Final-ish draft, hard critiques welcome. Also, is my opening anecdote appropriate? Forum

[Babe-Loblaw]

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[tinafeyclone]

Just my opinion, but I think it's a pretty weird thing to send as your personal statement. Definitely change the anecdote. This statement really made me cringe.

[Babe-Loblaw]

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[Shema]

Love it. Don't change it. This is memorable. Admission officers read these all day and every day. You want to be remembered. This is memorable and substantive. So long as the rest of your file is strong I don't think it will hurt at all.

[rcharter1978]

Just my opinion, but I think it's a pretty weird thing to send as your personal statement. Definitely change the anecdote. This statement really made me cringe.

The anecdote, or the whole thing? I don't really see myself being able to explain why I want to go to law school without explaining the cooperative stuff, given that I'm trying to do public interest work in affordable housing and community development. I was hoping the ridiculousness of the situation would add some humor since the last half is a little dry, but I also could just think it's funny because it happened to me. A lot of my better stories about my work in this area either require a lot of contextual knowledge about how housing cooperatives work to be understood or would be a violation of ethics to discuss, so it's kind of difficult to come up with something. Would it be better to just say the complex was covered in graffiti and not mention what it was depicting?

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Penises (penii?) on windows will never not be funny. But for some reason it reads a little rough. Maybe start out with "Representative X was coming in three hours, it was 50 degrees outside, the tabling area was flooded and the windows were covered in penises."

I don't know that you need to do so much scene setting, although I can see why you would.

[joeytribbiani]

Get rid of the second to last paragraph. It reads as though you're trying to sell the idea of cooperatives to the adcom and that's irrelevant. Also, whenever someone says they aren't a zealot, the first thing I think is that they are a zealot. You don't have to defend yourself for believing in them. Just my $.02. On the whole I think it would be memorable and clearly shows your reason/passion for why you want to go into law.

[tinafeyclone]

Just my opinion, but I think it's a pretty weird thing to send as your personal statement. Definitely change the anecdote. This statement really made me cringe.

The anecdote, or the whole thing? I don't really see myself being able to explain why I want to go to law school without explaining the cooperative stuff, given that I'm trying to do public interest work in affordable housing and community development. I was hoping the ridiculousness of the situation would add some humor since the last half is a little dry, but I also could just think it's funny because it happened to me. A lot of my better stories about my work in this area either require a lot of contextual knowledge about how housing cooperatives work to be understood or would be a violation of ethics to discuss, so it's kind of difficult to come up with something. Would it be better to just say the complex was covered in graffiti and not mention what it was depicting?

The anecdote. Because the likelihood that the admissions officer reading your essay will be on the traditional side, I think it shows poor judgement to send something like this. I realize that it had an effect on your life, but I personally don't see how cleaning up obscene graffiti shows anything insightful about you, let alone demonstrates why a law school accepts you.

The housing cooperative part is good, but reading the anecdote ruined the essay for me. I really wouldn't risk it. Just my opinion though!