face, be sure to focus on the comeback. Share with the reader how the challenge affected you for less than half of the essay, and make sure you’re using as much room as possible to highlight how the challenge pushed you to grow. In what ways did the challenge force you to develop new skills? What did you learn?
6. Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.
It’s important to realize here that they’re asking how you furthered your interest inside and/or outside the classroom. If you don’t have both, okay! Similar to the past few prompts that we’ve gone through, UC wants to hear more about how you developed your interest, what’s the story behind it? Feel free to talk about the coursework that developed the interest, but get into specifics about what you may have found fascinating.
As for extracurricular involvement, what did your internship/volunteering/tutoring/research teach you about the topic? Are there any other ways you imagine expanding your interest? On the UC website, they invite you to talk about how you might want to further your interest in the subject specifically at UC. This is a perfect opportunity to do some research about specific schools and what opportunities you might want to take advantage of when you get there.
7. What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?
Similar to Prompt 1, adjusting the scale of this prompt is completely up to you. When asked about “how you’ve made your school or your community” a better place, it’s important for you to describe your role in said community first before getting into the particulars of how you created change.
It would be most helpful in this prompt to take a narrative approach; what’s the scene like? Where are you in relation to the scene? What is the problem the school or community is dealing with? What change did you enact to alleviate the problem? What is the result of your actions? It’s also important to consider why you decided to act in the first place. It’s very easy to simply not take action—why did you decide that it was up to you to make the changes that needed to be made?
8. Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?
All of the prompts above, and their limited word count, only allow you to write about one topic at a time for the most part. You might decide to use this prompt as an opportunity to answer an earlier prompt more than once. For example, if you have a deep passion for quantum physics that you detailed for Prompt 6 at the expense of your interest in romantic literature, you might decide to use Prompt 8 to discuss the latter more deeply.
If you feel like you don’t need to answer any other prompts again, this is a perfect opportunity to tout your achievements and accomplishments as much as you’d like. If there is anything you can think of that your application would be incomplete without, feel free to mention it here!
Conclusion
The UC PIQs are an important opportunity to share your voice, values, and experiences with admissions. Approach each question with thought and intention, and you’ll be well on your way to creating a memorable UC application. Good luck!
