The document provides prompts to help generate ideas for a UC personal statement essay. It asks the writer to identify a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution, or experience and then write a short anecdote for each. The prompts are meant to illustrate the writer's qualities and how they relate to who they are as a person.

1. The UC personal statement prompt #2 states, "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?"
Respond to each of the following prompts to generate fodder for your essay:
Personal Quality: Identify one important quality about yourself. For example, you might be
compassionate, honorable, kind, or a really great friend. After you identify your quality, write an
anecdote (tell a short story) that illustrates what you mean.
Talent: this could be athletic, musical, or intellectual. After you settle on your greatest talent, tell
a short story that illustrates when this talent became obvious to you or others.
Accomplishment; What goal have you reached in your life? Are you an Eagle scout? a black
belt? What have you worked at hard to achieve? Once you figure it out, tell a short story about
the journey to that achievement and how you felt when you finally reached your goal.
Contribution: What have you done for others? This could be a family, school, or community
contribution. Are you in student government? Did you family have an emergency or situation
where your help was very important? Have you done volunteer work for the community? Once
you have identified your contribution, write an anecdote about what you did and how you felt
about it.
Important Experience: Have you had an important experience in your life? Think about
moments of great realization; they often follow important experiences. This could be a
relationship experience, an illness or injury, and encounter with a stranger, or a moment on an
athletic field. Any time you said to yourself ” wow, I won’t do that again” or “Hey, I totally get
this now” is a potential experience to investigate. Once you figure out which one to write about,
do so. Make sure to include your epiphany.