I have a confession … I didn’t submit my UC application by Nov. 30.

Okay, just kidding. I did submit it on time — well, my time. Dec. 1, 2024, at 2:59 a.m. EST, to be exact. Thank god for that three-hour time difference.

’Twas the night of Nov. 30. After a long day of school and tennis practice, I locked myself in my bedroom and finally began my UC application. It was time to finally get all of my information into that damn portal. What sat in front of me was 20 blank rows on my activity sheet, four unfinished Personal Insight Questions and enough open Google Docs tabs to freeze my entire laptop. I bounced from “Finalized Version Activity Sheet” to “REAL Piqs” and from Reddit thread to TikTok. The answers were somewhere, right? Right?! I had spent months procrastinating and “brainstormed” one too many nights. Now, Christmas was right around the corner, and my application was due in five hours!

UC Berkeley had been my dream school for years, so you’d expect me to take the whole application process a lot more seriously. But when you’re a high school senior who’s notoriously done everything at the last minute, your UC application is just the same as the last English essay you submitted at 11:59 p.m. Except your UC application sadly won’t offer any pandas and confetti upon successful and timely submission. But don’t worry, bCourses will bring you right back to high school with all of the normal celebrations once you set foot on campus. For prospective Bears, bCourses is just Canvas rebranded to be more Berkeley-esque.

And if you’re anything like me, you’ve already scoured the depths of r/A2C — gosh, what a throwback — and watched every single video about UC Berkeley you can get your hands on. I expect you’ve done your due diligence. I can’t promise admission upon completion of this article. But I will try my very best to provide you with the most helpful information I can.

First things first

Before you start drafting any PIQs or brainstorming how you might fill your Activities & Awards section up, read through the entire UC application. Scroll through the application to get a sense of what you need to compile, think about and, eventually, write. Oftentimes, the hardest part is simply getting started. Do the hard thing now and open it up — I promise, it’s not that bad. Copy down everything the application asks of you into a document. You can either use separate Google Docs for each section of the application or a master one.

Build out your own version of the Activities & Awards section by creating a 7-by-21 table. Title the columns “Rank,” “Name,” “Level of Recognition,” “Type,” “When,” “Eligibility” and “How.” Under “Rank,” you’ll rank each activity, 1 through 20. Note the 250- and 350-character limits for your “Eligibility” and “How” entries. This table allows you to organize all of your activities in a visual and structured way. You can also easily move things around by cutting and pasting — or by simply updating an activity’s rank in the furthest left column. Pro tip: Add a checkmark emoji in each box after it’s been completed and is submission-ready.

Use your activity list to show something special (or silly) about you

The Activities & Awards section of the UC application allows you to list up to 20 activities across six categories. These categories are: Award or honor, Educational preparation programs, Extracurricular activity, Other coursework, Volunteering/Community service and Work experience. Unlike the Common Application, which only allows you to highlight 10 activities, the UC application offers ample opportunities to showcase all of the amazing activities you’ve participated in. Use this extra space to bring back activities you unfortunately had to part with on your Common Application.

For example, on my UC application, I listed my participation in various summer programs, such as Girls Who Code and Kode with Klossy, as activities. Think of the Activities & Awards section as the place where you can show off even more about yourself. My good friend and fellow Golden Bear, Kelly, recently revealed to me that she listed her membership in her high school’s Sandwich Club as an activity entry. So, as you can see, anything goes!

Check for copy-and-paste errors

If you’re a frequent “Command-Shift-V” user as I am, I command you to stop and read this section right this second. In many of my college applications and essays, I discussed the concept of déjà vu repeatedly. Notice the accents? Well, for some reason, the UC application I submitted failed to include both the accents and the entire second half of the word, “déjà.” So, throughout an entire PIQ, only “de vu” t shows up. Nice one, Cara. Maybe if I had given myself more than a minute for a final review, I would have caught that.

While I’m still not entirely sure how this mistake happened, I know it could have been completely avoided if I’d just checked more thoroughly. Please make sure your application is free of formatting errors — especially if you’re migrating information from those handy Google Docs I suggested you use earlier.

Research the super cool UC Berkeley majors available

Truthfully, I didn’t know what cognitive science was until maybe my second semester on campus. Once I learned, I immediately whipped open my laptop and Googled “cog sci minor at UC Berkeley.” While I’m more than content studying English, I wish I had explored more of the other amazing majors available at UC Berkeley.

Unlike high school, UC Berkeley offers many more interdisciplinary studies such as media studies, cognitive science and industrial engineering and operations research. When you’ve only taken classes including AP Biology and AP United States History, you might not even know there’s so much more available to learn about in college! Take some time right now to peruse the different majors and minors offered at UC Berkeley and draft up a list. Note that some schools directly admit and declare students into their chosen major. Others, like the College of Letters and Science, do not.

Good luck and have fun with your application! Use this time to learn more about yourself, your interests and aspirations. While you couldn’t pay me to go back to the fall of my senior year, you could definitely pay me to share all my wisdom and advice with prospective students! Just kidding, I’m happy to do it for free here. And bonus points for you because you’re on The Daily Californian website trying to learn more about the UC Berkeley campus community!