Top Law Schools

Like, remember when you applied to lawl school and it was like "Haaaaay. Never gotta write one of these shits again!"

FF to end of 2nd semester and the intolerable arrogance and hubris involved in writing a transfer PS when you should actually be studying for exams because you have no guarantee of a repeat performance of 1st semester.

Also, WTF should I even say???

/rant

I'm assuming it's a PS for Chicago? Since EA for GULC/GW/WUSTL closed a month ago and RD for everywhere else doesn't open for another month.

I've had just as hard of a time with Personal Statements. Trying to find a balance between modesty and bragging. I tended to put mine towards more of an explanation as to why I want to be at that school in particular since that information is something they can't simply glean from your record, unlike your accomplishments and how awesome of a unique and magical snowflake you are.

reasonable troll wrote:FF to end of 2nd semester and the intolerable arrogance and hubris involved in writing a transfer PS when you should actually be studying for exams because you have no guarantee of a repeat performance of 1st semester.

Uh you should not be writing personal statements now unless it's for EA/ED. You'll have at least a month between finals and getting grades to do so (which is plenty of time) and you can upload it to LSAC as soon as you're done. If you are doing anything for transfer apps now it should gathering recs and maybe requesting deans cert. Like you said, you should mostly be studying for exams.

crossarmant wrote:I've had just as hard of a time with Personal Statements. Trying to find a balance between modesty and bragging. I tended to put mine towards more of an explanation as to why I want to be at that school in particular since that information is something they can't simply glean from your record, unlike your accomplishments and how awesome of a unique and magical snowflake you are.

My personal statements were all two pages. I kept the first page the same for all of them and talked about why I came to law school, what I liked about law school, and my career goals. The second page I personalized to each school. I think I had one paragraph on that page for career placement (showing that they place well into clerkships, etc.), one paragraph on the journals I'd want to join and the clinics/classes I'd like to take, and a final paragraph on why I wanted to be in the city/region (or just a conclusion depending on the school). Obviously there's lot of different ways to do it but I think it helped to have a set first page and a personalized second page (more work than a stock PS but not a horrible amount of work).

FWIW, I basically did what quiver did. Also, wait until after exams unless you're doing Chicago ED.

quiver wrote:Uh you should not be writing personal statements now unless it's for EA/ED. You'll have at least a month between finals and getting grades to do so (which is plenty of time) and you can upload it to LSAC as soon as you're done. If you are doing anything for transfer apps now it should gathering recs and maybe requesting deans cert. Like you said, you should mostly be studying for exams.

Agreed, except w/r/t Berkeley. That's my target and, at least from what I've read around the forums, it seems that they may give a fair amount of weight to apps that are submitted early.

reasonable troll wrote:

quiver wrote:Uh you should not be writing personal statements now unless it's for EA/ED. You'll have at least a month between finals and getting grades to do so (which is plenty of time) and you can upload it to LSAC as soon as you're done. If you are doing anything for transfer apps now it should gathering recs and maybe requesting deans cert. Like you said, you should mostly be studying for exams.

Agreed, except w/r/t Berkeley. That's my target and, at least from what I've read around the forums, it seems that they may give a fair amount of weight to apps that are submitted early.

I want Berkeley too. I thought about starting my PS now, but then I thought about what my grades would be like if I decided to spend time writing a 4 page paper instead of studying. I'm going to wait until after finals.

reasonable troll wrote:

quiver wrote:Uh you should not be writing personal statements now unless it's for EA/ED. You'll have at least a month between finals and getting grades to do so (which is plenty of time) and you can upload it to LSAC as soon as you're done. If you are doing anything for transfer apps now it should gathering recs and maybe requesting deans cert. Like you said, you should mostly be studying for exams.

Agreed, except w/r/t Berkeley. That's my target and, at least from what I've read around the forums, it seems that they may give a fair amount of weight to apps that are submitted early.

Yeah that rumor was floating around last year too and it didn't help me any. I applied like 4/8 and still got rejected (despite being accepted to higher ranked schools like CLS, NYU, and Penn). I think CA connections are more important for Berkeley than submitting an early app.

The reason i'm even considering writing a PS now is because a professor kinda implied that he would like for me to give it to him so he knows what to write about in the LOR. I'm thinking of just writing a really rough BS bio thing and then just revise the heck out of it after finals.

think I might start my ps after finals, even though I wont have a month before grades come back a couple weeks should be more than enough, working full time on it.

as a side note, since some schools transfer just the credits of the student and not the GPA, would having the GPA restart be of any benefit or do employers figure it out from looking at the transcript?