What do UC readers look for in personal insight questions?

UUC Berkeley's own study of its admissions reads, the 2005 Hout report, printed the coding sheet readers used on applicant essays, and it shows what they were checking for when they read a student's writing. Most essay advice is about craft: the hook, the image, the closing line. Craft is barely on Berkeley's sheet.

That gap matters to every family drafting personal insight questions, because a beautifully written answer can still score close to nothing on the items readers were actually asked to mark, and a plainer one can score well. Readers were told to read the essays in full and then answer these questions.