I’ve Read Thousands of UC Berkeley Essays and Here's What Stands Out

What an admissions reader looks for in personal statements and supplemental essays.

Margaret Anderson has read applications for UC Berkeley for two admissions cycles and counting, including thousands of Personal Insight Questions. She also helps Admissions Angle’s students conceptualize and refine personal statements and supplemental essays.

When a student hits “send” on their UC Berkeley application on or before Nov. 30, 2026, they, and the parents who helped them get there, might not know that their application has just become a singular point in a spreadsheet of data. In last year’s application cycle, UC Berkeley received over 126,000 applications and extended offers to over 14,000 students, not including transfer applications.

One of over 126,000, a number that can feel impersonal, even bleak. How do admissions officers actually take the time to get to know each applicant well enough, let alone fairly? With your student buoyed in an ultracompetitive sea of talent, most parents might be justly concerned with what goes on behind the scenes.

Rest assured, at UC Berkeley, your beloved little data point is handled with the utmost care. Every year, the admissions staff trains a large number of application readers for a massive community effort in which each application is read at least twice. That might not be the case everywhere, since some schools handle a high volume of applications differently, using things like a GPA cutoff to narrow the pool early.

The admissions process at UC Berkeley is designed to build up each student and assume their best intentions, an energy that echoes the university’s founding motto, Fiat Lux, and its stated duty to be a beacon of opportunity for promising young minds.

Berkeley's application readers deeply respect the accomplishments of competitive applicants alongside the four years of discipline that got them here. No admissions officer sets out to crush dreams, and, in my experience, that’s simply not how admissions works at Berkeley. Context-specific metrics, cultural sensitivity, community involvement and academic excellence are among the values ingrained in its admissions methods, even while handling tens of thousands of applications each year.

For the past two application cycles, I have had the honor of being part of the passionate Berkeley admissions team and have read more than 3,300 student applications. Given there are four Personal Insight Questions, what the UC system calls college essays, you can do the math: I’ve evaluated more than 13,200 personal statements. Many students and parents are unsure what it takes to craft a UC essay set that lands well with Berkeley admissions readers. Here I offer a few barometers for approaching personal statements and supplemental essays.

Tip 1: Don’t try to be original; just be yourself

Every application cycle has its trends. In my two years reading applications, I’ve seen no shortage of essays about solving a Rubik’s Cube. Whether inspired by the nerdy joy of solving puzzles or by real competitive cubing, the subject and theme varied, but the cube remained the thread. In China, where I read a large volume of applications, a wave of young women wrote about launching sanitary pad initiatives at their schools, aiming to bring free menstrual supplies to bathroom stalls and reduce the stigma around periods.

Your natural, parental instinct here might be twofold: perhaps a bit impressed with the Chinese applicant pool, and a bit fearful about essay fads in general. If your gut reaction was "Oh no, how do I make sure my kid doesn't lean into an essay fad? They need to stand out!", try not to think this way. College admissions processes don’t work like that. At no point in UC Berkeley’s admissions evaluation is anyone sitting down to compare one New York student’s environmental awareness campaign about the fast fashion industry to a Connecticut student who ran something similar.

Attempting to plan how your student can prove themselves to be truly original in this process would drive you a little crazy, because it’s impossible. High schoolers are still teens, navigating many of the same day-to-day realities that come with growing up.

I can’t count the number of earnest students who have dramatically declared, “Seriously, nothing interesting has ever happened to me. I have nothing to write about!” To students and parents: It’s not about having a unique experience. It’s about being yourself. Every parent knows their child is full of contradictions, with many talents and personality intricacies. The college admissions teams know this, too. Admissions is mostly gauging who filled out the applications correctly, and whose accomplishments and raw academic stats indicate who is likely to be a successful, active community member on campus.

For this reason, our New York student’s fast-fashion campaign wouldn’t be picked apart and compared to the Connecticut student’s. Admissions would see the campaign within the constellation that is their whole admissions package and whole person: effort situated within many academic, social, school and familial circumstances. Such context is gleaned through a candidate’s personal information, extracurricular activities, other essays and academic transcripts. These varied backdrops, and the relationships between accomplishments, give texture and humanity to an application. They will all inform their fast-fashion campaign and bring it to life. Other students’ accomplishments and essays won’t do that.

No two students will say the same exact thing about their lives, even when they’ve navigated many of the same day-to-day realities. Just like a Rubik’s Cube has millions of multicolored permutations and manipulations, a student could take that cube in nearly any direction. What matters to the admissions officer is the student’s individual self-analysis and accomplishments on their own terms. Be yourself and trust your innate voice. Write about what you are passionate about, because that joy shines through.

Tip 2: Write multiple drafts. Then write more.

In any given essay writing season, the minimum number of drafts might be around four. In a high-touch setting like Admissions Angle, there might be 20. As an admissions reader who has reviewed thousands of essays, it’s usually clear how many drafts a student wrote before their essay got to me.

Some cues are easy to spot: loose, unedited sentences that don’t shape into real structure, points that get lost along the way, lines that feel rushed or thrown together, word choices that fall flat, transitions that don't hold ideas together and accomplishments rehashed straight from the resume.

The student’s concept might be clear, but the execution falls short of it. I feel genuine disappointment for the applicant when I read an essay that’s obviously a first or second draft, or when I can tell I’m the first person other than the student to read it. They haven’t put in the work to make the essay good enough to strengthen their application, and the essay becomes a liability rather than an asset.

On the other hand, I get excited when I can tell an essay has been through many stages of revision. It has likely been looked over by parents, teachers, academic advisors and peers. The prose is so tight it could be published. The writing sings across the page. The student has totally maximized the opportunity to share who they are. This is when I’m proud of them, and know they have a real chance at admission.

The takeaway is simple: students should write, rewrite and write again. The first few drafts are for figuring out what to say. Then, tighten the narrative and curate the details while an essay theme develops alongside it. In the later stages of drafting, polish the whole essay and make sure every sentence pulls its weight. After four years of high school's competitive grind, don't waste the opportunity with careless errors or a slack approach to the process. Have many eyes on the drafts. Make it a community project. A broader audience reduces errors, catches blind spots and makes the essay more relatable.

Tip 3: Factor in speed while considering essay topic and style

Because Berkeley draws one of the largest applicant pools in the UC system, its admissions evaluators read each application carefully, but quickly. This means the essays your student spent months crafting are likely read in a matter of minutes.

For this reason, I encourage you to think of the modern college essay a bit like scrolling through TikTok or Instagram Reels. Admissions officers are moving through essays at lightning speed, just as anyone might speed through 50 reels in a given sitting. Speed crucially informs style. What hook will hold an admissions officer’s attention? What makes them lock in? What makes someone stop and re-read mid-scroll? Usually, it comes down to one clear, specific detail rendered so vividly the reader can't breeze past it.

Here’s one thing I can tell you: if you’re bored writing it, I, the admissions reviewer, am probably bored reading it. But if you love your topic and feel genuinely plugged in, that energy is going to come through regardless of time constraints.

Ask your student to have peers and family members read the essay quickly, noting any points where their attention dipped or they accidentally skimmed. Writing conventions that hold attention include vivid verbs, imagery and sensory details. You can strategize where you place those things so that as the eye flows over the prose, there is a built-in attention map: a well-placed verb in line one, a vivid visual in line three, an emotional beat in line five and so on. This advice applies especially to large schools with a high volume of applicants.

Remember your typical admissions officer is likely highly educated. Quick shifts between highbrow and lowbrow themes, allusions or humor can be a great tactic to break up monotony. Four essays in a row centered on school, after I’ve already read your transcript and conducted extracurricular review, might land as repetitive or as a missed opportunity to showcase who else you are. Say we have five reels: Science Olympiad, American Invitational Mathematics Examination, late-night study sessions, a personal coding project and the horror of getting a C once. That reads as boring and repetitive; we already know this student is academically driven.

To have a chance at a T20 school, you likely already have some nerdy qualities, and those will be on full display in your transcript. Compare that academic sequence to another: a reel about your community kitten sanctuary, a caretaking routine with an elderly grandmother, scoring the winning soccer goal and standing up to your strict father. That sequence is carefully curated with details that make up a real life, punctuated with pops of accomplishment. The kitten sanctuary shows the grit it takes to start a nonprofit, the grandmother shows a persistent routine of care, the soccer goal shows talent and standing up to your father shows what it looks like to overcome adversity. It's more playful and more fun than a transcript alone. Don't waste the opportunity to showcase your personality and achievements by choosing repetitive or overly academic topics.

Tip 4: Expand or explore new sides of yourself

Because the process is holistic, admissions officers want to learn everything they can about a candidate from every part of an application. The extracurricular section should not be dryly repeated anywhere else. Doing so wastes a chance to say something new.

The UCs give applicants 350 characters per activity explanation, compared with the Common App’s 150. That extra space means the extracurricular section carries more weight in a UC application, so adjust accordingly: never repeat an achievement across sections. You would be surprised how often this happens. It wastes space that could go toward something admissions hasn’t seen yet.

Build on your accomplishment only if it is significant and you have a great deal more to say about it. Say you started a math club and have committed five hours a week to it since ninth grade. Or say you are an Olympic athlete, or that you founded a literary magazine at your school. Tell us more. Expand on what you wrote in your extracurricular section, or share an anecdote about that activity that reveals something insightful about you. For example, you and your co-president had an ethical disagreement about AI, so you held a roundtable with your writers and collectively devised an ethical guide through a series of Socratic discussions. Now we know several things about you: you are a real leader with creative solutions to conflict, and you are thoughtful and collaborative. We get the concrete accomplishments on your literary magazine from the EC section, published bimonthly, led a team of 30, interviewed peers, designed a digital publication, etc.

Closing thought: Are essays a relic of the past?

Since the American college admissions process was established in the 1700s and 1800s, many more systems of communication have emerged beyond the essay. Now we have reels, video, voice notes and photos. There are so many more ways we could theoretically communicate with admissions officers, and some schools are already adapting. Washington University in St. Louis, for example, offers a video supplement, a 90-second window into who the student is.

For now, though, the vast majority of schools continue to employ the good old-fashioned essay. And there is something to be said for that. The essay remains one of the few places in an application where a student gets to plan methodically, make deliberate choices and speak entirely in their own voice. Master it, and it becomes something powerful to wield, rather than an obstacle. We have to work within this system, and for students who take the essay seriously, it’s a real opportunity.

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