Perspective please, am I off my rocker with this PS? Forum

[CenterFringe]

I've obsessed over my personal statement for months, and I've gone through so many iterations I'm afraid I might have ended up in left field. I'd really appreciate some extra eyes and thoughts on it. I consider it a final draft, so if you want to rip it apart for grammar, spelling, etc. I'd actually appreciate that as well. I know I'm on the edge so I'm trying to use my PS to push me over the edge.

Thank you for your help!

My basics: LSAT: 176, GPA: 3.58 @ state school
Goal school: Harvard
Backup: UVA
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Cold and wracked with altitude sickness, I struggled to catch my breath. I was in the Peruvian Andes, twenty thousand feet above sea level, searching in vain for the valley below. The morning’s promised view was disavowed by an afternoon fog. I’ve summited mountains the world over; it’s almost comical how often I’ve found the hardest peaks to have the thickest clouds. Still, I climb without regret, driven by something beyond understanding. A hundred years ago, environmentalist and Sierra Club founder John Muir summed it up, “The mountains are calling, and I must go”.

On a steamy, midsummer afternoon, while stopped at a busy intersection in São Paulo, I saw a physically battered and homeless child curled up on the sidewalk. In the road, a young girl juggled old coke bottles, while an even younger boy collected change. So profound was this experience that six years later I returned to South America and volunteer at an orphanage. Since 1975, Brazil has cleared over 750,000 square kilometers of Amazonian Rainforest as part of a so-called National Development Plan to build dams and mines, clear grazing lands, and grow soybeans. Still, the country fails to feed its children.

While cheap power is critical to improving a country’s quality of life, what is gained if the Earth is destroyed in the process? I saw this conflict in the Punjab region of North India. There were frequent blackouts, little air conditioning, and the city’s water pumps only ran for an hour each morning and evening. I met several electrical engineers from a regional coal fired power plant and they gave me a tour of their facility. As an electrical engineer with a background in power generation, I was immensely interested in their process. I was distressed to learn that, to reduce the cost of production, they did not filter sulfur dioxide (the primary component in acid rain) or carbon dioxide. They also had transmission losses over 20%, four times the U.S., due in large part to excessively political and ineffectual policies. In raw terms, India produces enough power for the entire country and has a transmission line density similar to the United States, yet they have 300 million people without power. The poor regulations have resulted in inefficient production, an ad hoc distribution system, excessive leakage and pilferage that culminated in a 2012 blackout affecting 620 million people.

The needs of National Security further complicate the already delicate struggle between environmental concerns and human interests. Since 2014, I’ve commanded a platoon of forty-two combat engineers and 1.3 million dollars in equipment, based on the island of Oahu. As the platoon commander, I am responsible for ensuring my Marines are physically, mentally and emotionally ready for combat, while also ensuring all training falls within applicable state and federal environmental regulations. From the blue footed booby to the sacred koa, Hawaii’s training areas are rich with natural and cultural resources. To balance these competing interests, I worked with the Hawaii Department of Natural Resources, local nonprofit organizations and others to find creative and mutually beneficial training opportunities. One example, a state trail in need of severe maintenance became an opportunity for us to construct a mobility corridor, satisfying an annual training requirement. Affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy is also a matter of national security, and I want to leverage my experiencing working with a wide range of stakeholders and finding creative solutions to have wide ranging impact.

Late one fall, I was driving through Appalachia and saw an alluring mountain. I pulled over and began a spontaneous climb. There was no trail and the brush was nearly impassable. Caught in a rainstorm, I had to turn around less than halfway up. Coming back, I found a well-used trail that led quickly back to the road, a quarter mile from where I parked. The mountains teach harsh lessons, like the importance not just knowing where you want to go, but also how to get there.

With a long history of preparing individuals for work on the national stage, a law degree from Harvard is the critical next step in my goal to work with the Department of Energy. Good policy writing and regulation compliance can avoid lawsuits, increases efficiency and benefits all stakeholders. My choice of undergraduate degrees, electrical engineering and sociology, was a deliberate choice to synthesize practicality and passion. Too often, those with the technical expertise to effect change lack an understanding of the social consequences, and those most passionate about social change lack the technical background to chart a feasible transformation. Similarly, an intimate understanding of the legal system is critical to translating my substantive knowledge into beneficial policies with a nationwide impact.

[Vandy2bforrealz]

Your gpa is borderline for Harvard with your LSAT but I think your ps is good enough where 1 or 2 people may be willing to fight for your admission to a great school. My prediction is you get the RTK at NYU or Darrow at Michigan and you live happily ever after. I would say 50/50 at Harvard.

[Mr. Elshal]

I haven't read a personal statement in a long time, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

With that said, while reading the essay I found myself wishing there had been some kind of roadmap to tell me just what I was reading. I actually feel like I would have liked the last paragraph at the very beginning (although that seems to ruin the imagery you currently open with). Otherwise, you present some compelling stories and a background that seems, at the very least, unique and relevant. I enjoyed reading it, but I'm left feeling curious about exactly how you're going to contribute to the law school environment/community, and why you need to be a lawyer to work with the Department of Energy (i.e., how exactly will law school get you there in a way that no other path will?).

I don't really remember what a PS should generally look like, but those were my impressions.

Best of luck!

[rpupkin]

Well, it's audacious...I'll grant you that. But I don't think that writing a series of short essays is a great idea for a personal statement. If there's supposed to be a unifying theme running through these little stories, I can't tell what it is.

I suggest rethinking the concept.

[robotrick]

Echoing others, I don't think I get it. I don't see a clear unifying theme across the vignettes and the last paragraph--which I thought was most "useful"--was, well, only a paragraph at the very end. I get wanting to be daring given your goal and your numbers, but I'm not sure I would go with this.

I'm not the best writer in the world, though, so what do I know? If you decide to go this route, I thought there were a few errors (maybe just transcription errors) and opportunities for clearer writing. I'd go through and find them if you think that could be helpful critiques.

[RZ5646]

Charitably, one might call this PS eclectic, less charitably, schizophrenic. I see what you're trying to do, but if you give it a quick read (which I imagine adcoms will do), it seems like you're just expanding unconnected resume lines into paragraphs. Given that several of these are very standard resume lines (probably 75% of the premed people I know have traveled to a third world country and had an "eye opening" or "inspiring" experience), I am not sure how well it will go over.

[Tls2016]

I don't understand what you are doing with this PS? I liked the beginning but then you lost me. (Aren't the toughest mountains the ones with the worst weather because that is how weather systems work around high peaks?) Is that story there to tell the reader that you don't always see the way but you keep going for some ineffable reason?

Why then do you start spouting facts about poverty, the environment, etc after a lyrical beginning. To me it comes across like you are lecturing the reader, almost condescendingly, not informing them about you. It was a jarring transition and you lost me.

At any rate delete the entire Appalachian story or if you won't at least delete the last line about "the mountains having lessons to teach us." To me, it read as corny and a little pretentious. The reader wants to know what the mountains teach you, not a sermon.

Bottom line: I read this and the only thing I know about you is you like to climb mountains, you were in Brazil doing some volunteer thing and you were in the military. You have a good deal of prose but little of it is revealing about who you are.

Saying that, you sound like an interesting person with a number of accomplishments, compelling life experiences and the drive to change things around you. I just think you can maybe do a better job of conveying those things.
(Unlike others I didn't like the last paragraph! Maybe because it felt too tacked on? Also, being changed by seeing poverty first hand is valuable no matter how many other people have done it. It speaks to your character. You have a rich life to mine here, but you are giving little, superficial glimpses.)

Edit to add: of all these things, what are you the most passionate about? Write about that thing.

[robotrick]

Unlike others I didn't like the last paragraph! Maybe because it felt too tacked on?

You're right. I don't like the last paragraph as a piece of writing, or even necessarily as a component of the entire essay, but I liked that it was more concrete. It had a clear point, it talked about career goals, and hinted at why a law degree might be helpful. I think those are good things to have in a personal statement (though probably not necessary...).

[Alive97]

It's a bold concept to jump around the world with your various experiences in succeeding paragraphs, but each needs to be more clearly connected to the preceding one, leading to a more coherent "whole", presumably solidified in the final paragraph. I think this would require many, many more drafts to develop your concept with very precise sentences that together form a whole.

[Mr. Elshal]

Unlike others I didn't like the last paragraph! Maybe because it felt too tacked on?

You're right. I don't like the last paragraph as a piece of writing, or even necessarily as a component of the entire essay, but I liked that it was more concrete. It had a clear point, it talked about career goals, and hinted at why a law degree might be helpful. I think those are good things to have in a personal statement (though probably not necessary...).

This was my feeling too

[CenterFringe]

Thanks for all the input. Many of you spoke to my concerns, especially about the lack of a unifying theme between the paragraphs. What I was shooting for (and I'll obviously be reworking) was a narrative journey that explains why I'm interested in administrative law, and why these substantive areas are important to me, through a series of experiences that shaped my perspective. It begins with a concern human welfare, then expands to include environmental protection and finally national security. The final paragraph was my attempt to tie it all back law school.

I intentionally made use of syncopation (Cold and snowy to hot and steamy, or 'cold facts' juxtaposed with an emotional appeal) to keep the readers interest, but if it's jarring or schizophrenic I took it too far. My thoughts now are to pull the Appalachia story completely (that was my least favorite paragraph) and use that space to better tie the three body paragraphs, and beef up my conclusion. I'm still up in the air on the introduction, as I like it for a attention grabber but would like to tie it more concretely to the rest of the story.

Finally, I definitely left things unsaid in the PS. Some of it was because I didn't' want to repeat my resume, others because ultimately I see the PS as a way to get an interview, not necessarily the thing that gets me an offer.