 UT Austin, you have a fair share of essays, so let's get to it. I am Dr. Josie, this is Write Your Acceptance, thank you so much for joining, make sure you hit that subscribe button. I have worked with students for about 15 years now, seven of which, through Write Your Acceptance, and so I have helped students get into and graduate from Columbia, Michigan, NYU, USC, UC schools, you name it, we've done it. So I know what they are looking for to help you stand out, let's get to it. So for essay one, which is the longest of the Longhorn essays, it is basically the 500 to 700 word essay, the personal essay. Tell us your story, it says. What unique opportunities or challenges have you experienced throughout your high school career that have shaped you, who you are today? So you're applying through Apply Texas or Coalition, and if you have multiple essays on Coalition, great, but maybe you are applying through Apply Texas and you have Common App, the Common Application for other schools. And so you want to think about that main Common App essay or that main Coalition essay as the Apply Texas one. So you should be thinking about how to recycle that main essay, especially if you're talking about kind of foundational dimensions of who you are. So if you're learning, deepening growth, overcoming an obstacle, really showcasing your best self identity, any combination of those and lessons learned and reflection and you have creativity and critical analysis, you should definitely be using most of it, if not all, for this main essay, in my opinion, especially if you have multiple essays to write. So main idea is that you are looking at experiences and obstacles that have shaped you today, right? Sometimes the main essay, especially if you recycle it from Common App or another Coalition school, sometimes that kind of reflection, how the experience or the obstacle that you kind of narrated how it has shaped you, if you don't cover that directly, I would make sure that you have that additional paragraph, especially at the end. For the most part, this is going to be it could you have the space to make it longer than a main Common App essay. So you want to make sure that you are answering that very kind of pivotal question or sub question in the prompt. When there are four short answer questions, they are about 250 to 300 words. So let's break them down so that you have some guidance on how to approach them. So the first prompt is why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first choice major. So this is definitely kind of those academically driven why us supplements. I have a couple of why us essay videos. If you want to kind of grab more information on that, I'll link them above but I have like three. You want to kind of consider this to be a kind of academically driven why us. So it says what is your interest in your specific major, right? So you want to think about naming the specific major the way it's named at the school, right? So at UT. So is it biology? Is it biological sciences? Name it exactly how UT names it. Maybe a couple courses and really get particular with this. I have a lot more information in the why us videos if you want to kind of grab that. Do you want to kind of think about naming a course or two? What are their learning outcomes? Like what will you learn? How will you gain from it? How can you kind of connect it to something you've already done or you started to do and you kind of want to deepen that experience. So really think about how you can bring in UT Austin opportunities and resources and really kind of round out the academic experience that you're seeking to kind of curate and tailor at at UT. So for these types of academic essays, especially when they're kind of on the shorter end, but they still give you some room to breathe. You can kind of consider the two paragraph model. I also mentioned it in subsequent videos because you'll like you can definitely kind of recycle this with the Emery one that they have and even Georgia Tech and they're around the same from a word count perspective. So in case you are applying to a combination of those and those are subsequent videos that are coming right after this one. So you want to think of a potential kind of introductory anecdote. So like a two paragraph kind of template would be or, you know, rough cut would be like an opening anecdote, like an opening story where you are teaching coding to to elementary to middle school kids for your nonprofit or, you know, volunteering somewhere or kind of you in an engineering competition, something that shows you intellectually engaged in the fields that you are applying to and then kind of talk maybe the last line of that paragraph could be kind of connect that to UT and then go into a very specific course, go into a professor, go into a research opportunity. So kind of I would make it bottom heavy from a why us evidence perspective, right? So a lot of UT Austin evidence to back up the opening story. But maybe the opening story is kind of like an anecdote or in story form a narrative kind of description of you immersing the field in some way very recently, short answer to describe how your experience is perspectives, talents and or your involvement in leadership activities at your school, job community or within your family will help you to make an impact both in and out of the classroom while enrolled at UT. So this is a great one because it lets you kind of pick and choose what aspects of who you are. You haven't really showcased in other aspects of your application, right? So like if you showed leadership in your main essay, like in the first long one, then maybe you're doing more kind of identity and cultural background here or service or research and intellectual curiosity. So what are you picking? You can choose kind of strength from experiences and kind of touch on diversity. You can do perspective and think of diversity of thought. So you may not be culturally diverse or you're not like looking to kind of focus on that, but you think differently. You question things. You have a diverse sense of, of engaging with the world around you traits that you have developed or cultivated. So this is kind of, you know, experiences, perspectives, talents and leadership. It really just kind of like runs the different key elements. It lists the different key elements that you should be highlighting a well-rounded application at some point in either the main essay, the short answers or the extracurricular activities. So this is basically hitting. So you want to think about, yes, the short answers are very important. And more so, I think the, all the answers in Apply Texas or all the essay topics are especially important because they've picked them all, right? But you want to think about taking a step back and looking at your application holistically. Do you cover the big five? And the big five is for me, intellectual curiosity, leadership, social awareness, cultural diverse identity background, community service. Those are for me, the big five. Can you at some point in your main essay and supplements kind of focus and highlight on all of these or a couple of these so that you have as well balanced an application as possible? Are you applying to UT soon? I know it's approaching comment below. I'd love to help you out. So short answer three, the core purpose of the University of Texas at Austin is to transform lives, the benefit of society. Please share how you believe your experience at UT Austin will prepare you to change the world after you graduate. So they say, how will we prepare you to change the world? I like students to kind of reverse and take a step back and show how they have in, it could be a small way. But still, how have you kind of helped to change your community or your surroundings in a way and then kind of go from there? So the key is transformation, right? That is the key word in the prompt in serving others. We transform not only our immediate surrounding, but ourselves as well. And I think that that's kind of what you could possibly focus on when answering this. Samples, student essays that have gone really well. I've seen students write about kind of how they helped social isolation for the elderly population locally, especially with COVID and the pandemic and the shutdowns, like the lockdowns. I've seen students write about environmental aspirations and their kind of research on biofuels and it's kind of experimental benefits for the future. So that may be interesting. I've seen students write about health care inequality and how they've kind of done some service projects related to it and how they kind of want to expand upon that and amplify their effect in the future. And then very specific course or project or service that UT Austin offers so that you can show how you will be kind of working towards advancing your goals at UT and beyond. And finally, short answer for please share background on events or a special circumstances that may have impacted your high school academic performance, including the possible effects of COVID-19. For this one, I would recycle your COVID statement if you have a COVID statement in your common application and you're doing apply Texas or coalition. So you're doing both and you can kind of recycle that. Right. I for the most part would write a COVID statement this cycle. If you got sick, if your parents got sick, like if you have a very specific personal connection to an impact, right, everyone went to school remote for a while. So I would not use that, especially not this cycle versus like last cycle, which everything was a little bit more kind of fresh in those kinds of upheaval kind of circumstances with, with our learning, but a low grade. You starting a club in high school, I would say more than anything about how you want to write out or write about a red flag, a potential low grade or dip in GPA or something like that. I would want you to kind of focus on trending to the positive. How did you take action? What did you learn about yourself as a learner, as a thinker, as someone in your school community? So really think about how you kind of moved away from that or how you learned from it, how you change systems of how you think and study. And so not only kind of what happened, but how you reacted and how you were intentional about it. So if you want more guidance, especially for the kind of why us essays, I have a YS template with a phrase bank and things that you can kind of like expand on. So if you have multiple my essays, I have that in the description below. But if you have any other questions, definitely comment below and I hope to help you out. If you liked this video, found it helpful, give us a like, share with your friends, all that good stuff. Thank you so much and I'll see you soon. Bye.