DELETED Forum

[Anonymous User]

Deleted for revisions. Thanks for y'all's input.

[jac101689]

Good writing for a first draft; no question about that. I like your style and how the story shows your tenacity. However, I would think devoting such a high percentage of a personal statement to childhood is risky. I'm not sure law school admission committees will think they're gaining much insight into who you are now from this kind of reflection.

Definitely get rid of the Lou Gehrig-Cal Ripken analogy you underlined. It's gimmicky and obnoxious for the purposes of a law school PS and in any case its effect relies on the reader's inferring you're talking about a record of consecutive games played (if that's even the context; I had to think about it to make an educated guess and I'm too lazy to look it up). You probably suspected all that.

I'd also be careful about saying anything to the effect that you haven't identified or been committed to a long-term goal since 2008.

Your "why law" explanation is cliched, vapidly delivered, and disjointed from the rest of the essay. That's not, of course, to say that your interest in law is insincere.

[oshberg28]

"He was my Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, and I was the Iron Man, Cal Ripken Jr." - well, you were a kindergartener, not someone who had broken any (attendance) records. So you weren't an iron man in that regard...yet.

"For me to attain this goal, I, not only, needed to have enough determination to see it through..."

Take out those commas.

"When emergencies came up, for instance when my uncle passed away during my fourth grade year, I would stay at a friend’s place." - I spent a few minutes wondering why you would need to stay at a friend's house in situations like this - might want to expand on that (your uncle lived out of town and your parents went out of town, etc.?)

[sjgonzalez3]

I agree with the first response you received. Pay a significant amount of attention to your why law section. The connection made between persistence, goals and law (not to mention the unsupported bit about your grandfather) is tenuous at best.

As the other guy said, it's not that you don't have some genuine interest in law, but your attempt to convey it fell flat. You are a great story-teller, but I would reduce the overall length committed to your perfect attendance story to allow for the greater elaboration needed on "why law"/the impact the experience had on your outlook.