UC APPLICATION PROMPT EDUCATION BARRIER
Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.
Things to consider: An educational opportunity can be anything that has added value to your educational experience and better prepared you for college. For example, participation in an honors or academic enrichment program, or enrollment in an academy that's geared toward an occupation or a major, or taking advanced courses that interest you - just to name a few.
If you choose to write about educational barriers you've faced, how did you overcome or strive to overcome them? What personal characteristics or skills did you call on to overcome this challenge? How did overcoming this barrier help shape who are you today?
I am about 100 words over, I think I went into too mmuch depth about my school, or what should I delete and what can I add to clarify and answer the topic better.
My mother and father never completed college because my mother was pregnant at a young age and they both had to drop out in order to support our family.
Because my parents never went to college, nor did my grandparents and so on, it was difficult for me to grasp the importance of getting a college degree. And it was even more difficult understanding the steps necessary to achieve one. I never did well in school or took it seriously because it was never expected of me to do so.
As I finished freshman year the reality of life after high school began to hit me. With a society revolving around a college degree I understood that I had to break this curse (of no college)?, and prove to my family how an education is important to succeed in life and achieve my goals.
After my freshman year I discovered I was ranked 93 among 610 students. Although this is not too bad considering my slack in school, it opened up my eyes about the importance of every class and assignment. I became more involved in school and started caring about my academics, and class rank.
Immediately I signed up for my first AP class, World History, during sophomore year. As the year went on, several of my classmates began to drop left and right. My own grade was discouraging as I struggled to adjust to the rigor of AP. I had not learned how to study, take notes orrrrrr-----. At the end of the first semester i finished with an 80. Despite being disappointed in myself, I decided to try even harder the next semester. I began to refine my academic abilities by going back to the basics. By the end of the year, my hard work pushed me to finish off the last semester with a 94. I really enjoyed the rigor of AP courses and I decided to challenge myself even more junior year and signed up for AP Biology, Statistics, English, and US History. I became really dedicated to school whilst juggling a job, and multiple extracurricular activities and organizations.
At the end of my Junior Year, I was proud to see that my hard work and dedication really paid off and I am now ranked 18 of my peers.
I believe that my parents not having a thorough education really encouraged me to do the opposite and create a pathway for myself. Although I was able to overcome the difficult task of achieving high school the challenge is still with me today as I go through the college application process. It is a rocky journey without having someone to talk to daily or ask advice at home as many fortunate students do. But this has taught me how to be independent and search for many different resources to fill the gap of under-educated parentsI feel like you should get to the point of your essay faster in the beginning and summarize the part about your parents into one sentence. The voice of the essay seems a bit vague, and maybe you should clarify what you are really trying to aim for. Like I can't really seem to understand WHAT your educational barrier is. I would say to follow this layout: (You want to have the focus of your essay be you and NOT your parents)
1. Because of the lack of education my parents received, they never seemed to support me on my academic journey.
2. Go ahead and talk about some of your struggles, not too much maybe a paragraph to a little more than a paragraph
3. Talk about how you overcame it, and how your parents felt about education
4. What you learned from this barrier
I would push your barrier from saying how your parents disapprove education to saying how no one supports you/ encourage you to go this path
hope this helps a bit
What is the word count?
Also I agree with the person above me, I think you have to be very careful as to not let the focus of your essay drift to your parents.
Before you talk about your family, I think you need to talk about yourself first. Maybe start off with a sentence about how you were never a school person before or something along those lines. Those sentences about your family can be condensed into one paragraph.
I suggest going a bit more in depth with what made you more serious about school. I'm not sure if mentioning your rank is necessary. Only because I feel like this aspect of your essay should be more fleshed out with possibly a short anecdote?
I'm not too sure what the education barrier is exactly? Make that more clear and maybe mention it at the beginning of the essay. Also, I would work a bit more on the conclusion to make it stronger.
"As the year went on, several ..." could be changed to "Though many of my peers dropped out of the rigorous class, I managed to remain strong...." Maybe something along those lines.
The sentences about your parents and grandparents never going to college could really be summed up if you're trying to be within the word count. "I would be a first generation college student" would be good enough tbh.
Sorry if I sounded harsh but hopefully some of this helped!
