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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 9:18 pm
Thanks Guys/Gals! Starting over...
SOME PERSONAL STATEMENT ADVICE FROM A PAST FACULTY ADMISSIONS COMMITTEE MEMBER
The following was written by a member of the Berkeley Law faculty (and past member of the Admissions Committee) in response to trends they were seeing in personal statement content and tone. We offer this feedback for you to consider when developing your personal statement:
The statement should avoid simply summarizing what is in the resume. It should avoid simply asserting how able, accomplished, and well suited for law school the applicant is. It should avoid uninformed attempts to ingratiate oneself through exaggerated claims of one’s interest in Boalt...For instance, more than a few applicants stressed how much they want to work with named individuals who are at best passingly related to a Center or the like and aren’t even members of the faculty; these claims make one doubt the applicant’s due diligence...
The statement should avoid self-absorbed autobiography. What we need is something that doesn’t simply assert, a.k.a brag about, how qualified and impressive the applicant is, but rather demonstrates it through the substance of what is said in the personal statement. If it is going to be autobiographical, I for one would prefer it to generalize a bit; that is, instead of, 'How I changed as a result of this experience and now am so special,' it should talk about how and why such experiences can affect people.
“I felt the cold, sharp edge of a knife at my neck.” “ ‘You rich Americans are all alike,’ she screamed.” “I’ve never been so scared in my life.” “The child’s belly was swollen and scabbed.” You get the picture. Start the essay with a dramatic, unexplained sentence designed to grab the startled reader’s attention. (In fact, what it does to the reader is produce a dismayed feeling of, “Oh no, not another one of these.”). Continue this dramatic episode for a short paragraph without tipping off its relevance to the application. Begin the next paragraph by switching to expository style and informing us of what you were doing in this dire situation and how it was part of the background that makes you a special applicant to law school. Develop why you are so special in the rest of the statement. Conclude with a touching statement returning to the opening gambit, about how now, after law school, you can really help that little girl in rags.
It is very clear that many applicants have been coached by someone that this is how to write a compelling personal statement...This format is transparently manipulative, formulaic, and coached. Except for the occasional novelist we admit, none of our students or graduates is going to write in this style again; none, thank goodness, is going to begin a brief with, “He stood frozen in fear as the gunman appeared out of the darkness.” So, this artifice is irrelevant to law and counter-productive: Once it ceases to surprise – and it did so more than 10 years ago – it just becomes a cliché which really ought to be held against the writer. Not only using clichés, but also having been coached ought in an ideal world to discount an application. Needless to say, however, I did not hold these statements against the writers; you don’t feel you should do that. Often the bulk of the statement does report on impressive activities that are relevant to admission. t is transparent when essay formulas have been coached, and we (should) strongly advise applicants to write in their own voice and style and without trying to dramatize what they have to say in order to attract our attention." http://www.law.berkeley.edu/5188.htm
Your personal statement is unnecessarily dramatic, summarizes your resume, doesn't tell the reader much about you other than "I overcame great adversity...like an apple hitting me, and eating vegetables, and being obnoxious," and does almost nothing to show the reader why you want to become a lawyer.
REALLY? That's the adversity? An apple? How was that a "bout with adversity"? And vegetables? And being a jerk to your family?
Here's the thing - I don't doubt that you've overcome challenges, but your statement provides only a very shallow window into who you are as a person. Your thesis is basically "I did hard things and my brother says law school is hard so I want to go to law school and I'll do well." And the supporting evidence for your claim that you overcame adversity is that you overcame adversity.
You don't have to have escaped from a crack den or war zone to write about overcoming adversity. Whatever you do write about, though, you need to demonstrate your ability to overcome adversity rather than simply declare it.
Compare what you've written to the examples in Chapter 11 of Ken's book:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/chapter11.html
Then go ahead and read the whole book.
http://www.top-law-schools.com/guide-to ... ments.html
The good news is you are capable of writing sentences that are interesting and readable. The ones you have written just don't fit into the logical framework you need to have in a personal statement.
HTH and good luck!
That said, I'm going to start over... probably avoid the whole adversity card...