advice for breaking up topics for ps for Notre Dame. help! Forum

[lolol10]

the topics i want to cover include:

1. how my upbringing traveling the world in a military family/being the son of a JAG officer has broadened my worldview. ultimately this galvanized my interest in IR and is the reason why i studied political science ug. this coupled with my life long desire to be a lawyer is one of the main reasons i want to study law (IL/humanitarian law).

2. growing up i was diagnosed with a mild form of autism. this was a significant challenge to overcome to be able to adapt socially and academically--especially with the ever changing landscape of moving every two to three years. i transferred into notre dame--an obvious achievement for me considering the difficulties i had as a kid. music became an outlet for me growing and i have been fairly successful in the underground indie/folk rock scene. in my rough draft this seems to be a very a tangential point. would it be inappropriate to include this as a diversity statement? if not including the music part, what about my challenge to adapt?

3. why notre dame. obviously, this is one of the optional essays for the ND app however, should i be including this at all in my general ps for the school? i have a somewhat unique experience (like everyone elses im sure) regarding how i came to know about notre dame and why i ended up transferring in as a ug and wish to remain here. also, part of my interest in law finds its origin at my time here as a ug. e


in 2 pages dbl spaced its going to be hard to convey all of this--this the obvious challenge of crafting a well written statement. should i break up the topics into the three essays and address them more in depth? i dont want to seem petty or offensive by writing that diversity statement though...thoughts?

[RTFM]

I would suggest using 1 as your PS topic and 2 as a DS. Both of them seem like pretty solid stories by themselves and you risk diluting one or the other or both by combining them. I think that being diagnosed with a mild form of autism is absolutely an appropriate topic for a DS--I find it hard to believe that you'd come off as petty or offensive.

As for the "Why Notre Dame," you could try to work it into your PS, but since you sound like you have a lot to say about it, why not just write the separate essay? (Although, I've heard deans of admission from other schools say that there's not much point writing a "Why X" essay if you went to the school for undergrad--they can pretty much assume that you know why you want to go there and they already know everything that you might say about their school. So that's just something else to think about.)