Technically, your DS is supposed to be one page, double spaced. Mine was two pages, double spaced, which was DEFINITELY a gamble. I would say 3 pages is way too long. I'd be willing to go over your DS for you if you like and make suggestions on how to trim it down.

Thanks, you guys!

I cut mine down big-time. A three page limit would be more helpful, but if you start at three (which I did), cutting it down to two really makes you consider what is truly important from what is extraneous. HTH

Anyone else wanna critique my DS and PS?

hey!

would anyone be willing to read my ps and ds and give me some feedback? i would really appreciate it! pm for them!

.

Hi, would anyone be able to read my PS and DS? I'm struggling! PM me, please!

This is wonderful! Do you mind my asking what your LSAT & GPA were??

Wow! All of these are really good and provide great insight. I particularly liked the last one. It was not whiny, just took the disadvantages faced by the individual and turned it around to be experiences that enhanced her learning, which is exactly what law schools seek.

Should I write a DS?

I don't have the kind of diversity I think law schools traditionally look for - racial/ethnic/socioeconomic.
However, I have had a kind of crazy life story, I've lived in 5 countries and hold 3 citizenships.

Is it worth it to write a DS about this?

Yes of course. Diversity does not have to be limited to the three factors you listed. I will be writing mine on those, but like yourself, my parents were born in Algeria and Sicily respectively so I will speak on that as well! You are DIVERSE from your classmates in that you hold 3 citizenships and lived in 5 countries, whereas most students are 1 and 1.

This is what I submitted. I am not as happy with it now, but please tell me what you think...

My heart pounded incessantly as we drove over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge into Camden, NJ. I realized that this trip would be different; instead of going to the same house we lived in for nearly fifteen years in North Camden, I would be spending my last Christmas break from Morehouse in a house in the Parkside section. While the house was not even ten minutes from my old home, I knew that the communities would be drastically different. While I looked at the passing Philadelphia skyline, my aunt asked aloud what I had been pondering in my mind. “Would you like to stop by the house while we are here?” I merely nodded and returned to my thoughts. As we approached the house, I stepped outside onto 403 and 405 Elm Street, somewhat expecting the neighborhood to have changed since we moved out. Such a difference could not be found: drug dealers still stood by the corner store waiting for patrons; heroin attacks still settled in the adjacent lot, injecting poison into their arms; and prostitutes still roamed the block looking for passersby to service.

As I glanced upward, a flood of memories from the house invaded my mind. I recollected the back porch where I witnessed my mother struggle with multiple sclerosis until she eventually succumbed to its awful powers. I thought about the times where my uncle and I would carry my aunt to bed because she was too weak from chemotherapy treatments to climb the two stories from the living room to her bedroom. But not all the memories were bad ones; a flood of good memories overtook me as well. I recalled the four mentally disabled clients that would rush down the steps to greet me as family after a grueling semester at Morehouse. I pondered the nights my uncles, cousins and I spent working on renovation projects while joking with each other. I remembered my grandmother's face as she lit with laughter at Sunday dinner tables. I remembered waking up to coffee brewing and my cousins Jimmie and Simon telling stories about the good ole South and people that had long gone home but remained alive through their narratives.

The house buffered me from the plagues of the community that surrounded my home. I ran there to escape the low expectations society placed on Black children reared by single-parents in urban communities. While others, even within my family, succumbed to those predictions, I was expected to transcend the afflictions within my neighborhood to set an example for my younger cousins by excelling in the classing, working tirelessly in the family restaurant, and assisting older cousins with tasks around the house. Like many other families, we had our share of troubles, but I quickly learned to neither resent our tragedies nor wallow in our triumphs. Instead, I never allowed my background to prevent me from pursuing my passions.

Suddenly, my mind drifted back into reality. I smiled at the man that I had become. While I am far from perfect, I know that the experiences I had in that house provided me with the tenacity and determination necessary to navigate through difficult times. As I glanced at my aunt when I jumped back into her car, the look in her eyes assured me she was thinking the same thing.

Can somebody confirm for me what the proper length should be for a diversity statement? I heard that 1 page is seen as the norm, but many of the statements on here are multiple pages long. Also, is it appropriate to use statistics in a DS?

wow, this was quite a diversity statement...and a freaking gutsy one...like damm....

anyone willing to read mine? I dont think i am sending out a DS to a couple of my schools and I am kind of freaked out by that. PM me

well damn

Has anyone written about or have access to a sample DS on being a first gen college grad?

The school I am applying to has asked that I submit a Diversity statement based on that I am a First Generation College Grad.
Here is what I have so far..Please critique...What am I missing? What makes me different? What do they want to see from me?


I was raised as a practicing orthodox Jew. Both my paternal grandparents and maternal grandmother came to America as immigrants after WWII.
They had gone through the holocaust and wanted put down roots in the United States. My Paternal grandparents came to _________ after being sponsored by a family who lived here at the time. My Grandparents worked in several industries throughout their life in __________ but always carried with them the same work ethic that has descended into my Parents and myself.
My Father and Mother, regrettably, were not able to finish College as they, like many children of the same background, went straight to work. I have had many opportunities that were not allowed to them at the time.
I was able to spend a year abroad in Israel, as part of my college program, studying and learning the vast history of the land. I was able to continue in my college program in Chicago, IL where I did a joint program of studying Judaism and complete my Bachelors.

I received so much guidance from TLS samples during my application cycle. Wanted to share my diversity statement. Hope this helps. My personal statement is also posted on the personal statements board.

LSAT: 161
GPA: 3.98
Accepted Full Scholarships: Cardozo, Rutgers, Seton Hall, St. John's (attending)
Accepted Partial Scholarship: Brooklyn, Hofstra
Rejected: NYU, Fordham
Withdrew: Columbia, Duke

As a child I dreamed of growing up to become a journalist, a flight attendant, a lawyer or a DJ. I never dreamed of becoming a statistic. That is exactly what I made myself however when I became pregnant at 17 years old. According to society, by becoming a black teenage mother, my daughter and I were doomed to life of a perpetual despair. I am determined not to live up to those expectations.
Shortly after my daughter’s birth, a close family friend spoke to me as kindly as anyone who saw a promising future hanging off a precipice could. After telling me that she loved me and that she was proud of me, she encouraged me to fulfill the promise of my youth, saying simply, “You made a mistake. Do not wallow in it.” Her words became my life’s mantra. I would not wallow. I had already overcome too much in my young life to wallow.

My father was killed four months before I was born. His untimely death left my young mother with an 8 year old daughter, a 5 year old son, and a baby girl on the way. Fiercely independent, and with no family support to speak of, my mother worked tirelessly to provide for me and my siblings. In her quest to provide for her children, my mother migrated to America from our homeland of Jamaica when I was 8 years old. She needed to settle herself in America before me and my siblings could join her, so we were left behind.

I was left in the care of strangers who ran boarding facilities out of their homes. Although the five years that I was separated from my mother seems short in retrospect, at 8 years old, it felt like an eternity. I missed my mother terribly and longed for the day that we would be reunited. As a child, I vowed that my own children would never have to bear the pain of growing up without a mother. As a single mother, I have had to sacrifice financial, career and educational gains to keep this promise to my daughter. It is a sacrifice that I make readily.

At the age of 13, I was finally able to join my mother in America. It was then that I learned that she had injured herself in a workplace accident at one of her two full time jobs. There were weeks when she was unable to get out of bed and days when I would come home from school to find a hurriedly scribbled note telling me that she had been rushed to the emergency room. No longer able to work, my mother, from whom I learned the value of hard work, now relied on meager worker’s compensation payments and food stamps to make ends meet. I suppose we were poor by society’s standards, but I did not realize this as my mother shielded me from the reality of our despair. She never wallowed in our despair. She carried herself with unparalleled grace. It is through her grace that I learned the concept of dignity.

I could wallow in my struggles as a black, fatherless, immigrant, teenage mother, but the sense of dignity that my mother cultivated in me prevents me from doing so. It is also this sense of dignity that allows me to push forward and give voice to my experiences while working diligently to transcend my missteps and pursue my life-long goals. My struggles serve as a constant reminder that we all have experiences, good or bad, that shape our perspectives. This awareness was enhanced when I entered the workforce as a Human Resources professional and was afforded the opportunity to work and socialize with people from all walks of life. Through my appreciation of their unique perspectives, I have become adept at interacting with people across a wide range of cultural, socio-economic, political and demographic backgrounds.

Now 31 years old, I no longer want to be a journalist, a flight attendant or a DJ. I want to be a lawyer. I continue to be molded by my experiences and the experiences of others. I look forward to sharing my experience and voice with my classmates in hopes of promoting diversity while furthering and fostering understanding of each other.

This is my diversity statement. Although my PS is biographical and it talks about my immigration to the U.S. I used my DS to analyze one of the benefits of being around people who are different from you.

Any critiques would be greatly appreciated.

Diversity Statement #2

French: aloof and cold. Argentineans: loud and arrogant. Peruvians: vulgar and obnoxious. Eastern Europeans: drunk and violent. Etcetera.

It sounds almost comical to me now, but those were some of the preconceptions I held before moving to Miami. They were the result of my homogeneous upbringing in Bogota where T.V. was my only window into other cultures, and the collective consciousness that prevailed categorized different groups of people according to some of the shortcomings of a few outrageous and unrepresentative individuals from those groups who happened to have gained notoriety precisely by being outrageous and unrepresentative. Even my teachers and parents were conductive to the promulgation of these false beliefs because they themselves were unknowing victims of the terrible depravation.

So I am almost always sympathetic when, after stating my country of origin, I am asked with distrust if I am a drug-dealer. Aren’t all Colombians just like Pablo Escobar?

It is possible that prejudice and distrust for those who are different carried survival value for our ancestors, who lived in times when the arrival of a different people meant also the arrival of bad things. Perhaps that natural fear is what drives most bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and hopefully evolution will reprogram us not to fear, but to embrace those who are different from us because they enrich our lives through shared experience, knowledge and art. However, I am convinced that we can reprogram ourselves, and aid evolution in the process, by fighting that fear consciously, which is really not that hard once you surround yourself with people who are different from you; whether that difference stems from sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or any other way in which we categorize ourselves and others.

I have had the good fortune of spending half my life in very diverse places such as Miami, Chicago and New York. In my travels, I befriended a very warm French family that opened their doors to me, despite my poor French, when on a trip to Montpelier. I’ve also fallen in love with a wonderful Czech woman who grew up in communist Czechoslovakia and with whom I have shared seven wonderful years. I now proudly say that my two best friends, Hernan and Rodrigo, are from Argentina and Peru respectively. I have learned to respect and love their cultures and my life is much richer for that. I am now a devote enthusiast of Peruvian food and Argentinean music among other things.

Surrounding myself with people from different backgrounds and learning to understand their cultures and points of view has been the most direct and conclusive way for me to escape the confines of prejudice. I believe that my influence on their lives has yielded a similar benefit to them, for I have developed a unique perspective thanks not only to my ethnic background but also through my episodes in different points of the socio-economic spectrum. I believe that this perspective can be of value to Stanford’s already diverse culture.

Hi, everyone, I'm a gril from China. I don't think I'm belonging to URM group, but still I write a diversity statement. One of my Canadian friends told me that my DS sounds too strong and a bit of racism and I'd better start a new one. I want to know your opinions. How do you guys feel about my DS? Is it really that bad? I need your suggestions!! The following is my DS~

With black hair, black eyes and yellow skin, I am not very different from most of people around in Hong Kong, except for the language. Mandarin, the Chinese official language which is different from Cantonese spoken a lot in Hong Kong, exposes my identity. It means that I am from Chinese Mainland, as an “inlander” named by Hong Kong people. In Hong Kong, I do not dare to speak mandarin, as I may be labeled with many disgusting identities, for example, “locust” that means rich but rude people from Chinese Mainland who only purchase luxuries, and “girl from the North” that means a girl from Chinese Mainland providing sex service in a nightclub. No, I am neither the locust nor the girl from the North.

But, speaking mandarin brings me these insulting labels over and over. I still remember one day I stood on the sidewalk, calling up my mom with mandarin, later several men walked around me. They spoke poor mandarin and asked “Hey, chick, how much?” I was so scared and cried for a long time. I don’t understand why I come to this place where it belongs to China but the people with Chinese faces here discriminate Chinese, and prefer to be the British. Yes, they are preconceived to treat their own compatriots, the Chinese from the Mainland. To escape from the discrimination, I began to speak English in public places, no matter in a supermarket or a hotel. I tried to use language to obscure my identity, and I tried hard to let others take me as a Japanese or South Korean.

However, a business trip to Teheran completely changed my perception. At the beginning of this year, a business trip to Teheran was accessible for my project team. Before departure, I was very worried about the safety. In my mind, Iran was the country full of terrorists and extreme Islamists. And it was not until I experienced a lot in Teheran that I realized how stupid I was.

On the day we arrived at Teheran, a lot of Teheran women were demonstrating peacefully. Local people told me that the women demanded to abolish a law that in Islamism, women must wear turbans, because they thought the law was unenlightened to suppress their freedom for beauty. In addition, I found there were many TOEFL training billboards beside streets in Teheran. Feeling surprised, I asked a local person:” why is there TOEFL training? Don’t you hate America? ” However, this Teheran young man answered me in English:” No, most of us don’t hate America, conversely, we appreciate this country; we don’t understand why Americans hate us. The Ahmadinejad’s government cannot represent our opinions, we are eager to go to America and learn advanced civilization.” I heard that and thought about what I saw in Teheran, suddenly, I realized I was preconceived to treat them, just as the Hong Kong people are preconceived to treat me. It seems that I made the same mistake carelessly. I never contacted with any Iranian before, but I labeled them with “terrorism” or “radicalism” that was labeled by media.

A sage said that “what we see governs what we think”. People’s eyes are instinctively narrow. If you don’t experience by yourself, how can you get the reality? We thought we could understand the whole world through Internet, but in fact, what we see are pictures carefully selected by political organizations and media. So to speak, we are actually persons of narrow view. When I returned to Hong Kong, I began to tolerate the discrimination, and I would not obscure my identity. I began to show pictures and texts of Chinese Mainland to my Hong Kong friends in Facebook, and liberally speak Mandarin in metro instead of English, and tell the pregnant and the old in Mandarin that you can sit down on my position.

For my upcoming study life in America, I don’t know whether I will be discriminated or not as a Chinese, for example, labeled with “rude”, “bad hygiene” or “dishonesty” that is criticized by Romney in his president campaign. But, I will no longer pretend to be a Japanese or South Korean, oppositely, I am so brave and confident to contact with my schoolmates, professors, even everyone lived in America as a Chinese. I will tell them the long history of Eastern civilization, and show them a polite, environment-caring and honest Chinese girl. I think, at some moment, they may realize like I did that we cannot understand this world by Internet only, we must experience and contact to get the reality. I will let more schoolmates feel a diverse China from myself. I believe, this will be my contribution to the diversity of ** University.

LSAT 166
LSDAS GP: 3.66
Applied (all pending): NYU, Penn, UMich, Berkeley, CLS, SLS, HLS, Duke, Cornell, NULS, UVA, UTexas, UCLA, Georgetown

I wrote about immigrating to America in my PS, so i didnt want to write about it again.



For many years I felt as if I was carrying a huge weight on my shoulders every hour
of every day. Carrying that load was not a choice, or at least not a true choice. In my view, I
could choose to live my life openly as a gay man, but I knew this would entail forgoing any
possibility of success, any possibility of a family of my own, or any possibility of acceptance.
Growing up in Colombia’s conservative society meant facing an implicit negative view of
who I was. I remember the deriding and pejorative tints of the conversations about gay
people. I had never met an openly gay doctor, lawyer, or any other professional.
Representation of gay people on popular culture was limited to crude stereotypes. In most
industries being openly gay represented the end of a career. I clearly understood the negative
connotation of being gay. In the light of these circumstances, being gay was not a choice.
As I grew older I convinced myself that I could live a full life without ever
acknowledging that part of me. I believed that if I devoted all my time to my studies and my
work I could overlook my sexuality. This was, however, not possible. My mind was in the
constant shadow of fear and wrapped up in ‘what-ifs’. It consumed me psychologically and it
even affected my studies and work as it was the only thing I could think about every waking
minute.
I am not sure when this changed, but I know what made it change. For all of the
challenges I encountered when I moved to America, facing my sexual orientation was the
only one that truly felt insurmountable. However, in the same way that this country has seen
shifting views of gays in society, I started to witness these changes in my life. With
increasing regularity I saw the success of openly gay doctors, lawyers, and politicians. I
noticed the change in tone when gay issues were discussed as they were no longer plagued by
derogatory terms. And more important, I came to see the prism of normalcy used to see gay
families. I clearly remember watching Neil Patrick Harris on TV and suddenly thinking that
for me lying did not have to be the status quo, that marriage and kids were a possibility in
addition to career success. Keeping my sexuality a secret was now the shackle I needed to
shed if I was to become the person I wanted. One Saturday afternoon in a whirlwind of
emotions, I got on a bus to Philadelphia where, sobbingly, I told my sister I was gay.
I casually met Neil Patrick Harris a few months ago and I thanked him. His life had
injected a sense of normalcy into my existence, and I am sure, the existence of many other
gay people. Progressively unencumbered by the many fears I had carried for so long I made
new friends, I started to date, and I tasted professional success. Being gay no longer holds me
back. I do realize how lucky I am to live in such a great society that as much as it has erred in
the past, it constantly seeks to redress its mistakes. When I read the Colombian newspaper
from time to time the homophobia and vitriol rapidly surfaces in the comments section
whenever gay issues are covered. It is a sad reminder of the unparalleled life I am able to lead
in America. Today’s gay youth has many role models to emulate. I only seek to be one more
piece in that big and complex puzzle. Today I am applying to law school as an openly gay
man and that is a sentence I never thought I could write.