Top Law Schools

Revision a few posts down. This is an updated version and I would appreciate any feedback. Thank you!

I want to be in an environment equally committed to filling holes.

giggity giggity giggity giggity.

LMAO. Word. That sentence is awkward regardless. Will take out!

From my quick once-over, here are my thoughts:

You are a good writer, and your PS is well written. The biggest flaw that stood out to me was the 'ADD'-ness of your topic. I'd recommend that you pick one or two main stories/experiences and elaborate on them, instead of listing them out so fast that it leaves your reader spinning. I think it also has to do with your wordiness and commas (here, I refer specifically to these sections, and possibly others as well - )

"A sense of relief in knowing that my mother has a safe, stable home, along with feelings of frustration, resentment, and occasional burden, are among the complicated levels inherent in sharing a one-room living space with a parent as a self-sufficient young adult."

"The undocumented, monolingual Spanish-speaking mother receiving death threats from her boyfriend. The man who was beaten by his same-sex partner, but whom the police mistakenly refused to treat as a domestic violence victim. The developmentally disabled elderly woman hospitalized after getting raped in her nursing home."

"Corruption, mishandling of crime scenes, misogyny, and exclusive language crippling the use of the Femicide Law are among the cocktail of factors that perpetuate rampant violence against women in Guatemala."

"activism advocating against specific U.S.-Colombia policies, writing grants and helping assemble curriculum for gender equity workshops in Guatemalan schools, facilitating emotional stability for violence survivors, and waiting tables in a menial job to sustain a stable place to live for myself and my mother. "

"Hearing, on their own soil, these in-person oral testimonies of victims’ families and survivors themselves, has instilled in me a deeply rooted responsibility toward them and to similarly threatened groups."

"Whether on my apartment floor, through the phone, across the hospital bed, next to a mourning mother in a rural shack, or in the temporary living room of a displaced family, witnessing the human impact of violence – interpersonal, random, state-based, or otherwise – is now, for advocacy my purposes, a point of no return."

Hopefully isolating these sections shows you how scattered your sentences seem when you are constantly listing 3-4 different things about completely separate topics for us. Any of these sentences on its own wouldn't necessarily be overwhelming, but when you put them all together in one 2-4 page paper? It gets kinda intense. This is only compounded by the fact that you focus on 1) your history with your mother, 2) your experience volunteering in a rape clinic, AND 3) your experience with foreign non-profits. You clearly have a lot of great experience to talk about, and you clearly have the ability to write in an interesting manner: now your challenge is to edit down your PS and focus on one specific narrative. Ideally, this narrative should be concise and should provide your reader with some insight into what drives YOU. It should also flow smoothly from one topic to another, with some form of connecting/transitioning device that creates an overarching theme to the PS.

IMO, the beginning has a little too much emphasis on your mother. I would cut some of the references to her, choose one example each from your experiences with the rape victims and with the foreign non-profits, and elaborate on those 2 examples with detail and emotion that will draw your reader in. You can tie the 3 separate topics by expanding on the 'spackle' theme you seem to have started (as a PS tactic, this can be a GREAT move if done correctly).

This has the potential to be a kickass PS, but it's just got a bit too much information right now. I TOTALLY understand the urge to stuff as much cool info as possible into your PS (I did the same thing when I first wrote mine), but at some point you have to realize that it actually hurts you more than it helps. It would benefit you much more to make the examples you list real to us. And, of course, don't forget to always tie things back to you: how you felt, how you reacted, how you stepped up to the plate, and why all of that makes you a good candidate for law school.

Crumpets, thank you SO much for all that input. I completely agree with everything you said and I think I just needed to have someone else tell me. Very much appreciated!

Nothing to contribute, except I read this as "pi themed" and got all 3.14 excite.

I feel like you are barking at me a mile a minute. Your PS has no stated thesis. Your sentences are long and tend to run on. Some are grammatically incorrect. Such as:

A sense of relief in knowing that my mother has a safe, stable home, along with feelings of frustration, resentment, and occasional burden, are among the complicated levels inherent in sharing a one-room living space with a parent as a self-sufficient young adult.

A sense of relief are among the complicated levels? What does that even mean, even if it were grammatically correct? You are partly doing a resume regurgitation. Overselling your experiences, and focusing on quantity over quality.

Not unlike these personal interactions with survivors in active crisis, my experiences on delegations with non-governmental organizations to Guatemala and Colombia have, too, allowed me to observe the more systemic gaps, such as in policy and society-wide prejudices, that facilitate further victimization of already vulnerable groups.

Here you are attempting to seque by saying two totally different things are the same. If you want to describe the social problems in Guatemala, don't make "your experiences" the subject of the sentence. Write concise paragraphs and resist the urge to include every thought you have as it goes through your head. I would use your dysfunctional role in your family as a catalyst for caring for others and focus like a laser on that. Perhaps you can go from the crisis center to Guatemala, but most likely, just one would suffice.