Students that are getting ready to transfer to a UC attended the UC personal insight question workshop Sept. 28 where they got a walk-through of what questions to expect and how they should be answered.

Marvelina Graf, counselor at the Transfer Center, shared with students the personal insight questions required for a UC and gave tips on how to answer each.

“The goal for today was to introduce the new personal insight questions that are on the UC applications towards our students, although you can’t submit it until Nov. 1-30. It’s a good timing for students to start brainstorming,” Graf stated.

The personal insight questions allows the university you are applying for to know more about yourself; your life, interests, experiences, ambitions, and inspirations.

It is barely the second-year UC’s have this set of questions, before students would just answer two questions with a total of 1,000 words in which students would get caught up.

With the new set of questions there is one required question every applicant must answer and then choose three other questions of seven additional questions.

Each question must be answered with a maximum of 350 words.

Unlike Cal States, UC’s review GPA but also allows students to include awards, honors, payed work, community involvement, volunteer and personal insight questions which are used for admissions and scholarship process.

“The personal insight questions also allows you to clarify yourself among other students that have your similar records,” shared Graf.

If you are someone that had weak grades or received W’s this is also an opportunity to address if there was any kind of emergency or situation that caused that.

The question every student must answer is: “Please describe how you have prepared for your intended major, including your readiness to succeed in your upper-division courses once you enroll at the university.”

To look at the other 7 additional questions go to ucal.us/personalquestions.

At the end of the presentation, Graf shared some answer examples for students to know what to write and what not to write.

Graf also informed students about the UC Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) which only six schools offer it and its free.

TAG is a way to secure a campus but you are not obligated to attend if you choose not to. The deadline for that is Sept.30.

Oscar Ramirez, French major, is applying for fall 2018 to UCI, UCLA and UCSB and showed up to get further information on what to write for the questions.

“The best thing was the examples because it showed what to write and what not to write,” Ramirez said.

Natalie Orozco, accounting major, “everything was very helpful, I was kind of embarrassed to share some things because I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging like I’m a single mother or I’m a Latina but now I know that’s going to help me because I’m going to be different from other students.”