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UBC  /  Essays  /  Prompt 1

UBC: Who you are

50-500 words (500-2,100 characters)

Tell us about who you are. How would your family, friends, and/or members of your community describe you?
What it’s really asking

UBC wants a real, specific portrait of your character as the people around you actually experience it, not a polished self-description or a list of achievements.

Why they ask it

This is the reader's first impression of you as a person. It frames every answer that follows, and a vague or generic response here makes the whole profile feel coached. A vivid, honest one earns trust.

Three ways in
Start from a real quote

Think of a specific thing a friend or family member has actually said about you, and begin from that exact phrase.

Find the recurring role

Recall a small, repeated moment, like the role you always end up playing in a group, that reveals your character without you announcing it.

Prove one trait, not three

Pick a single trait and find the concrete habit or scene that proves it, rather than naming several traits with no evidence.

✕  Weak opening

“Ever since I was a little kid, my family and friends have always described me as a hardworking, caring, and passionate person.”

✓  Strong opening

“My younger brother calls me "the fixer," because I am the one he texts at 11 p.m. when his code will not compile.”

✦ Annotated example · The fixer who listens. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
My grandmother says I have "slow hands." In Tamil it sounds like a compliment, and she means it as one. When she dropped a teacup last winter and the pieces skittered under the stove, my cousins lunged to sweep them up. I knelt and lined the shards on a napkin first, edge to edge, until I could see which corner was missing. 1I found the chip wedged in the floor grate. She laughed and called me her little detective, but my mother, watching from the doorway, said something truer: "He cannot leave a thing half-understood."2That is the version of me my family sees. The friends version looks a little different. To them I am the one who reads the group chat twice before answering, the one who texts "wait, say more" when everyone else has moved on to the next thing. My closest friend, Devon, once told me I am exhausting to argue with, not because I am loud but because I keep asking what he actually means until the disagreement turns out to be smaller than we thought. I took it as a compliment. He insists it was only half one.3At the community kitchen where I volunteer on Sundays, the coordinator, Mrs. Okafor, has a shorter word for it. She calls me "steady." I am the one she puts on the intake table, where people who have run out of options come to ask for help and sometimes cry before they can finish a sentence. I am not the warmest person there, and I have stopped pretending to be. What I can do is stay in the chair, not look away, and find the one practical next step, which bus, which form, which phone number, that turns a bad week into a slightly less bad one.4Slow hands, twice-read messages, steady. Three different people describing the same habit: I would rather understand something fully than respond to it quickly. It has cost me. I miss the witty reply, I am rarely the first to raise my hand. But it is also why people hand me the broken cup, the half-finished argument, and the hardest seat at the table. 5I am still learning when to speed up. I suspect I always will be. But when something matters, I want to be the person who knelt down and counted the pieces first.6
  1. 1Opens on a concrete, specific image instead of an adjective. UBC rewards specificity over polish, and a borrowed phrase in another language signals a real family voice rather than a generic self-summary.
  2. 2Uses other people's words to describe the applicant, which directly answers the prompt's framing (how family and community would describe you) instead of self-asserting traits.
  3. 3Shifts deliberately to the second audience the prompt names (friends), showing self-knowledge by acknowledging the trait reads as a flaw to some people. Honesty about being 'half' a compliment is more believable than pure praise.
  4. 4Brings in the third audience (community) and earns its self-claim through a real role and limitation ('not the warmest, stopped pretending'). This is genuine reflection rather than an achievement list, exactly what UBC says it values.
  5. 5Synthesizes the three perspectives into one coherent trait, showing the descriptions were not random but facets of a single self. Naming the cost ('it has cost me') keeps the reflection honest.
  6. 6Closes by looping back to the opening image (counting the shards) without overclaiming growth, ending on forward-looking self-awareness rather than a tidy moral.
Stuck? Start here
  • What is a phrase someone close to you actually uses to describe you, and is it true?
  • What role do you fall into without being asked when you are with a group?
  • If a teacher and a sibling described you, where would their descriptions overlap?
Before you submit
  • Does it open with a concrete scene or quote, not an adjective list?
  • Does it show a trait through action rather than naming it?
  • Does it sound like a real person, not a coached brand?

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