EssayLens

UC Davis  /  Essays  /  Prompt 7

UC Davis: Community

350 words

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?
What it’s really asking

Define community however you honestly experience it: your block, your team, your faith group, your family, an online space. Show a concrete contribution and its effect on others, not a one-time volunteer day.

Why they ask it

UC Davis values students who give back to a public. Readers want sustained, real impact, and they can tell the difference between a resume line and a genuine contribution.

Three ways in
The small recurring thing

Something you do regularly that other people quietly depend on.

The gap you filled

A need you noticed in your community and stepped in to handle without being asked.

The overlooked group

A community most people walk past that you actually serve.

✕  Weak opening

“I have always believed in the importance of giving back and making the world a better place.”

✓  Strong opening

“Our apartment building has eleven units and exactly one person who knows how to read the gas bill in Spanish: me.”

✦ Annotated example · Community: the free tax clinic translator. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
Every February, our public library hosts a free tax-preparation clinic for low-income families. My first year volunteering, I was supposed to greet people and hand out forms. By the second week, I had become the person families asked for by name, because I was the only volunteer who spoke Armenian.Our neighborhood has a large Armenian community, and many of the older residents who came in could read the forms in their own language but not in IRS English. I watched a grandmother nearly leave without claiming a credit worth $1,400 because she could not understand the question about dependents.1I started sitting beside the certified preparers and translating in real time. But translation was not enough, because tax words do not map cleanly between languages. So I built a two-column glossary of forty common terms, English on one side and plain Armenian explanations on the other, and printed copies for the front desk.2The next year, when I had a college visit and could not make a Saturday session, the glossary meant the other volunteers could still help Armenian families without me there. The clinic director laminated it and now hands it to every new volunteer.3Over two seasons I helped translate for roughly sixty families. I cannot tell you most of their names. But I can tell you that an elderly man cried when he learned he was owed a refund he had assumed was lost, and that I was the reason he understood the form in front of him.I did not make my community better by starting something big. I made it better by closing one specific gap that I happened to be able to reach.4
  1. 1Identifies a specific, concrete gap (a $1,400 credit nearly lost over a language barrier) rather than describing the community in general terms. Specificity is what UC Davis rewards.
  2. 2Moves from a one-time good deed to building a reusable tool (the glossary), which shows initiative and contribution that outlasts a single afternoon.
  3. 3Demonstrates lasting impact by showing the system works without the author present, which is stronger evidence of having made a place better than personal heroics.
  4. 4Closes with an honest, grounded claim that resists overstatement, matching the school's preference for evidence over inflated reflection.
Stuck? Start here
  • Which community do you actually belong to, beyond the obvious ones on a resume?
  • What small, repeated thing do you do that others count on?
  • Who is better off because of something you do regularly, and how do you know?
Before you submit
  • Is the contribution sustained, not a one-time event?
  • Is the effect on real people concrete and believable?
  • Did you resist inflating the scope of your impact?

Drafted it? Get an honest, admissions-style read, free.

Score my essay