Engineering PS - Redrafted! - Revised 11/8/15 Forum

[sjp200]

Please critique my PS as I get ready to move on to applications. Applying in the top 20

Based on all of the comments below, I tried forming a better narrative and taking out some of the "fantastic" language and made it more credible. Please let me know about further suggestions! I used information from all posts up through totesthegoat for this revision. Any further commentary is certainly welcome as this is not a final draft by any means! When reading this, it flows better to me. I see that there is more of a mock trial --> what it did for me---> what I want to extend those experiences
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Edited 11/8
Flyer in hand, I walked into a poorly-lit classroom building and sat in the back of a room full of people I had never met. They were mostly chatting amongst each other. Waiting for the meeting to start, I began looking over the packet the flyer recommended that I print out. Minutes later, the room quieted as a suited man walked in and the room took on a much different, more serious air. Not a sound was made until the man finally put down his coffee, and he said “Welcome to the first meeting of mock trial. Let’s get to work.” Like clockwork, the returning members opened their binders and the eager newcomers followed their lead. From that meeting’s end, I had one week to try out, and I got to work. Expeditiously, I found mock trial engaged me to diligently work to improve myself in disciplines I had little exposure to before entering college. Inside the doors of basement classrooms on the Raritan River I practiced techniques that led me to believe in the power of rhetoric and language over my collegiate years. As I spent more time in mock trial competing and studying trial technique, I learned how to harness those powers into an art that empowers others to act. The art of empowering others to act, as I soon found to be my coach’s mantra, is what many attorneys consider to be the goal and motivation of true trial advocacy - to inspire others. Inspiration has become a central focus of my career outside of mock trial as well.

During my last moment as an undergraduate, I stood up, walked to the podium I had been instructed to speak from, and for a second, I paused. The moment had felt entirely different from the closing arguments I had given during mock trials, however the purpose was the same. That moment was no longer practice for a bigger stage. After weeks of preparing just as I had for any closing, I thought I was ready. My notes, I barely needed them. Yet, as I reached the podium, I suddenly felt no amount of preparation would replicate the atmosphere I was in. In the moments before speaking, I realized the reason this new moment was markedly different from my experiences in mock trial was because for the first time, my task was to inspire an audience to believe in a tangible objective I could relate to personally. The words were no longer about fictitious people whose lives were made entirely for a competition. It clicked for me that the moment I was in was my first chance to be an advocate for real people, for people who wanted to let the world know that they were ready to innovate and take on the challenges modern society will inevitably face in the near future.

I looked at the thousands of people before me, and I began my speech. This time there was no jury, no judge, and no scoring. I was speaking to, and for, the _____ Class of 2015 TLS: Not commencement, only for 1 school (about 1,200 graduates) . It was our convocation. As I went on and got past the lines the administration required me to add for fear of monotony, I was focused on my first real glimpse at advocacy. I used the techniques I learned from mock trial to convey the struggle of our road to success and the vision of the new world we were ready to begin materializing. Only a few minutes later, which in the moment felt like only seconds, I had finished. I walked back to my seat, ready to receive my diploma as a chemical engineer, knowing that my experiences from mock trial and background as an engineer was leading me along a path I had not originally planned on taking.

An organization that I joined just after I entered college transformed me, and has shown me that I can be passionate about my work and give that work true purpose beyond its immediate use. When I think of my development as an undergraduate, my evolving figure is accompanied by my experiences in mock trial. I would not be the person I am today or the person I will be ten years from now without the perspective I learned in the courtroom. The cases I tried in a fictitious state opened my eyes to a world in which my frame of reference as an engineer and studies in advocacy would complement each other and empower me. Even as an engineer, I live by the words my coach instilled in us, which at first seemed to be irrelevant to my success as an engineer. Through law school, I hope I will one day stand up in front of a real judge and jury and inspire the trier of fact, just as mock trial had inspired me to want to become a trial attorney.

[CanadianWolf]

You do NOT want justice; you want your client to win.

[CanadianWolf]

I only read your opening & closing paragraphs. Both need to be scrapped.

[sjp200]

You do NOT want justice; you want your client to win.

I didn't want to put that because it's unrealistic. You want your client to have the best outcome possible,but part of that is because you have to also believe in that outcome as the just one. It's not really as black and white as winning and losing.

[PeterGibbons90]

I saw you were seeking some constructive feedback in the other thread. Here's what I got from it.

>As a child, I always wanted to be a chemical engineer.

I don't really care what you wanted to be as a child. I wanted to be a basketball player nor is your change in path unique or different from everyone else who realized they wanted to be something else. An opener is important, and I think "as a child" may be too cliche.

>The frame of reference, the point and time and space to which all events or actions are all made relative, is a fundamental concept to all disciplines of engineering.

Feels clunky. I'd just trust your knowledge in the subject and cut out the appositive definition of the frame of reference.

>I had written everything down weeks before and revised it over and over. I practiced for weeks so that I knew exactly what needed to be said.

Redundant writing. You've now used to two sentences to tell me how long this took you without really telling me much.

>Yet, as I reached the podium, I could feel that my preparation had not prepared me for the immense gravity of the moment.

There is a more positive way to frame this. You don't want to admit to being unprepared! Perhaps say instead that the atmosphere and gravity of the moment could not be replicated in my time practicing. Something like that to show the importance of the moment. What I do think you are doing here is successfully hooking the reader. In fact the commencement speech may make for a more interesting introduction. You're really building up to a moment and I'm wondering the payoff. Lo and behold the payoff is a pretty big deal. You're giving a commencement speech!

>For people who wanted to let the world know that they were coming.

I think I get what you're trying to say here. But it's not an effective sentence to close a paragraph. Essentially what you're trying to say is it was my job to inspire these people to be ready to enter the real world, right? Try to communicate that more clearly and with less vague language like "they were coming."

>Although I have only had a small glimpse into the life of a trial attorney, I know the hours of preparation will make every closing its own chance to inspire an audience to find for me. I know there are many unrepresented voices that need representation, so that they are heard.

I don't know if I like these sentences. It feels a bit too self-assured that your experiences in mock trial now provide you insight into the life of a trial attorney. Also the unrepresented voices part really wasn't established in this essay. I don't know your experiences dealing with the unrepresented other than the fact you are telling me you now know what that's like and delivering a commencement speech. I wouldn't exactly categorize college graduates in a moment of grand achievement as unrepresented voices.

>. Even as an engineer, I live by the words my coach instilled in us, which seemingly have nothing to do with engineering or even the law explicitly, but will always be relevant.

They don't seemingly have nothing to with engineering or the law.Inspiration is a broad enough message to be applied to anything.

I definitely don't think is a bad essay. These are relevant experiences to law school, but the theme feels a bit underdeveloped. For instance, your theme here seems to be a coach's inspiration. You can do a lot with that. Like how you realized the meaning of inspiration personally to pursue a law degree as an engineering student and also how to inspire others.

And I'd tone down some of the language in the conclusion and perhaps throughout the essay. I'm getting too much of a theme of how you "knew" moments without really showing me the process of learning why you now knew these things. Aka knowing what it meant to be an advocate, knowing it wouldn't be your last graduation, knowing these people can be inspired. It's start to sound a bit self-congratulatory. I think when it comes to the subject of inspiration, it's something that absolutely needs to be shown instead of told.

What I think is good here is you have events that serve as a meaningful, transformative experience. I'm just not sure this essay properly conveys that transformation and how you were inspired to eventually reach that moment. Instead it more feels like an essay where you are reflecting on the knowledge granted by those experiences talking to yourself instead of really showing me how that knowledge was acquired and how you were inspired.

My main suggestion would be to re-tool the intro and conclusion and try to develop the theme of inspiration. There's a good personal statement here. It just needs to be told a bit differently.

[Alive97]

This is great subject matter for a PS I think, and a commencement speech is a rare accomplishment. I agree with the above poster that the PS needs to become more focused on a thesis. As it stands it seems to have parallel arguments - one that you chose law over engineering and the two have a core similarity that you first learned in engineering but can now utilise in the law, and one that your commencement speech had a fundamental difference from mock trial closings, and that difference became your final inspiration to study law.

If the former argument is supposed to logically develop into the latter, I think that could be made more clear. In theory you could construct an overarching argument that leads from changing your mind from engineering to law in the process of advocating during mock trials (but retaining the frame of reference concept learned in engineering in your mock trials), to the commencement speech as a final confirmation of your passion for advocacy. But I think there's a question as to whether that's too much to cover in the length of a PS, and whether the frame of reference skill learned from engineering is just kind of tangential to the primary "story" of mock trial and convocation.

In other words one option would be to adopt a laser focus on the story of mock trials -> commencement advocacy, while developing the theme of that becoming your motivation to practice law. With this option you could jettison the engineering experience. Or, maybe you could explicitly tie in the engineering skill of a frame of reference as another unique aspect of you that you bring to the table. But I think that again raises the question of whether focusing on both the engineering skill AND the commencement story is just too much.

Another question is whether your ultimate Thesis should be focused on your motivation to practice law or your motivation to study law. One could argue law schools are much more interested in the latter. If the end result of your story is that you want to give closing statements in front of a jury, that might be a more limited thing that makes law school a mere mans to an end.

In general k think your paragraphs could be divided up and made sequential and more organised along the path of your thesis. These are my thoughts anyway.

[sjp200]

Thanks a, lot! This is very useful moving forward now that I have a better clue of what to key in on

[totesTheGoat]

TBH, I don't think this does anything but tout that you were on Mock Trial and that you got to give your commencement speech. I don't see anything in your PS that says "these experiences prepared me for law school."

I'd cut the engineering stuff completely out... it adds nothing to your PS. I'd also cut out some of the sappy "immense gravity of the moment" and "a purpose I truly believed in."

I also think that hiding the ball on it being commencement adds to the inappropriateness of the sappy phrasing.

Finally, you need a better flow and development to your PS. Right now, all I'm getting is "mock trial was inspiring. I got to speak at commencement and it was inspiring too. I think that I can inspire people as a trial lawyer." It's disjointed, and loosely held together by the theme of inspiration, which doesn't really do much (for me, at least).

I think a better flow is "In undergrad, I joined Mock Trial because of reasons XYZ" -> "I didn't realize the profound impact it would have on me by inspiring ABC" -> "I found Mock Trial so engaging that I worked really hard to become very good at it" -> "Because of my hard work, I got to speak at commencement" -> "Now, due to my love for Mock Trial and the results i've seen (e.g. speaking at commencement), I think I'd make a great law school candidate"

[sjp200]

Did a big revamp to address these concerns. Please leave further comments below as I get ready to finish applications