“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?”
How your child behaves under real pressure — and it explicitly asks for the academic link.
Three things worth noticing before you say anything — and one rule: notice them out loud as questions, not corrections.
Be careful with this one. Many students reach for the heaviest thing that has happened in their family. Before you write that essay, think hard about three things: it can end up being all about another person instead of about you, the applicant; it can read as overly dramatic; and it can leave a reader unsure whether you are through it yet. Admissions officers are, fairly or not, thinking about whether a campus is the right next step right now.
Many students write about a learning difference and the study techniques and tutors they used to get around it. Others write about an experience with prejudice, racism, or bullying — including online.
One of the strongest I have read was not a tragedy at all: a student who ran into an ethical problem on a service trip, sat with how unsettling it was, and found her way to closure. A challenge can be intellectual or moral. It does not have to be a catastrophe.
Do not skip the last sentence of the prompt. UC asks how it affected your academic achievement. If you never answer that, you have answered a different question.
And whatever they write: SHOW the reader, do not TELL the reader.
The example essays are the part families ask for most, and the part we keep inside the course. Every question gets at least one real student response, with Danielle’s notes on why it landed.
See the course