Hi everyone. I'm applying to the UCs and would like some help on my first prompt
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
When I was much younger, I was fascinated with computers and other electronics. I played outside with all the other children, but I was also quite content to stay inside and tinker with a computer with my father. I always thought computers would be a nice hobby, but in middle school that all changed.
Sometime around seventh or eighth grade I fell in love with computers. I was in a class to prepare for a mathematics competition, MathCounts. We had the fancy, new TI-84+ Silver Edition calculators, of which I had never seen anything like. My friends showed me the programming function of the calculator and I was immediately enthralled.
Not too long after I was creating basic sentence generators on my calculator. From there I asked my father and grandfather more about computers and programming them. We looked around the library and on the internet, and found the Basic and C++ languages for download. My grandfather mailed me some books for coding in each language which I used to expand my knowledge of these languages.
When I reached high school I chose to leave the majority of my friends and go to the technology magnet school in Las Vegas, A-Tech. The school had a great computer programming track and I loved it. Taking a course with people who wanted the same thing I did and who were just as knowledgeable as I made me more enamored with computer science than before.
When I moved to Brentwood, a San Francisco suburb, there was no computer science available to take right away. I kept myself 'in practice' by continuing to code in my free time. The beginning of my junior year I chose to take classes in HTML and Visual BASIC. I really enjoyed both and decided to graduate high school with a certificate saying I completed many courses in the Computer Science and Engineering field.
Growing up in the Age of Technology has given the world as a whole, and me, many advantages. I hope to see computers play a more powerful role in the world. I hope to help become a part of this Age of Technology by studying Computer Science and Engineering in the UC system.
This is a strong essay, but it seems written more on the topic of "why do you want to study computer science." Technically it meets the prompt requirements, but the reader doesn't know that much about your background after finishing the essay, only that you love computers and have gone out of your way to learn more about them. This is a good thing to tell the admissions people, but I rather suspect you could use this essay for another prompt, and write a new one on this topic that would highlight some other set of good qualities about you.
well..just like Kerfuffin said, i think u should focus on "what i have done for this major" instead of "why..."
also, i think this may be a little short?? so why dont u just add something more, and using this one as the intro??
anyway,its all my personal suggestion...
