Personal Statement Final-ish Draft. Thoughts welcome! Forum

(Personal Statement Examples, Advice, Critique, . . . )
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CoastinGhostin

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Personal Statement Final-ish Draft. Thoughts welcome!

Post by CoastinGhostin » Wed Nov 02, 2016 4:31 pm

edit: deleted for privacy
Last edited by CoastinGhostin on Thu Nov 03, 2016 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Babe-Loblaw

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Re: Personal Statement Final-ish Draft. Thoughts welcome!

Post by Babe-Loblaw » Wed Nov 02, 2016 6:03 pm

First thoughts:
What makes you someone who does things the difficult way? What journey do you taking seriously? Then you kind of slide into something that sounds like it was clipped straight from your resume. I would leave that part out.

You spend the least amount of time on the most interesting part of your essay. Facing a parent's mortality at a young age can be a massive growth experience. However, many people can suffer through all of the pain and anxiety that it brings without any real introspection, and you don't really do anything to connect such a traumatic experience with personal growth. What was your relationship with your father like before the accident? After? How did your family dynamic change? What changes did you make in your own life plan because of it? How did it alter your perspective on life, death, kindness, or God? Did your financial situation or your family's change dramatically because of it? Were you in a position to help him or your family and if so, how did you do so? If you weren't, how did you deal with the helplessness and anger that comes from that? Did your dad teach you to play baseball? Is he still capable of throwing a ball around with you?

Scrap that third paragraph entirely. Write a new one for each school. Adcomms know what law school is like, you don't have to tell them. Figure out something specific you would appreciate about each school and mention that in particular- if you are interested in a certain field of law and want to go to their clinic, for example.

If the crux of your essay is "I'm drawn to things that require personal discipline, and my father's near-death experience helped spur that into action, therefore I should go to law school" you need to find a way to connect all of those things in a way that makes sense, using concrete examples. Right now it reads more like "Here's some things I think about myself with very little proof to back them up, btw my dad nearly died and it made me better, here's a list of things I like about your school that apply to literally every law school, here's some more stuff I think about myself without any proof, can I go to law school now?"

CoastinGhostin

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Re: Personal Statement Final-ish Draft. Thoughts welcome!

Post by CoastinGhostin » Thu Nov 03, 2016 1:52 am

Babe-Loblaw wrote:First thoughts:
What makes you someone who does things the difficult way? What journey do you taking seriously? Then you kind of slide into something that sounds like it was clipped straight from your resume. I would leave that part out.

You spend the least amount of time on the most interesting part of your essay. Facing a parent's mortality at a young age can be a massive growth experience. However, many people can suffer through all of the pain and anxiety that it brings without any real introspection, and you don't really do anything to connect such a traumatic experience with personal growth. What was your relationship with your father like before the accident? After? How did your family dynamic change? What changes did you make in your own life plan because of it? How did it alter your perspective on life, death, kindness, or God? Did your financial situation or your family's change dramatically because of it? Were you in a position to help him or your family and if so, how did you do so? If you weren't, how did you deal with the helplessness and anger that comes from that? Did your dad teach you to play baseball? Is he still capable of throwing a ball around with you?

Scrap that third paragraph entirely. Write a new one for each school. Adcomms know what law school is like, you don't have to tell them. Figure out something specific you would appreciate about each school and mention that in particular- if you are interested in a certain field of law and want to go to their clinic, for example.

If the crux of your essay is "I'm drawn to things that require personal discipline, and my father's near-death experience helped spur that into action, therefore I should go to law school" you need to find a way to connect all of those things in a way that makes sense, using concrete examples. Right now it reads more like "Here's some things I think about myself with very little proof to back them up, btw my dad nearly died and it made me better, here's a list of things I like about your school that apply to literally every law school, here's some more stuff I think about myself without any proof, can I go to law school now?"
This is exactly the kind of feedback i was hoping to hear -- thanks for taking the time and effort

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