This may sound crazy... Forum

newcareernewtown · Post by **newcareernewtown** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 3:33 am

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seashell.economy · Post by **seashell.economy** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 6:54 am

benwyatt · Post by **benwyatt** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 8:47 am

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CanadianWolf · Post by **CanadianWolf** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 12:47 pm

Hopefully, if you do fire the gun, it won't be filled with blanks & it won't backfire. In short, don't write about your stroke in high school unless it had a significant, demonstrable, positive impact on your outlook on life. Also, law schools do worry about liability so it may not be wise to bring it to their attention.

newcareernewtown · Post by **newcareernewtown** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 3:21 am

MistakenGenius · Post by **MistakenGenius** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 4:07 am

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newcareernewtown · Post by **newcareernewtown** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 6:04 am

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A. Nony Mouse · Post by **A. Nony Mouse** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 11:20 am

^^ This post doesn't make a lot of sense. You're trying to draw distinctions about "risk aversion" that don't exist - law schools like Duke and UVA are national institutions that share the same culture/concerns as other national law schools, and if your point is that the surrounding area is less stressful because they're not big cities (as opposed to NYU etc.), that's irrelevant because the concern will be about the stress of law school itself, not where you live.

Your analogies between the impact of your stroke on your intellectual abilities and someone who is actually paralyzed are kind of strained. I get that you no longer think the way that you did before your stroke, but you need to find a better way to convey that, because your post makes it sound like you're mad that people who are physically paralyzed get the "pity points" that you don't because the effects on you were mental. (Bringing up people who don't have the natural ability to do as well on the LSAT is really muddying the waters here I think - all you need to talk about it that you have suffered long term intellectual effects that you've had to figure out how to deal with, not how other people who aren't in your situation compare.)

I get that it must be frustrating for you not to have the abilities you used to have, and I actually think writing about it would be fine, if done well. Based on your posts here, it sounds like you want to write about it because you want schools to know that you used to be much smarter than you are now, and because you're concerned that others are milking disabilities to get pity points that you should be able to get too, dammit. So while it sounds like it did greatly affect your life, and I think an essay that talked about what you've had to do to recover from the stroke, and how the skills/perseverance/insight/whatever you gained will make you a good lawyer/led you to law school could be effective, I'm not convinced from what you've said here that that's the essay you'd end up with.

(I don't actually think schools would be worried about you having a stroke again, unless you have some kind of condition that actually does make you prone to having another stroke. If it was a one-off for whatever reasons, it shouldn't be hard to convey that.)

Scalvert · Post by **Scalvert** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 2:46 pm

I think that if you mention anything about impairment, you should be careful. Reading your comments, I got the impression that you were saying it would be preferable to lose the use of a hand than to have your IQ drop from 150 to 145 (or whatever). Is that really the impression you want to give? My uncle was confined to a wheelchair after a stroke, and I can tell you he would welcome an increased degree of mobility in exchange for a few IQ points. I'm not sure how claiming a 97th percentile LSAT score as a disability is going to elicit any sympathy. It might do you more harm than good. I'm not trying to be jerk about it, because that was a tough thing to go through, but just be careful not to make comparisons between what you've suffered and what someone else may have suffered. (I'm not sure if you intended to imply such a thing in your essay, or if you were just venting.)

newcareernewtown · Post by **newcareernewtown** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 5:47 pm

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Scalvert · Post by **Scalvert** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 6:16 pm

newcareernewtown wrote:To anonymouse:

This was a good, well thought out response.

Though, it seems improbable for law schools to ask for the same, exact requirements out of their applicants everywhere. even in the T14. Those things may amount to the same amount of work and the concerns of the administration may even be the same, but I was speaking about the application of requirements rather than what they are in theory. Early action and early decision programs may differ in each school's application (in the sense I meant earlier: what the school does, not literally an application for law school), but they amount to basically the same thing across the range of law schools. Does that mean the differences aren't important? No. What I'm saying about each school's possible interpretation of my stroke is similar to that metaphor.

I was trying to point out my feeling that application "essays" are trash. Your suggestion about focusing on myself rather than others makes a lot of sense, as does focusing on the positives of my experience rather than the "I should get it too dammit!" bullcrap. I acknowledge I'm very cynical, for what it's worth... If I'm honest, that makes writing positive application essays cumbersome and I'm not convinced I could write one either.

Your post was extremely helpful, so really, thanks.

To Scalvert:

I don't want to be too insulting, but I don't think you quite understood what I wrote. Your impressions do not matter, what I actually said matters. I made sure not to attach a number to my IQ on purpose. If I were to sit down and form some idea of what I would actually trade, I would rather have my IQ not fall from 155 to 125-130 in exchange for a non-functioning hand. Or, frankly, no hand whatsoever.

I hate to say this, but the comparison with your uncle is a bad one. #1, I wasn't talking about a few IQ points. #2 being confined to a wheelchair was not what I wished to trade, again I wished to trade a non-functioning hand. In two separate instances you twisted what I wrote so that you could form an objection, instead of what anonymouse did in analyzing what I actually wrote.

I would argue that our definitions of words themselves are predicated on a comparison, but this isn't a philosophy forum. I apologize for being so blunt.

Oh, I realize my comparison was not ideal. I was just cautioning you to be careful because first impressions don't have take-backs. It is quite possible that an AdComm could have a friend or family member like my uncle and have an emotional response to something you might say in your essay. I don't think it's out of the question to address your situation - just tread carefully.

newcareernewtown · Post by **newcareernewtown** » Fri Oct 02, 2015 11:53 am

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