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I would really like this thread to keep existing, as I would have loved to have a 250 reference guide/example list beyond the few I could dig up at LSD. That said, I won't be posting mine until at least the fall for sake of anonymity.....so......

here's to hoping that I can free ride off others!

Yale.... out of my reach this cycle.. perhaps always. I'll by trying again this upcoming cycle-- one last time. Here is what I won't be submitting again. Hope you really love it, or unsparingly loath it. Congrats to all those who made it this year.

Modernity liberated us from the Aristotelian world of the Ancien Régime, where God and Nature inscribed inequality upon men before they were born: some were marked slaves; others, peasants; few, kings. Modernity erased those divine inscriptions and revealed a Tabula Rasa, thereby opening up heaven and earth to revision by human hands. Yet, like Israel in Scripture, fear and suspicion spoke, “Give us a king to judge us!”

Today, Science is god and King, tyrannically measuring, dividing, and ranking us. The standardized test, sociologists, psychologists, economists, and physicians – dissect, examine, conspire, and diagnose our living bodies and minds, phlegmatically prescribing justice and life to some, injustice and death to others. Science’s incontestable decrees fill our Tabulae Rasae with writings we cannot erase, leaving little room for the scribbles of our own hand.

A semiotic prison of Science enwraps our flesh and entraps our souls. Look upon my form and I tell you that the objective sun reflecting off the bars of my prison will blind you. Those beams are refracting who I am. When my body meets your eyes, you will see my adamantine bars are 6’1’’, X.XX, 1XX, 1XX, 12X/XX…. Seemingly infinite strings of scintillating variables blind and bind you and me to accept deceptions as truth. To bow before Science is sin. Close your eyes and rebelliously stand. You will then see your slate free from the metrologist’s tainted ink. As God is veiled, so are we - “ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ!” [greek: Know Thyself] ; and like Abraham, smash the obstructing idols.

Thanks for the kudos and well wishes.

I've got to say, though, that I'm loving Objection's entry. It may be a bit sweeter for me as I have a big headed brother-in-law who shared many of Objection's experiences. Tragically, his given name even rhymes with head. I will say, he has finally grown in to his noggin - but he is 6'4" and still identifiable from a distance.

Reeeeejected:


Both tourists and native New Yorkers often wonder why local taxi drivers accelerate aggressively towards red traffic lights, only to slam on the brakes at crosswalks. Why do they do this when faced with reduced fuel economy and increased vehicle wear? The answer lies in the design of the Taxi & Limousine Commission's official pricing scheme.

Of the four contributing factors, which include a fixed fee, a surcharge during rush hour, a rate for mileage, and a rate for time stopped in traffic, all but the last is determined at the outset of each trip. This encourages cab drivers to complete each fare as quickly as possible, thus maximizing the number of fixed fees received during each shift. Increasing total fares further requires drivers to maximize the portion of each fare spent idling in traffic. By accelerating into red lights, drivers increase the amount of time spent idling, without extending the lengths of complete trips. Therefore, this approach optimizes the number of trips, the time spent idling, and, thus, the total fares received in each shift.

The driver also has little incentive to prevent wear on the vehicle, since most cabs in New York City are leased to different drivers each day. And additional fuel costs, which are estimated at only 5%, are far outstripped by the thousands of dollars in inflated fares earned by reallocating only seconds of each trip.

The moral: Hope yours is one of the few New York City cabs still equipped with a seat belt.

Here's mine, which got me a rejection after about 7.5 months of stony New Haven silence...

Since I was 14 years old, I’ve made a point of knowing as little in advance as possible about the movies I see and books I read. This is occasionally problematic. A novel’s meaning can be elusive if you don’t know who the author is or when the book was written. I can tell a few stories about taking people to movies that turned out to be disastrous (I recall bringing my mom to American Pie, a movie whose most famous scene involves a simulated sex act with a baked good). My friends don’t understand why I refuse to read the plot summaries at Blockbuster.

Still, I’ll happily remain uninformed. Walking into a theater knowing only the movie’s name, you open yourself to a whole different experience. If a favorite actor stars, or the movie turns out to be based on a novel you love, it’s like running into an old friend. And if the movie stinks, you’re not responsible for picking badly. The less baggage you bring into the theater, the easier it is to stand up and leave.

More than anything else, approaching films and books with a blank slate lets you form your own opinions, uncolored by prejudice or preconceptions. And when you unexpectedly find something wonderful, it’s a unique sort of joy – the “wild surmise” that Keats ascribes to Cortez’s men, first looking out on the expanse of the Pacific. Life’s full of signs detailing what’s over the next ridge. I’d rather wait and see.

Some of these are really great. I'll post mine after the ASW.

As someone who aspires to one day apply to Yale... I am appreciative of all these postings.

Here's a quick question: when applying to Yale, do you use the same PS as with other schools, plus this 250 essay? Or do you totally redo the PS for Yale, since you can get "interesting" facts about yourself into the 250 (therefore focusing your Yale PS on more academically oriented material)?

Must admit my disappointment that we have yet to see any contribution from anyone who actually made it into Yale so far - as this question and others that may follow regarding what a successful Yale 250 might look like - would be in a much better position to dispense advice for us to follow. As someone who didn't make it, I'm not sure whether you should take my advice Kulax22 - But lets see whether a bump in this post can get those more qualified to answer this question a comment they can hopefully critique to help enlighten us all - All I can tell you is what I did, which though it might have been the right course to take, ultimately didn't lead me to New Haven (Still here, wandering in the Purgatory of Kansas).

I would suggest you read the following blog posting by Asha, which I believe I found posted somewhere on this website.
http://blogs.law.yale.edu/blogs/admissi ... tross.aspx

To directly answer your question however, I did not rewrite my personal statement - what I sent to Yale, I sent to all the other schools. What I attempted to do, seems to be nearly the opposite of what you proposed in your question. I wrote my PS without much reference to my academic passions or accomplishments, not because these were not central for preparing me for Law School, but because doing so would have been outside of the scope of talking about growing up and overcoming a particular situation. My strategy was to utilize my 250 to address this particular lacuna in my application - to indirectly demonstrate some of my intellectual or academic passions and training. As you can see from my prior post - though I thought it was pretty damn good when I sent it off, I read it now and see it for what it was -- I feel like Dr. Frankenstein who doesn't understand until it is too late the hideous and ugly monster he has unleashed upon the world, a monster that is certainly composed of good intentions and fine thoughts, but is too bulky and disproportionate, hastily and carelessly sewn together, too unreasonable to gaze too long upon.

Ultimately, though there are many whispers about the shrouded mysteries of what the Yale 250 should be - it is perhaps most important to not ignore what is not esoteric. For example - BEWARE - don't do as I did - Don't try to shove too much into too small a container. Whether your 250 is about sex, love, rock n' roll, or an abstract elucidating and distinguishing the two types of heterotic string theory - be clear, precise, and ensure the structure is made of firmer stuff then fancy words, ideas, and sentiments. I THINK that you have the absolute freedom to do whatever you want - as long as you can construct your sentences into an argument or compose a conclusion that the minds of Yale would be at ease wandering around within; as long as your intellectual ceiling is secure and not prepared to fall upon their heads you'll be fine. I get the impression that the Yale faculty may spook easily when confronted with a crack in wall, a leaky roof, and a door that doesn't quite fit the frame or the color of the rest of your Yale 250 house. Going with this simile, I think the Yale 250 is like a house you're constructing for the admission's committee - you want them to feel at home, safe and secure, amongst familiar, logical, and well reasoned surroundings. You don't want them to come over to the place you invited them to, and while they are no doubt polite to your face, they are secretly thinking to themselves - "Where the F**k am I?" The moral: build your Yale 250 with the high intellectual tastes of the admission's committee in mind. You don't have to be Emerson in your language or ideas - you just have to be the most reasonable, logical, clear, and hospitable self you can be. Fix the cracks, mend the leaks, buy some marshmallows, and invite them over from some hot cocoa and a fun game of Taboo! You'll be friends before your know it (At least that's what we all hope).

Fran and I are both attending Yale, so there are at least two successful 250s in this thread. I'm glad this thread was bumped, actually, as I had not yet read her contribution. I have no idea what her PS was like, but the dissimilarity of our 250s shows that there is no single approach.

I did rewrite my PS for Yale. I am both older and making a major career shift, so I used the PS to outline a research agenda, explain why I was suited to the task, and describe how that research would apply to practice. There is a professor at Yale whose work I hope to build on, so writing a version for Yale felt more like putting back what was left out of the others than adding an extension (I hope that's how it read!).

My combination of 250 and PS matched your description. The critical thing, I suspect, is to communicate as much about yourself as is possible.





Any more 250s out there?

OK, I'm posting my 250 to help future applicants. I would have liked to have seen examples when I applied. For what it's worth, I think that it's good if your 250-word essay is completely different from your PS.

My application was successful: I applied near the end of Nov and was accepted at the beginning of Feb. Yale was the last application I submitted (because I wanted to spend a bit of time on the 250) and my last acceptance (and where I'll be going next year).

I hope it's helpful to next year's applicants.


Here it goes:



"In the next few paragraphs, I explain the main finding of my first research project as a graduate student.

Most bacterial, viral, or cancer populations are very large. The evolution of these populations is shaped by the simultaneous spread of multiple adaptive mutations. By showing that only a small subset of such mutations is actually relevant, my collaborators and I demonstrated that this apparently complex process can be significantly simplified.

What is the fate of adaptive mutations? Most confer only a small fitness improvement (small selective advantage), which means they will spread through a population slowly. Highly adaptive mutations, which confer very large selective advantages, are so rare that they tend to occur late or not at all. Therefore, mutations carrying intermediate selective advantages typically arise, spread, and dominate the population before smaller mutations multiply to appreciable numbers and before larger mutations appear. Guided by this insight, we showed that an initially homogeneous population soon becomes a mosaic of subpopulations containing favorable mutations that are neither too small nor too rare. We further established that the selective advantages of the prevalent mutations can be approximated as being equal and thus represented by a single value. This representative selective advantage, which we determined experimentally for a laboratory population of bacteria, can be used to make further predictions about a population’s evolution.

The simplified description that we developed provides a new paradigm for characterizing adaptive evolution of large populations and promotes our understanding of infectious diseases and cancer."

I wish I could say the same of your attempt at crafting a proper sentence.

Come on. Don't hate on the Yalie!

Thanks, Opera, the post wasn't even up five minutes ...

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This is great haha.

bookmark.

So I must now ask: doesn't Yale say the 250 is their PS, and other PS may be attached? Do they really place more emphasis on the 250?

Just seems strange. I guess it's more of a catchy-writing exercise. If I apply to Yale, I don't think I will change my regular PS much, if at all.

Thanks for this. Excellent stuff.

ROFL this is even funnier for me because I just tried an attempt at a Y250... and mine was about the perils of being tall (I'm 6'7". I wish I was in the same percentile of June LSAT score as I am in height).

This was pulled off very well though. I approve.

OA you really should have picked just about any other topic. Congrats though on staying consistent!

Objection that is one of the best Yale 250's I've read congrats!

GeePee suddenly became very attractive to me...