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Hello TLS community,

I'm an incoming student at one of the professional IR schools (SFS/SAIS/Fletcher/SIPA). I'm applying to law school to do a joint MA-JD degree and I'm concerned about whether I should write a specific addendum.

So my situation is: I enrolled in another IR program straight out of undergrad (two years ago) and after a couple of months realised that I hated it and left. I have since travelled around and worked for some time and decided that I wanted to go back to school and learn about development in a more professional setting. When I applied to the aforementioned schools I did write an addendum to explain why I had left from a somewhat similar program and I guess it worked.

Now my conundrum is: Are law schools interested in knowing about all that (I do have a longer than three month employment gap), or is all that "superseded" by my acceptance into a top IR school? Also, my biggest concern is that I don't think I have particularly solid reasons that wouldn't at the same time jeopardise my law school chances (In my previous addendum I said I felt that the curriculum was too academic/IR-theory based and I wanted to get real world work experience). I've been told that it's better not to write an addendum than one with weak arguments.

Sorry for the long post - I would be very very grateful for any advice/suggestions!

P.S. if it's helpful, I'm an international student, have a 3.8-3.9 UGPA and 172 LSAT and hoping to make into a T14.

Thanks a lot!

I can't decide if that reasoning (that it was too academic/theoretical) would make you look better because of your action-oriented attitude or worse since law school is very academic. But your numbers will do the work for you, heh.

I'd say always err on the side of full disclosure. While the reasoning may be a bit weak, I don't think explaining it yourself is going to hurt you in any way. On the contrary, not disclosing it may send up some red flags.

I don't really know though.

I have a similar situation. I was not going to write about it for the reasons you indicated. I'm curious to know what other people think about this. Maybe it's a question for one of those ask an adcomm threads.

I would appreciate the answer to this too.