Compare my Two PS: HELP Forum

[skri65]

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[skri65]

bump?

[skri65]

Andddd bump (willing to swap)

[basketball law guy]

I am just beginning my own personal statement so I will also be interested in what others think. Personally, I find both versions to be boring. The writing may be technically correct and I understand the basis for the statement but I lose attention. I hope others respond because I am trying to make mine more personal, show some emotion. Maybe my approach is wrong. If admissions personnel are reading 5,000 of these statements, I want mine to be interesting. Again, I may be on the wrong path.

[skri65]

No that is fine critique. I agree that neither PS is quote personal enough. At the same time, I am looking for advice on which PS to revise or if I should just start over from scratch. Any other suggestions?

[CalAlumni]

PS 1:

I vividly recall opening the large black and white box containing my first computer. It was a 1994 Gateway Pentium desktop computer, which came with a variety of different programs pre-installed. I spent countless hours with my father exploring the capabilities of this home computer through troubleshooting the many errors and discovering the wonders of the Internet. I did not know it at the time, but in addition to the computer itself, each program, utility, and application was a different company’s intellectual property—subject to a specific set of laws which is adhered to by each of the 50 states. It was not until my experience as an Information Technology (IT) Support Technician that I began to understand the complexity of today’s technological intellectual property legal landscape.

I first encountered issues with intellectual property in my capacity as Desktop Support Technician at the ******** Information Technology Department. Armed with a Master's degree in Computer Science, I handle all technology issues for the employees. One day an employee approached me with a request to install accounting software he used at home onto his work computer for commercial use. As a technician, I receive these requests quite regularly and use my expertise to resolve them—only here, the problem had nothing to do with technology. The issue was that our company did not have a license with the software developer; in fact, we had an exclusive license with a competitor. What I first viewed to be as an innocuous request turned out to be a nightmare for both the employee and our company’s legal department. This experience gave me a new perspective of the technology industry in which I was employed. While computer programming operates under a pretty rigid set of rules, I came to realize that the developers and companies that produce these products are bounded by a completely different set of limitations.

As a criminal justice major at ******** University, I am familiar with the law and the legal system. After enduring countless classes implementing the Socratic Method, I have come to understand that the law, unlike computer science, does not have a rigid set of principles and rules. Through my research on criminal laws for my mock appellate brief supporting a criminal's Fourth Amendment protections to unlawful searches and seizures, I learned that sometimes the best argument wins, regardless of whether it is the best result for society. In order to protect the values of free speech, criminal justice, or even open source programming, top quality lawyers that can effectively understand and effectively convey the true reality in certain situations are necessary. Patent trolling for example has become a large burden on courts across the globe as they are being constantly flooded with frivolous patent law suits. By combining a law degree with my background in computer science and technology, I will be well-situated to tackle all of today's intellectual property legal issues.

^ Although I don't know much about the validity of what you're saying, lexically and otherwise, you come across very didactic. This may be a turn off to someone more well-versed in things juridical.

Based upon my concerns, law school is the next step for me to be able to someday help protect legitimate patents while helping to drive technical innovation. I know that the research and writing skills I gained as a criminal justice major combined with my expertise and passion for technology will lead me to success in law school and eventually as an Intellectual Property lawyer. ******** Law School, located in ****- a beacon of high technology--is the perfect place for me to continue my education in this area of law.

Structurally, I like where your overall narrative leads; however, your prose is quite listless and boring. Make it more personal and give them a glimpse of who you are beyond the abstract-ish 'this led me to this and this led me to here which led me to...'