UC Merced: Creativity

350 words max

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

What it’s really asking

UC reads creativity widely. This does not have to be art. A clever fix to a recurring problem, an original way you study, a workaround you invented all qualify. They want to see your mind make something that was not there before.

Why they ask it

It reveals how you think when there is no template, which is hard to see anywhere else in the file. Readers look for genuine originality and the process behind it.

Three ways in

Creativity beyond art

A non-artistic outlet: reorganizing your family's tiny kitchen, inventing a mnemonic system, modding a game.

An invented solution

A recurring problem you solved in a way nobody taught you.

Your specific method

An artistic practice where the interesting part is your particular method, not the medium itself.

✕ Weak opening

“Creativity has always been a huge part of who I am as a person.”

✓ Strong opening

“Our oven runs forty degrees hot, so I rebuilt every family recipe around a thermometer and a stack of index cards.”

✦ Annotated example · Repairing what's broken. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →

My creativity does not look like a painting. It looks like a pile of dead appliances on my garage floor and a soldering iron that has burned my thumb more times than I will admit. ¹It started with my grandmother's radio. The dial light went out, and a new radio was forty dollars we did not really have, so I opened it up to look. I had no idea what I was doing. The fix turned out to be one tiny bulb, but finding that out took me three afternoons and a library book on circuits. ²After that I could not stop. Neighbors learned I would take their broken things, so our porch became a drop-off for toasters, a vacuum, a lamp shaped like a duck. ³Most of my creativity happens in the gap between what a thing is supposed to do and why it stopped. A vacuum that will not suck is rarely a broken motor. Usually it is a sock, or a hairline crack in a hose that I patch with a bike-tube rubber and a zip tie. ⁴I keep a notebook of these workarounds, because the official manual never lists them. Forty-one entries now. Each one is a small invention nobody asked me to make. ⁵I am not naive about it. Some things are genuinely dead, and learning when to stop is its own skill. But I have come to believe creativity is less about making something from nothing and more about refusing to accept that broken is the end of the story. That belief is what I would bring to an engineering classroom: not a finished answer, but the stubborn habit of opening the box.⁶

1Subverts the expected 'artistic' reading of creativity right away, which makes the essay stand out and signals an honest, specific self-definition.
2Roots the trait in real economic context (resourcefulness born of necessity), which UC Merced explicitly rewards, and shows process and patience rather than instant talent.
3The duck lamp is a small, funny, concrete image that proves the habit is real and gives the reader something to remember.
4This is the heart of the prompt: it defines creativity as original problem-solving and gives precise, hands-on evidence (the bike-tube patch) that no template could fake.
5The notebook with a specific count turns a hobby into a documented, sustained practice, reinforcing coverage and depth.
6Ends with a reflective, plain-spoken thesis that ties the trait to academic intent without overclaiming, matching the school's preference for evidence over polish.

Stuck? Start here

When have you solved a problem in a way nobody taught you?
What do you make, fix, or improve that others overlook?
Where does your mind wander when you are bored, and what comes out of it?

Before you submit

Defines creativity through a real example, not a general claim.
Shows your process, not just the finished result.
Reads as something only you would have written.

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