how much do law school personal statement prompts differ?
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2015 8:28 am
Is It bad to just send in one general personal statement to all the schools you apply to?
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If you send the same one to each school is it good to do any of the additional essays they ask for? I imagine that a generic ps might be the cause of yield protection a lot of the time, thoughts?Clemenceau wrote:I don't think I actually read a single one of those prompts. Just sent the same PS to every school.
I think additional essays can be worthwhile. Alot of top schools YP pretty heavily. Cls, penn, uva, mich all come to mind. A decent 'why x' essay can help avoid that. Personally I was accepted everywhere I wrote a why x essay, but I did get a few WLs at places where I didn't write one. My numbers were also kinda funky/january application tho.cdotson2 wrote:If you send the same one to each school is it good to do any of the additional essays they ask for? I imagine that a generic ps might be the cause of yield protection a lot of the time, thoughts?Clemenceau wrote:I don't think I actually read a single one of those prompts. Just sent the same PS to every school.
I feel like a page sounds right. If a PS is only 2, nothing else should be more than 1. Being really specific to your actual interests probably is best.pittsburghpirates wrote:
Question for you on the "Why X" essays you wrote. I've been struggling to find advice on how long these typically are... Did you keep yours to about a page or less? Or longer? Figured that it's important to have something more meaningful to say other than that "I want to go to X because X is a great school" just wasn't sure about length. Any advice on content would be appreciated too. Sorry to hijack your thread OP, but figure this could be helpful in terms of whether to tailor a PS as well
Yep one full page. Content varied from school to school. For a couple, I sold ties to that geographical area. For others, I mentioned relationships I had with alumni of that school, and thus concluded x school would be a great fit for me etc etc etc.pittsburghpirates wrote:Question for you on the "Why X" essays you wrote. I've been struggling to find advice on how long these typically are... Did you keep yours to about a page or less? Or longer? Figured that it's important to have something more meaningful to say other than that "I want to go to X because X is a great school" just wasn't sure about length. Any advice on content would be appreciated too. Sorry to hijack your thread OP, but figure this could be helpful in terms of whether to tailor a PS as wellClemenceau wrote:I think additional essays can be worthwhile. Alot of top schools YP pretty heavily. Cls, penn, uva, mich all come to mind. A decent 'why x' essay can help avoid that. Personally I was accepted everywhere I wrote a why x essay, but I did get a few WLs at places where I didn't write one. My numbers were also kinda funky/january application tho.cdotson2 wrote:If you send the same one to each school is it good to do any of the additional essays they ask for? I imagine that a generic ps might be the cause of yield protection a lot of the time, thoughts?Clemenceau wrote:I don't think I actually read a single one of those prompts. Just sent the same PS to every school.
I don't think tossing the schools name somewhere in your personal statement would have much impact though. Felt kinda contrived to me.