First full draft---any thoughts welcome Forum

[NCtoDC]

**reworking it

[bk1]

Some thoughts:

1. Your first paragraph sounds very arrogant. You seem to set yourself up as better than the preppy kids, because you had to work and they got to go on vacation, and better than a lot of Southerners, because they are culturally ignorant.

2. The regional slang comment makes you seem very naive.

3. Take out the comment about McDonald's and Burger King. There is a stigma with fast food and I really don't think fast food joints are the best way to paint your culture shock.

4. There are drastic shifts from the apples to your husband to a sudden regurgitation of your life story. Pick something and stick with it. If you are going to talk about apples, talk about them. If you are going to talk about the obstacles you overcame, talk about those, but I don't think that mixing the two is the best idea.

5. As noted above, you provide a ton of information that you literally just vomit onto the page all at once: divorce --> 5 moves --> remarried --> dad's suicide. This is way too many things to just put there. If you want to write about overcoming these adversities, it should be a PS in and of itself, not a footnote in a larger PS. These events are just too drastic to have them mentioned in a single line, so if you do focus on the apples, cut it out.

6. I wouldn't remind AdComms that you took most of your classes online. I think there is a stigma with going to school online and I feel that there is no reason to remind AdComms of this if you can avoid.

[CanadianWolf]

Your essay is good, but not effective. It will satisfy the requirement of a personal statement, however, it may not help your application.

[NCtoDC]

Some thoughts:

1. Your first paragraph sounds very arrogant. You seem to set yourself up as better than the preppy kids, because you had to work and they got to go on vacation, and better than a lot of Southerners, because they are culturally ignorant.

2. The regional slang comment makes you seem very naive.

3. Take out the comment about McDonald's and Burger King. There is a stigma with fast food and I really don't think fast food joints are the best way to paint your culture shock.

4. There are drastic shifts from the apples to your husband to a sudden regurgitation of your life story. Pick something and stick with it. If you are going to talk about apples, talk about them. If you are going to talk about the obstacles you overcame, talk about those, but I don't think that mixing the two is the best idea.

5. As noted above, you provide a ton of information that you literally just vomit onto the page all at once: divorce --> 5 moves --> remarried --> dad's suicide. This is way too many things to just put there. If you want to write about overcoming these adversities, it should be a PS in and of itself, not a footnote in a larger PS. These events are just too drastic to have them mentioned in a single line, so if you do focus on the apples, cut it out.

6. I wouldn't remind AdComms that you took most of your classes online. I think there is a stigma with going to school online and I feel that there is no reason to remind AdComms of this if you can avoid.

Thank you for the constructive feedback. I will definitely take some of these suggestions into consideration.

[NCtoDC]

Your essay is good, but not effective. It will satisfy the requirement of a personal statement, however, it may not help your application.

Do you have any suggestions to make it more effective? Am I on the right path or do I need a whole new angle? I appreciate your input.

[Calla Lily]

Your grammar and sentence structure need a lot of work. I would definitely have someone edit that for you before you submit your PS. As far as the content, I agree with previous posters that you need to focus on one topic. The intro indicates that you will center your PS around the legacy topic, but it seems as if each subsequent paragraph focuses on a new topic. You need to come up with a theme or thesis and build the PS around that.

[paratactical]

Some thoughts:

1. Your first paragraph sounds very arrogant. You seem to set yourself up as better than the preppy kids, because you had to work and they got to go on vacation, and better than a lot of Southerners, because they are culturally ignorant.

2. The regional slang comment makes you seem very naive.

3. Take out the comment about McDonald's and Burger King. There is a stigma with fast food and I really don't think fast food joints are the best way to paint your culture shock.

4. There are drastic shifts from the apples to your husband to a sudden regurgitation of your life story. Pick something and stick with it. If you are going to talk about apples, talk about them. If you are going to talk about the obstacles you overcame, talk about those, but I don't think that mixing the two is the best idea.

5. As noted above, you provide a ton of information that you literally just vomit onto the page all at once: divorce --> 5 moves --> remarried --> dad's suicide. This is way too many things to just put there. If you want to write about overcoming these adversities, it should be a PS in and of itself, not a footnote in a larger PS. These events are just too drastic to have them mentioned in a single line, so if you do focus on the apples, cut it out.

6. I wouldn't remind AdComms that you took most of your classes online. I think there is a stigma with going to school online and I feel that there is no reason to remind AdComms of this if you can avoid.

I'm gonna +1 all of this.

This reads as incredibly disjointed and several of the comments make you seem incredibly naive, which is not what you want.

[shock259]

There's nothing about law in this personal statement.

Here's what I think would help:

1) Write about an event/thing you did/etc BRIEFLY
-the Farm stuff I actually enjoyed reading, although it was a bit much at times. I think if you cut it down and made it more concise, you could definitely use it.
-you could also do one of those overcoming adversity ones, but these can be hit or miss in my opinion. And some REALLY miss.

2) Write about HOW and WHY this will help you succeed in law school
-For instance, maybe farming taught you the importance of being attentive to the details. It may be harder to do this with something like farming.. but you get the idea. Get creative, but be convincing.

Don't include things like your marriage/divorce/dad/nowhere to live/etc unless they are the thing you are writing about. It's very jarring to gloss over those as a reader.

Main thing: stay on target and keep it simple.

[ArchRoark]

In reference to the above poster, IMHO one doesn't need to explicitly state "why law?" in their PS. One should though paint a picture shoeing qualities that implies the applicant will be successful in law school.

[firemed]

The advice I got on online schooling is simply this: don't mention it.

Also, the line about spitting on neighbors windows was a turnoff.

[NCtoDC]

Thank you all for the comments and suggestions. I am going to start over and try to focus on one thing.