HELP - Personal Statement for Transfer APPS - what format? Forum

[Anonymous User]

So I know for initial apps, you just wrote about yourself and rarely the school directly.

For transferring, I read you should speak about geographic and personal reasons. My question is how do you from a compelling story to these reasons? And what should the general topic be? Does why you want to be a lawyer still matter?

[LS-boundNYC]

Also curious about this. My initial draft is focusing on a change in perspective/career goals I had during 1L, and connecting this to my goals in transferring. These goals include geography and personal reasons. But I'm wondering if I'm not spending enough time on why I want to transfer and spending too much time crafting a story which is how I approached my personal statement for law school. I'd appreciate any insight people can bring here.

[Frm312]

Disclaimer: I am participating in this transfer cycle, so idk if what I decided will actually be successful

I had the same question when drafting my personal statement for transfer apps. Ultimately, I decided to spend considerably more space talking about myself (mostly taking stuff from my original personal statement), and much less space talking about why that particular school. If I had to put numbers to it, I'd say i only used about 20% of the space to talk about that school.

I decided to approach it this was because, other than improved job prospects and clerkship opportunities, I couldn't think of any more extremely compelling reasons to go to one school versus another. I did spend about half of my essay for one school talking about why I wanted to go there specifically, but I have strong ties to the area.

Ultimately, I figured that they get tons of applications and will be able to see through all kinds of bullshit. So i figured I would talk about the guine reasons I had for wanting to go to a school and once I exhausted those, I spent the rest of the space writing a more personal style PS.

[FlanSolo]

I used the same basic template and modified one paragraph so that it would be specific to that region. Also sprinkled in things about programs at the school. In general though, I'm not sure your PS really matters that much as long as it is well written. Your grades are much more important (they know why you want to transfer, by and large, and aren't going to judge you for that). As a caveat, based on last year's cycle, it seemed like many of the people who got into HYS had legitimately compelling personal stories.

[lasersgopewpew]

I've got a simple theme that I've been thinking about since the fall that speaks to my desire to transfer enthusiastically, but isn't keyed to any particular school(s). I may tweak it a little for one or two specific schools, but, generally, it's a one-size-fits-all.

I think adcoms are going to assume you're there for more opportunity, so unless you have a very specific reason for choosing school X, I would try to grab their attention with something other than wanting a better job/shot at a clerkship.