Choosing between two PS conclusions Forum

[Mr. Elshal]

Hey guys,

I've written my personal statement and I'm trying to decide whether to use the purple conclusion, the blue conclusion, or write a whole new one altogether. Please leave some opinions. I also wouldn't mind critiques of the PS itself, but the conclusion is my primary concern for now.

Thanks!

I sneak down to the basement and look for my father’s toolbox. I am still too short to reach the light switch so I fumble around blindly until my small hand closes around a screwdriver. Triumphant, I march gloriously back to my bedroom and quickly close the door. I just got a new computer for my ninth birthday, and there is no time to waste. While most of the children my age are using their computers for games or schoolwork, I have a burning desire to find out what makes it work. I know the answers lie inside of it, so I carefully take my new computer apart….

My family calls me “Snapple-Cap” because every time I open my mouth, they learn something new. I am an information-lover and I move from topic to topic polygamously—trying to experience, and thereby learn, all that I can. For example, last year, I spent nine months consulting for a startup company operating in another country and, this past summer, while I spent my days working at Ernst and Young, I dedicated my nights to learning about website coding.

At the beginning of my Junior year of college, a friend of mine asked me to join OFEK, a student consulting group providing services to Israeli startups. Seeing a great opportunity to learn about how businesses are started, I eagerly accepted the offer and took a position leading a team of six other students. Our client was Freeversation, an online platform for anonymous communication. Freeversation had only a bare-bones version of their platform set up. They wanted to find a target market and, once found, determine what new features would make Freeversation appealing to that market. Working hand-in-hand with the company’s founders, I coordinated my team’s efforts to create a business plan, combining findings from focus groups, market research, and interviews with potential users. This gave Freeversation a new strategy for developing and marketing its platform while securing investor funding. Working with OFEK, and leading my own six-person international consulting team, I was able to learn about a business from the bottom up, a very unique and rare point of view that has changed the way I look at all businesses, from startups to international corporations.

This past summer, I decided to put my experience with OFEK and Freeversation to good use by working with my brother to create ShukMe.com, a web-based marketing consulting startup. Unable to pay a professional programmer to build the website, I decided to learn whatever I could about web-design in order to build the site myself. I was very intrigued by the flexibility of the HTML5 coding language and I spent all of my free time researching how I could use it to make our website look more professional. The site is now complete and we have since begun alpha-stage testing. While I cannot picture myself making a career out of web-design, I can now carry an educated conversation with professional programmers, which was instrumental in our finding a dedicated web engineer to join the team. Now we have someone who can handle all of our programming needs, allowing my brother and I to dedicate our efforts to managing the business’s client-related functions.

Until now, my studies of the world around me have been scattered amongst whatever varying topics caught my eye. Whenever something interested me, I would learn as much as I could about it, and then try to apply that knowledge, which would further my understanding of the topic. The unifying theme, though, is that I want to learn as much as possible about the world around me. While I have enjoyed my scattered studies, I now want to delve down to a much more fundamental level by studying one of the most deeply complicated aspects of life—the society in which we live.

I hope to use the study of law, which is both a product of, and a catalyst for, societal behavior, to unify my inquiries and what I've learned from them thus far. Law is the underlying instruction manual for how we act and react, much like the components in a computer, the business plan for a new company, or the code for a website. I see a legal education as my screwdriver to deconstruct and understand my surroundings, so that I can apply that insight to my continuing search for knowledge.


Alternate Ending:
These are only a few examples of how my passion for knowledge manifests itself and, while these outlets may seem varied, a pattern has become apparent. When I encounter something I’d like to learn more about, I delve into it and try to experience it as directly as I can. By doing this, I end up with a new set of experiences and skills that allow me to expand my understanding of the world around me.

Though I am now finishing my undergraduate education, I wish to further my search for knowledge by studying one of the most deeply complicated aspects of life—the society in which we live. I firmly believe that the best way to accomplish this is through the study of law, which is the driving force behind our actions and reactions in different situations. Law is the underlying instruction manual for societal behavior, much like the components in a computer, the business plan for a new company, or the code for a website. I hope to use the study of law as my screwdriver to deconstruct and understand my surroundings, so that I can someday use that knowledge to further advance the world in which we live.

[Bfalcon]

Purple, but it needs to be reworked. I have worked as an executive recruiter for a couple of years now, and one of the things that is a major red flag at our firm is what we call a "jumper." A jumper is someone who shifts all over the place, call it the ADHD of the job world. Maybe it's the fact that they make a good first impression, but really are socially awkward. Or maybe they can't seem to focus long enough on one thing to master it. I feel that in the same way, admissions committees may find elements of your statement a bit worrisome (nothing that can't be fixed in the statement itself!). Try and paint more of a picture of centeredness in this PS. Furthermore, with the purple conclusion, I get the feeling that you might be the type who would go to law school and either drop out after a year or so, or article and decide not to take the bar. The law schools will want someone who can be a fruitful member of the legal community to graduate from their program. Be careful with that!

ps, you have written "is that" at least once in this PS. Please remove! Just a pet peeve, but it is poor writing.

[Bfalcon]

pps, I like the stylistic writing, intro, and the screwdriver/construction motif