It's Time to Apply to UC's - Merit Educational Consultants
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It’s Time to Apply to UC’s

You’ve probably been watching your “high-achiever” students scrambling to get in their Early Action and Early Decision applications and thinking you’re lucky you don’t have to deal with all of that stress.  Well, it’s your turn if you’re applying to the California public universities only. 

Start NOW so you don’t become one of the 100,000 students racing to finish their essays and submitting the UC applications over Thanksgiving break.  Besides, wouldn’t it be nice to actually have time to enjoy that turkey and stuffing? 

Every year, I have kids (and their parents) calling me at 5 minutes before midnight on Nov 30th with questions and problems about the application.  The UC applications website https://admissions.universityofcalifornia.edu is now open and accepting online applications.  The deadline is an absolute NOV 30th!

Here are some tips on completing them without stress:

  1. Open the application and fill in all of the personal, family and course information.
  2. Get your unofficial transcript to fill in course titles and grades (A mistake here can cost you admission to the college! Not worth the risk!)
  3. Ask your parents about their job titles, occupations, and college degrees. (You should know this but even my kids didn’t know how to fill this in…)
  4. List your activities and awards (up to 5 in each category) and include descriptive explanations for your awards, extra courses, etc.  You’ll have just 150 characters and abbreviations are fine here.  So put your best foot forward and see what you can write in 150 characters!
  5. Start working on your 2 personal statements.  Both essays together need to be less than 1000 words and no fewer than 250 words for either of them.  Here are the prompts:
  • Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
  • 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?

Make sure your personal statements answer the specific prompts.  Tell a story to demonstrate your skills, talents, and passion. Ask someone to edit this for you but don’t let them write it or over polish it for you.  It needs to be your voice – not a 50-something’s vision! Admissions officers can tell when parents or others write your essays, so don’t let them! These are difficult to write so start early.

Don’t send your transcripts unless the admissions office requests them. Send your SAT or ACT scores by the end of Dec.  You can still take a Dec test and have them sent directly to the UC admissions office.

Don’t send resumes, letters of recommendation, brochures, artwork, or anything to the admissions offices unless you are specifically asked to do so. 

Definitely don’t send cookies..this will not help your application, and may even hurt it.

Submit this application online before Nov 30th to avoid system crashes and slow processing time. You’ll need a credit card to pay for the application fee for each UC you apply to.

Hope this helps!  Lay out each step and block off time to complete each task.  You’ll very quickly see why you need to get started now.  Good luck!