Submitting this PS by Monday - final thoughts? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I have been working on this PS for many months and it has totally transformed, thanks to everyone's help on here. I want to submit 10-15 apps right when my LSAT score releases, and this is that final piece to the puzzle. I've posted this PS throughout the process on here so many times. Could you please just give e your final thoughts, before I consider it polished and submit-able? Thank you

--Please do not quote, unless if in a PM to me---

Personal Statement

On November 7, 2004, I attended a men’s basketball pre-season game between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the East Stroudsburg University Warriors. Penn State was victorious, as expected. I left the game, jumped into my car, and began the one-hour trip back to my parents’ house in [LOCATION]. Before entering the highway, I stopped at a gas station to fill up my tank and purchase a Jones soda. I am sure that soda
was refreshing, but I do not remember drinking it. The next thing I remember is lying on a hospital bed thirty days later.

I was in a state of total confusion. I vaguely recall people talking about a car accident, but I could not really understand what they were saying. I was in complete denial and thought that everything was some type of nightmare – the kind of nightmare where you can open your eyes and end the horror at any time. But, no matter how many times I opened my eyes, I realized that nothing ever changed.

My parents brought me a laptop computer to use while I was in my hospital bed. I downloaded AOL Instant Messenger and logged onto my screen name. I was flooded with messages from my friends, ecstatic that I was doing well enough to be on the Internet. I decided to tell one of these friends about a horrible nightmare that I had. “I was in a car accident in this nightmare,” I said.

“…[NAME], please call me,” she said, stunned about how to handle the situation.
It was at that point when I began to realize that this was not some kind of morbid dream, but a new reality. I learned that I had sustained a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), had been life-flighted from the scene, and had spent ten days in a coma (the first night on life-support). In all, I spent forty days in the hospital and 4.5 years in rehabilitative therapies (up until the summer after my sophomore year in college). I went from being a two-sport athlete, to being fed through a feeding tube in my nose, unable to walk or stand on my own. I have since regained much of my physical ability, having become a certified personal trainer to aid in my recovery.

Balancing being a college student with being a TBI survivor in the early stages of recovery, presented some obstacles. A couple of those obstacles were learning how to study with a newly acquired ADHD profile and reading disability (both of which I have recovered from, or now manage, and have become negligible in my academic performance). During my sophomore year of college, I took a class that was widely regarded as a tough course, a “weed-out” class for future teachers. I prepared very well for the first exam, but scored about 20 points below what I felt I was capable of. I had an in-depth conversation with the professor during office hours about how I could improve upon this lackluster performance, and other study and test-taking strategies that I could implement to best help the “new me” after my TBI. After that conversation, I proceeded to get A’s on all of my future assignments for that class and ended the semester with an A. My grades began to generally improve as well, and I will not soon forget that conversation – or the lessons it taught me about the “new me.”

My life experiences have kept me humble while illustrating that I will not allow my brain injury to hold me back. These experiences have created within me a strong desire to practice disability law upon graduation. I am blessed and fortunate to have made the recovery that I have and I am passionate about advocating for and helping those who are less fortunate than I or who are still undergoing their own recoveries.

[roranoa]

Maybe you can mention the accident within one paragraph and expand on how you overcame the trouble that came after it in more detail. The incident itself seems to take up a lot of space.

[heythatslife]

Maybe you can mention the accident within one paragraph and expand on how you overcame the trouble that came after it in more detail. The incident itself seems to take up a lot of space.

I agree with this. The PS should be about how you overcame the obstacles, not how you got them in the first place. The parts about soda, laptop, and AOL, while they add color, are superfluous in a 2-page essay where you should devote that space to something more pertinent. Since you mentioned an interest in disability law, perhaps something about an instance where you felt/witnessed discrimination or institutional failure to properly support people with disabilities?

[Anonymous User]

Just a little update (this is from the OP):

I further edited my PS and submitted it a little over a week ago. I have had 2 adcomms comment on how terrific my PS is (their words), and T2 offered me a full-ride one day after going complete.

Thank you to this message board for helping me craft my PS!