Struggling to answer UBC personal profile prompts because of my personal circumstance.

UBC application essay

Hi Everyone.
I'm in my 30's and applying to UBC as a mature student. The personal profile prompts are proving more difficult than I anticipated. Long story short, I grew up in a culture that is strongly against women pursuing education beyond levels of simple reading and writing. When I was 16, I was taken out of school to help raise my family. At the time, I could hardly speak English. I continued learning by reading books, newspapers etc.

When I turned 18, I took some courses in a small community college to gain employment and got into finance and banking and progressed fairly well in my career without ever finishing high school. Last year, I enrolled in the Adult graduation program ( adult Dogwood) and recently graduated from high school with an average A. Now that I'm trying to apply to universities, I feel like I haven't done any extracurricular activities or achieved anything beyond working full time to help my family for the last 16 years. I was wondering if anyone else has ever been in the same situation, especially as a mature student? What do I write about? How do I explain concisely in 250 words or less?

Any tips or advice would be appreciated.

Cheers

Consider the individual prompt requirements. Outline what you think is applicable information per prompt, based on your existing social and family experiences. You may just surprise yourself and find that you actually have applicable experiences in life. Had you supplied a list of the prompts you have to respond to, I would have been able to somehow help you direct your personal experiences with the prompt requirements. I am afraid you will have to do that yourself now. Just remember, the older you are, the more relevant your experiences get. Don't lock yourself into a young adult mindset when responding to the prompts. Find the value in your mature life experiences and spin that into a proper response for each prompt. What you can do is try to write an essay for each prompt, post each essay in an individual thread in this forum, and I will review it then, giving relevant advice for each separately posted essay.

@Holt, Thank you. Really appreciate your response.