please CRITIQUE this *FINAL PS* that I need to finish by the end of Today Jan 19th Thursday and will update quickly..... Forum

[Anonymous User]

PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE

Please tear this PS apart..I wrote about something related to what I have to balance in my work everyday. This may be a non-traditional PS. Looking for comments soon...Any quick criticism welcome..

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UPDATE: The updated PS is posted below in a separate post in this thread...

[floatie]

This needs to be more about you. The first two paragraphs and much of the third (so, over half of your statement) aren't about you.

[OhMyLaw]

I agree with floatie. Another recommendation I have for you is to focus on one specific experience, choosing depth over breadth. After all, your work experience is going to be on your resume anyways right? If you decide to stick with this draft, your structure of sentences within paragraphs could use some work and you could be more concise. I don't know what schools you're applying to, but the recommended length for PS is about 2 pages. Finally, I'm not really sure I understand the decision you made. So you basically told everyone that your product was going to be successful even though you weren't sure? Sorry if I misunderstood. Best of luck with everything!

[zot1]

I really couldn't get over the fact that you spent two paragraphs on something that says absolutely nothing about you.

[Anonymous User]

I agree with floatie. Another recommendation I have for you is to focus on one specific experience, choosing depth over breadth. After all, your work experience is going to be on your resume anyways right? If you decide to stick with this draft, your structure of sentences within paragraphs could use some work and you could be more concise. I don't know what schools you're applying to, but the recommended length for PS is about 2 pages. Finally, I'm not really sure I understand the decision you made. So you basically told everyone that your product was going to be successful even though you weren't sure? Sorry if I misunderstood. Best of luck with everything!

thanks for the comments above. i have reworked the PS to begin addressing these main issues. posted below in the thread in a new post...

[mjb447]

Still pretty wordy on a micro level, although maybe you haven't had time to revise at that level yet.

Also, the turn to your public service goals feels a little abrupt or forced to me. Not saying you have to include your public service goals at all, or that you absolutely can't use this experience to discuss them, but right now the relationship between the two is kind of weak - your strongest statement about the relationship between your goals and the experience you spent most of the statement discussing is "This interplay of passionate persuasion and critical analysis happens every day in work in corporations as well as in public service." Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't really say why you're particularly interested in public service, and you don't really discuss the nonprofit experiences that have helped convinced you that law school is the right move to pursue a public service career.

[Anonymous User]

Still pretty wordy on a micro level, although maybe you haven't had time to revise at that level yet.

Also, the turn to your public service goals feels a little abrupt or forced to me. Not saying you have to include your public service goals at all, or that you absolutely can't use this experience to discuss them, but right now the relationship between the two is kind of weak - your strongest statement about the relationship between your goals and the experience you spent most of the statement discussing is "This interplay of passionate persuasion and critical analysis happens every day in work in corporations as well as in public service." Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't really say why you're particularly interested in public service, and you don't really discuss the nonprofit experiences that have helped convinced you that law school is the right move to pursue a public service career.

updated to add the connection between public service and experience in the last para.
nonprofit work is listed briefly in the resume. wouldn't that suffice for adcom?
please let me know any additional comments.

i also have Diversity statement from the app i sent 2 years ago. The experiences growing up reference is explained in that DS.
This is a completely fresh PS, but can the DS from 2 year old app be reused as-is?

Please see the UPDATED PS at the LAST POST OF THIS THREAD.....

[sethnoorzad]

Just a fast impression. In your conclusion you tie everything together nicely. I liked your statement by the end more than I did in the middle or the beginning. I think you could explain your dilemma as head of your development team in fewer words. Find out what exactly is the meat of that anecdote and cut out unnecessary details. Your main theme seems to be your leadership ualities. I would develop that a little more. You mention a lot of things, some of them seem unessential. Hone the thematic focus a bit and I think it could get better.

Can't do this without uoting... would be nice to print your statement out and go through with a pencil and identify words or phrases that you could improve in small ways. For example, look for places where you use the same word in two consecutive sentences and then vary your word choice (you have two sentences where you talk about your team in each one. Find a synonym for "team" to use in the second sentence.) Apply a little polish, so to speak.

Hope you can get something out of that. GL.

[Anonymous User]

thanks for the comments so far.

PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE
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Edit: The latest PS is posted in another post later in this thread

[inmybeginning]

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[sethnoorzad]

In the beginning, it was a little confusing how you indirectly lead the reader to the fact that YOU were the leader of this entire team. I can see how going about it indirectly you show how you were once a team member following a leader and now you are on the other end. But when you mentioned the big conference call it took me a second read to realize "oh, YOU are directing this whole meeting". Maybe the ad comms will be sharper than me but I think it would be better to just say that you were the most senior person on the project.

This is just my impression, so feel free to follow it or not. I agree with the above poster that you could condense the first three paragraphs into maybe one. Just include the essential points. You were the leader of a corporate software project. You had to address a meeting of all your subsidiaries of engineers and everyone else, and you had to strike the right balance between confidence in the project's ultimate success as well as a realistic assessment of the inherent unknowns when embarking on such a large project. Right now, you have a lot of sentences setting up your main point and it seems overdone. It's an interesting story but I think there's only enough "meat" in it for around one paragraph.

You could spend a whole new paragraph then or even longer on explaining your desire for a career in public service. I think that is very interesting and needs more words spent talking about it.

[mjb447]

I agree with the above poster that you could condense the first three paragraphs into maybe one. Just include the essential points. You were the leader of a corporate software project. You had to address a meeting of all your subsidiaries of engineers and everyone else, and you had to strike the right balance between confidence in the project's ultimate success as well as a realistic assessment of the inherent unknowns when embarking on such a large project. Right now, you have a lot of sentences setting up your main point and it seems overdone. It's an interesting story but I think there's only enough "meat" in it for around one paragraph.

You could spend a whole new paragraph then or even longer on explaining your desire for a career in public service. I think that is very interesting and needs more words spent talking about it.

+1. I still think you're underexplaining the public service stuff if you're going to mention it as a primary reason you want to go to law school - a resume may list your public service positions, but it's not really going to tell adcomms why you want to devote your life to public service and how law school is going to help you with that. You'll have a little more space to expand on that if you cut your software project story to its most important details.

[Anonymous User]

I agree with the above poster that you could condense the first three paragraphs into maybe one. Just include the essential points. You were the leader of a corporate software project. You had to address a meeting of all your subsidiaries of engineers and everyone else, and you had to strike the right balance between confidence in the project's ultimate success as well as a realistic assessment of the inherent unknowns when embarking on such a large project. Right now, you have a lot of sentences setting up your main point and it seems overdone. It's an interesting story but I think there's only enough "meat" in it for around one paragraph.

You could spend a whole new paragraph then or even longer on explaining your desire for a career in public service. I think that is very interesting and needs more words spent talking about it.

+1. I still think you're underexplaining the public service stuff if you're going to mention it as a primary reason you want to go to law school - a resume may list your public service positions, but it's not really going to tell adcomms why you want to devote your life to public service and how law school is going to help you with that. You'll have a little more space to expand on that if you cut your software project story to its most important details.

I have a Diversity statement that I am reusing as-is from previous application (re-applicant). The DS explains the motivation for public service better. wouldn't that do as the combined PS/DS will cover that gap?

board member/non-profit experience is going to be on the resume, although it'll be very brief. i have heard that PS doesn't necessarily have to explain why you want to do law school or such. so i was trying mainly to explain my dilemmas at my work and how they're applicable in the public service sector through the PS. may be that doesn't come clearly enough?

[mjb447]

Can't really comment meaningfully on a DS I haven't read; I just think it's a little jarring for your PS when, four or five paragraphs in, you first mention a commitment to public service like it's something that your PS has been based on or mentioned already. I also think you're getting feedback to include more about your public interest aspirations because there might not be enough 'meat' in the software development story to support an entire PS and we're looking for other avenues that you might use to expand your PS ('why I want to go to law school' being an obvious choice).

[Anonymous User]

Can't really comment meaningfully on a DS I haven't read; I just think it's a little jarring for your PS when, four or five paragraphs in, you first mention a commitment to public service like it's something that your PS has been based on or mentioned already. I also think you're getting feedback to include more about your public interest aspirations because there might not be enough 'meat' in the software development story to support an entire PS and we're looking for other avenues that you might use to expand your PS ('why I want to go to law school' being an obvious choice).

op here

Will PM the DS.

[Anonymous User]

op here.

based on the comments above, here is the latest PS. Added some stuff on why law/public service in the later paragrahs and made some changes to earlier ones based on feedback from 'inmybeginning' and above posters.
i'm thinking that this PS may be very close to final.
I have a DS that explain in more detail the motivation for public service and fills that gap.

EDIT: The latest PS is posted at the bottom of this thread..

[Future Ex-Engineer]

Not sure how I feel about this one.

On the one hand I can respect the talent/difficulty of your life experience (being an engineer myself), but on the other hand, I don't get why you want to leave that for law school (from your statement).

You say you've already started your own non-profit, and that you are involved on the board of another - I couldn't see from your statement how a law degree will help you be involved in charitable/PI causes more than you already are - in fact, it would seem to me that taking three years to get a law degree would actually take you away from being able to give time/money to those causes that you are already a part of.

Take that with a grain of salt - I'm sure you have good reasons for your thinking (we engineering folk rarely make big decisions like this on a whim), it just isn't clear to me from this draft of the PS as to why you would choose this route.

Also you probably shouldn't use the word 'interplay' in two consecutive sentences.

As other posters have said, I feel that the beginning 3 paragraphs are unnecessarily cumbersome. I kinda felt like I was reading a long LR question.

EDIT:
These comments were intended for your previous version - apparently you posted an updated version while I was writing my comment.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure how I feel about this one.

On the one hand I can respect the talent/difficulty of your life experience (being an engineer myself), but on the other hand, I don't get why you want to leave that for law school (from your statement).

You say you've already started your own non-profit, and that you are involved on the board of another - I couldn't see from your statement how a law degree will help you be involved in charitable/PI causes more than you already are - in fact, it would seem to me that taking three years to get a law degree would actually take you away from being able to give time/money to those causes that you are already a part of.

Take that with a grain of salt - I'm sure you have good reasons for your thinking (we engineering folk rarely make big decisions like this on a whim), it just isn't clear to me from this draft of the PS as to why you would choose this route.

Also you probably shouldn't use the word 'interplay' in two consecutive sentences.

op here
As other posters have said, I feel that the beginning 3 paragraphs are unnecessarily cumbersome. I kinda felt like I was reading a long LR question.

EDIT:
These comments were intended for your previous version - apparently you posted an updated version while I was writing my comment.

op here

i was trying to show my thinking to the reader in the first 3 paragraphs, but perhaps it can be shortened a bit.

the PS may not fully address "why law" question, but that wasn't the main part of this PS anyway. I thought that law school PS doesn't really need to explain 'why law'. Schools like H or below in T6 will not care much for 'why law' part anyway. Is that true?

So I focused more on showing my thought process to the reader.
The latest PS is posted above.
Does it make sense? or should i must change it drastically to make it final?

[Anonymous User]

I made changes according to above feedback and this is my LATEST PS.

Please give any comments/critique and how you'd think of it as close to a final PS...

Edit: will soon post the latest PS in this thread

[sethnoorzad]

I think your first paragraph is better in this version. It's nice and clear now. Good work.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure how I feel about this one.

On the one hand I can respect the talent/difficulty of your life experience (being an engineer myself), but on the other hand, I don't get why you want to leave that for law school (from your statement).

resolved