These days, the Santa Ana winds have started to blow dry in the mornings and evenings. When this wind blows, the atmosphere in the homes of high school seniors begins to change.

The UC application submission period opened on October 1 and closes on November 30. This is for admission in the fall of 2027.

A child from a family I know asked me a few days ago how many essays they need to write out of the 8. They got confused with the common application essay and mentioned they had already written one that was 650 words long.

The answer is 4. UC freshman applicants choose 4 out of the 8 Personal Insight Questions, abbreviated as PIQ, to answer. It's easier to think of it as four short answers rather than one long essay.

The word limit for each response is 350 words. There is no minimum length. However, being short doesn't necessarily mean it's good; general advice suggests that if it's just short without context, it doesn't hold much meaning.

Also, these 4 responses go to all the UC campuses you are applying to. There are 9 undergraduate campuses, meaning the essays are one set.

Everyone asks the same question here: which questions should you choose to be advantageous?

The official UC page clearly states that all 8 questions are evaluated equally, and choosing a specific question does not provide any advantage or disadvantage.

Honestly, I was a bit skeptical of this statement at first. It's true that the leadership question looks more impressive. I thought that if you weren't a student body president, you might be at a disadvantage.

However, looking at the structure, it makes sense. UC does not require letters of recommendation or interviews for most majors.

SAT or ACT scores are also not used in the admission review. Therefore, aside from transcripts, the only window to show who this student is, is essentially the PIQ.

To summarize the 8 questions briefly, they are: leadership experience, ways to demonstrate creativity, your greatest talent or skill.

Experiences where you seized educational opportunities or overcame educational barriers, your greatest challenges and how you overcame them. Subjects that inspire you.

Things that made your school or community better. The last question asks why you are a good candidate for something not mentioned in your application.

I believe the order in which you choose is important. Don't look at the questions first; start by listing your stories.

Write down the things you've spent the most time on in the last 4 years, your hardest moments, and habits that others don't know about. Then find the questions that fit those stories.

This way, the 4 responses won't overlap. The 8 questions have slightly overlapping themes, so it's common to make the mistake of writing about the same club experience twice.

For example, let's say you have experience working at a grocery store every weekend. Whether you put this in leadership or overcoming challenges depends on what scene you can show. If you trained new employees, that would be leadership, and if working reduced your homework time, that would naturally fit under challenges.

The UC guidance is in the same direction. They advise not to list achievements but to provide specific examples and to write from your perspective.

UC admissions officers have asked to think of these questions as an interview. They want you to think of it as a conversation with the reader.

Therefore, I believe straightforward sentences are better than poetic ones. If you focus on metaphors within the 350-word limit, you'll end up with less space for your actual story. As long as it's clear what happened, what you did, and what changed, that's sufficient.

And I have something I want to say to parents. Feedback is fine, but the responses should be the student's own writing.

UC explicitly states that you must not copy from any source. Essays that contain sentences from parents are quickly recognized by the reader. If a 17-year-old's voice is mixed with a 40-year-old's vocabulary, it becomes obvious.

There's also something easy to overlook just before submission. The official guidance suggests saving the final version as plain text and pasting it to check for any strange symbols or line breaks.

There is also a section for Additional Comments. However, UC has made it clear that this is a place to explain special circumstances, not to write a fifth essay.

They say that grammar or spelling itself is not graded. Still, if there are many mistakes, it disrupts the reading flow, so I recommend reading it out loud at the end.

I really liked the last line on the official page. It states that the PIQ is just one of many evaluation factors and that admission decisions are not made by one person alone.

There are less than 7 weeks until the deadline. If I were you, I would start by making a list of stories this week and finish 4 drafts by early November. I really want to discourage cramming it all in during the Thanksgiving holiday.

Before spending a lot of money on college consulting, read the official page first. It's free and surprisingly helpful.

Which questions did your child choose out of the 8? If there were specific criteria for choosing, please share in the comments.