UC PIQ Mistakes to Avoid

The UC Personal Insight Questions are unique in that they are some of the shorter college essays you may have to write when applying to American universities, but they also give you freedom of choice in what topics you prefer to write about. You can take a look at our previous post to get the best "dos" for PIQs, and today we're diving into the "don'ts".

Rule #1

Many English teachers and writing instructors say, "Show, don't tell!" and while this is good advice for writing a novel, it is not the best for a 350 word one-or-two-paragraph essay. You should show some things, including key sensory details, emotions surrounding an experience, or motivation to do something. However, you have to tell the admissions officers what you learned and why it influenced your educational journey. You should also tell why this experience makes you a good fit for the UC system and your future goals.

Rule #2

Don't try to boil the ocean in one essay. In the Common App, you might write a 600 or more word essay that covers several activities and experiences, but this is not advised for the UC PIQs. Try to limit your mentions of activities or meaningful experiences to 3 per PIQ. An example might be:

• You struggled with anxiety in high school and wanted to help people with similar experiences

• You built an app that makes mindfulness easier to understand for a young audience

• You distributed the app through various exposure events and online marketing and learned about how you want to major in communications to help people

  
  

These are three cohesive events that form a narrative. You don't want to:

• Start by saying you have anxiety in high school

• Talk about how it started because you moved in middle school

• Introduce all 3 counselors you've seen to treat your anxiety and explain why each was unhelpful in detail

• Give an anecdote about how you saw the Michael Phelps BetterHelp ad and were inspired to make an app

• Talk about the 5 different ways you tried to vibe code the app

• End with a note that "I'm caught between Computer Science and Communications and might double major".

While this might be able to work in a long format, the 350 word count is a hard limit. You need to hit the clearest points and make them into a story that is simple enough for a stranger to understand. Sometimes people try to include random details to seem more conversational or friendly, but the admissions officer is not your friend on a FaceTime call- they are hired staff who read hundreds of these essays in a day. Given their overwhelming workload, the clearest and most concise essays are more likely to stand out in a sea of confusing stories.

Rule #3

The freedom of choice with PIQs can be a student's downfall or winning ticket. The main issue is balancing variety with cohesion. You don't want to repeatedly talk about the same experiences or activities, but you also don't want to seem scattered. The key is shaping the PIQ choices to highlight your values. Author, public speaker, and advocate Brené Brown has a fantastic list of values and a paired exercise here to help you discover your values.

For example, if you value "stewardship" or taking good care of resources or various groups or environments, you can talk about an extracurricular you did the admin and budgeting for, how and why you developed this quality and where you hope it will take you, how economics feels like stewardship in action, and how you used stewardship to overcome financial difficulties in your life. Obviously, you can go into more detail about how stewardship ties into leadership, what lessons you learned along the way, and your future goals. You don't even have to say the same word of you value, but include synonyms or phrases that indicate it as a theme across your PIQs.

Additionally, you can have many personal values but sticking to 3 at most (and having the 4th essay address the most important one you wrote about before) will help your narrative stay cohesive.

Rule #4

Many students write about how they "learned a lot", "discovered themselves", or "became more grateful". These are great things, but everyone has these experiences in life unless they live under a rock. Try to talk about both specific experiences and specific takeaways. Here are some examples:

Generic experiences

• Winning the championship

• Traveling

• Parents getting divorced

• Grandparents or pets passing away

• I work hard in school and study every day

Specific experiences

• Starting an organization or mission to address a problem

• Finding a specific life goal after a big change that not everyone goes through

• Overcoming a legitimate learning disability, extenuating family circumstance, or similar and still being successful

• What you learned from losing or quitting and how you became better and did something else

• Integrating your cultural heritage or other identities into a community in a celebrated way

  
  

A good rule of thumb is that if 40-50 percent of people or more experience something (e.g. divorce, studying for a test, etc.), don't write about it unless you did something majorly impactful because of it. If your parents got divorced and you started a free family therapy clinic in your town, that's amazing! If you were very sad and don't like the change, that's just unfortunate and relatable to people.

The other half of not being generic is the takeaways or what you learned.

Generic takeaways

• I learned a lot

• I am very grateful

• I want to do better next time

• I was sad but now I am happy

• I like winning because it feels nice

• I like volunteering and helping people

Specific takeaways

• I realized how short life is and how I need to make an impact because tomorrow isn't a guarantee

• I had to give up X to attain Y, and even though it hurts, it is worth it

• Becoming a role model younger people look up to is humbling and motivating, and I want to continue this initiative in the future

• I learned X from this setback and it made me better at doing Y

• Representing my people (community, family, etc.) is meaningful to me and motivates what I do

These are not exhaustive lists and everyone's personal experiences will be different, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what to include in your essay to make it as impactful as possible.

The UC PIQs require a delicate balance of things to include and how to describe them, but combining the do's and don'ts of writing them will set you well on your way to PIQ success. If you are ready to start brainstorming PIQ topics or editing your drafts, you can schedule a meeting with one of our mentors today!