Cardinal Sin of PS - Resume Rewrite??? Forum

[sparty99]

This personal statement is not strong and would not motivate me to admit you.

This PS does sound like a resume, but more specifically, it reads like a cover letter. You're not trying to get a job at Intel. This is a personal statement. Almost all law school essay prompts are the same. They are worded in different fashion, but it's the same conclusion: Tell me about yourself. Just as you would answer this question in an interview, you need to be focused and not rehash your entire life.

You did a poor job connecting your first paragraph (the theme about your father) to the entire essay. I should be able to summarize your statement in one to two sentences. However, I cannot do that with your statement because you jump around from accomplishment to accomplishment. If I wanted to know that you managed $3M of revenue, I'd read your RESUME. This is the time for you to go behind your accomplishments. I did well academically and in my professional life, but I didn't demonstrate my accomplihsments by listing how much money I saved my clients or the number of territories I managed. How did you get $3M in revenue? Did you have to retrain your entire staff? Fire bad workers? Did you have to learn how to work with people who were 25 and you are 44? Did you overcome diversity? Were you the only african-american male and worked in the "old boys club." Did you have to work extra hours just so you could prove your worthiness to your white coworkers? This is not the time to rehash how you increased revenue, it is the time to put those accomplishments in context.

Also, after reading your statement, I do not see how your background would be a perfect match for a career in public service. You say you have a desire for Public Service, but it doesn't come through. You need to take a step back, read some essays from "how to get into top law schools" or other books. This should give you a better understanding on how to write an effective personal statement.