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Someone Destroy My PS Please

Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2019 2:20 am
by camru
Welp, here she is:

My parents were not the “graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University” type. My mother teaches hair and makeup at a vocational school and my father is a blue-collar electrician. Neither of them has gotten a college degree, as higher education was never instilled in them as kids. However, they always wanted better for my brother and me. While they were not afforded the opportunity to pursue their education, they have always encouraged me to do my best and go as far as I can. This is what influenced me to always look for more opportunities to learn and grow my mind.
While most of my friends did not even know that there were 27 amendments to the Constitution, I remember actively following the 2012 presidential election cycle. This was considered weird for someone that was a freshman in high school. I watch all the debates, studied every candidates’ policies and records, and stayed up all night the night of the election, excited to find out the results.
As senior year came upon me, I finally found a place where there were other people my age that shared this obscure interest with me. I enrolled in the "government and law related experiences" course at my high school. This was such a rewarding opportunity for me. We had a guest speaker come in almost every day who were lawyers, politicians, and people who knew the inner workings of state and local government. There is nothing more I can say about this experience besides that it bolstered my love for law and politics. This is where my whole mindset and future goals began to transform.
My parents always had told me that I was the smartest and that I was special. I was, without a doubt, surprised when I figured out that I was actually no different from anybody else. I went from the top to the middle of the pack. Luckily, I was able to overcome this realization rather quickly. This was also the extent to which my parents’ knowledge stopped, so I did not really have that guidance that I needed. I went into college with no major and did not really know what I wanted to do. I took mostly science and math courses freshman year since I found that I performed well in them in high school. Little did I know that not even four years later I would be applying to law school as a political science major. I always saw law and politics as more of a hobby, rather than a life choice.
In 2017 I went to a meeting for one of my town’s local political parties. Here is where I was realized my destiny. I finally understood that my love for law and politics did not have to be just a hobby. I decided to run for the Board of Education in one of New Jersey’s largest school districts, the Hamilton Township School District. I ran against 12 other candidates fighting it out for three seats. Over 40,000 people vote in off-year elections in Hamilton, so I knew that I was facing the most difficult obstacle that I have ever faced. Nobody besides my family and friends thought that a kid, 20 years old and fresh out of high school, could surmount a field of incumbents and outstandingly experienced challengers. I was pleasantly surprised when November came around and I realized that all my hard work had paid off.
This whole process matured me like no other experience. I had to learn how to effectively communicate with people in a persuasive manner. Since my time on the Board began, I was faced with the problems of tens-of-thousands of students, staff, and parents. My time on the board has only strengthened my affinity for the law. I have increased my legal knowledge tenfold since the election. The Board has influenced me to use my knowledge of the law and position to fight for the things that I believe in. I finally see that I can use the law to make the world better and shape the minds of the American people. This has undoubtedly been the most reward experience for me and has paved a path for my future.
I see myself using my law degree to fight for what is right. As I previously explained, I know that knowledge of the law, when used effectively, can make a huge impact on society. While I cannot yet say what particular focus of law I want to pursue, I can say that government and public interest is the area that excites me most. My experiences have awarded me with a passion for positively changing people’s lives through legal government action, and I am certain that passion will remain through law school.

Re: Someone Destroy My PS Please

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 9:00 am
by kevin_lomax
The first line of your PS is strange and comes off as distasteful. How many people's parents graduated with honors from Harvard? Maybe an extremely small subset of the population, and the way you phrase it the reader infers that you find something wrong with graduating with honors from Harvard. Also, why are you talking about your parents so much? I think this personal statement should be showing more about yourself, your abilities and achievements.

Next, throughout your essay, you have a negative connotation in a lot of the areas you discuss. Both in your parents not graduating college and your friends not knowing there's 27 constitutional amendments. I would delete those lines, in any admissions writing I would think you want to stay positive.

My last point, your statement seems all over the place. You write about your parents, your college, your local election experience and then conclude by saying you don't know what you want to do as a lawyer. I think if you just wrote one really solid personal statement about your local election experience, which sounds really great and something that would make you stand out, you'd be much better off. This PS seems all over the map and doesn't do enough to tell the law school about why you're a good candidate.

Re: Someone Destroy My PS Please

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 11:18 am
by nixy
Yeah, I agree that this is really disjointed and all over the place. It talks about a lot of things with little depth - it would make more sense to take one and focus on it more. And I totally agree that the local election would be a great thing to focus on that most candidates won’t have in their background. Why did you pick the Board of Ed? What actual hard work did you do to get elected? What specifically did you do while on the board - what kinds of problems did you deal with? What problems could the board solve and what problems couldn’t they solve? Did you have any issues working with other board members as a 20 yo? What did being on the board teach you about politics, education, local conditions, the best way to effect change in communities, or the like?

Re: Someone Destroy My PS Please

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 2:52 pm
by LBJ's Hair
Your PS needs a lot of work.

Agree with what the others said RE coming across as defensive/insecure about your parents and friends. Not helpful.

But more generally, I read this through twice and couldn't tell you what it's about. There's no....narrative. It's just a list of biographical details. Maybe the one consistent thread is that you're interested in law and politics. But even that isn't well-developed, and honestly it's the worst possible law school personal statement topic. Of course you're interesting in law and public policy...you're...applying to law school.

My advice: Start over completely, do the following.

(1) Pick *narrow biographical* topic to write about. You only have a few pages to work with---you can't tell your life story. Say, hypothetically, you spent a year as a high school math teacher for a year in rural Arkansas, but you're from New York City. Your topic is "teaching in Arkansas."

(2) Now think about a simple message you want to have successfully conveyed to the reader by the end of the piece. By "simple," I mean "can be summarized in a sentence, maybe even 10 words." In our hypothetical, that message might be, "My students taught me as much as I taught them." Cliche, but whatever.

(3) Now, using simple narrative prose, tell the reader a *story* illustrating that point. In our hypothetical, maybe you'd start by describing, very briefly, your childhood in New York City---you grew up riding the subways, you never even got a drivers license. Then you'd transition to Arkansas. Maybe we'd talk about how the students hated math class at first---you had a rough first couple of weeks. They weren't doing their homework. But eventually you were able to show them how it's useful and fun. Say you were trying to parallel park your car in the parking lot (remember, you never learned how to drive in New York), and just couldn't get it right...until one of your students showed you how.

Obviously like, there are many ways to craft a compelling personal statement. Some aren't even about *you*. But I think most have these qualities: they're focused; they have a simple, punchy message; and they usually *illustrate* that message via simple first-person narrative, rather than *telling* the reader it overtly.

Re: Someone Destroy My PS Please

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 4:00 pm
by mjb447
Agreed. I didn't really get any sense of who you are from this PS - most of it is about being a high-school politics enthusiast (I'd be allowed to say "nerd" here, because I was also one) turned directionless college student, which is a pretty common admissions story. The elections/Board of Ed stuff is unique, but you're only giving the reader the conclusions - I learned how to communicate effectively, manage far-reaching problems, fight for what I believe in, etc. - without giving any substantiating detail, so it isn't as compelling as it probably could be.