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Sounds interesting. And no one will care that you ran as a fake Republican in your fake election.

Sounds interesting.

I wouldn't worry too much about party affiliations or w/e in the PS. If T14 adcomms are as much about promoting diversity as they say (and displayed during ASWs last year) then they would welcome intelligent/articulate candidates from both sides of the aisle. I honestly think you'd be surprised at the parity between party lines/numbers of people on both sides at the upper level.

This sounds like a really cool experience, but I think you need to develop it more to make it a PS topic.
A few things you might want to talk about:
1) How does running a mock campaign relate to law school? You don't need a JD to go into politics.
2) What did you learn from the experience? I understand it helped you with public speaking, and self confidence. While those are good skills to have, how does that relate to actual legal things?
3) How is this going to help an adcomm determine how you are going to fit into the school? What about this experience allows you to bring something different than the 3000 other kids applying to the school.

You probably won't be going into policy specifics or anything, so you don't need to worry about offending anyone by the fact that you were a generically republican party candidate.

I'm going to vote "no" on this one. I don't think it will do enough to truly differentiate yourself from other candidates. A lot of candidates are going to write about interning on X, Y, Z's campaign/express an interest in politics. Sure, if this is really what you are interested in, then feel free to write about it. I just don't see this experience as offering enough about who you are outside the academic bubble. I think most adcomms would probably start to glaze over at another personal statement about politics/political involvement.

Platopus wrote:I'm going to vote "no" on this one. I don't think it will do enough to truly differentiate yourself from other candidates. A lot of candidates are going to write about interning on X, Y, Z's campaign/express an interest in politics. Sure, if this is really what you are interested in, then feel free to write about it. I just don't see this experience as offering enough about who you are outside the academic bubble. I think most adcomms would probably start to glaze over at another personal statement about politics/political involvement.

But writing about working on a real campaign is different than writing about winning a fake one. The OP could have a killer personal statement, especially if they address the whole thing with a bit of humor.

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Slippin' Jimmy wrote:
I didn't think about adding humor to it, but that is actually a great idea! I'll try to come up with a rough draft to see whether it actually seems unique and relevant, and if it doesn't work out I'll scrap this topic.

TCR. Try something and let us tear it apart. That's what helped me figure out my PS last year. You've got tons of time til apps open anyway, so crank out a draft and see if it looks salvageable.

I think it could be a good topic if written really well. If you do decide to do it, it could be cool to try it with a narrative lead about winning the election and then reveal that it is fake.

Joining the chorus of "this could be an interesting PS." I agree with using a humorous angle around it and not worrying about party allegiances in the least. Just use it to showcase your leadership abilities, persuasive abilities, and whatever other angle isn't directly apparent in your resume. And definitely make sure it's not a resume expander where this is on your resume but just explains everything you did during the mock campaign in greater detail. This should show character, personality, and abilities that wouldn't otherwise be obvious from the resume where I'm guessing you'd list it.

The meat of a PS is in the execution, not in the topic itself. You have a good topic to start with, now is the time to start crafting it in a way that provides interesting insight into you the person, not so much you the law school applicant.

nah