Personal statement

[apl1993]

four questions:

1) Will different schools have different prompts, or do they all basically ask the same questions?

2) What does, in general, and excellent personal statement look like?

3) I have a mediocre lsat score (159) and all the schools I'm applying to will be on the fence. Should I try to explain why this score doesn't define me, or just leave it be?

4) If a school says that the statement can be "up to" a certain amount of pages, should you use all the pages or is it ok to not use all of them?

Thanks!

[David Boyle]

four questions:

1) Will different schools have different prompts, or do they all basically ask the same questions?

2) What does, in general, and excellent personal statement look like?

3) I have a mediocre lsat score (159) and all the schools I'm applying to will be on the fence. Should I try to explain why this score doesn't define me, or just leave it be?

4) If a school says that the statement can be "up to" a certain amount of pages, should you use all the pages or is it ok to not use all of them?

Thanks!

Hello apl1993,

Schools may have different prompts, especially for optional essays; but all of them basically want to know who you are. This LSAC page, http://www.lsac.org/jd/applying-to-law- ... -statement , has some helpful tips.
An excellent personal statement...could be various things, but it should probably be clear, interesting, free from grammar, spelling, or other errors, and let the admission committee know who you are and how you can uniquely contribute to their school, maybe mentioning or fleshing out factors which they wouldn't have known without your telling them in your personal statement.
A 159 is a very good score! Don't knock it!! ...It sounds difficult to say "this score doesn't define me", since it may sound whiny if you do that. Then again, if you have a good reason, e.g., "My little brother ran over my foot with a car the morning of the test, so I was in agonizing pain", that could be worth mentioning.
As for using all the pages: if you use all the pages, make sure you have something to say! Just don't go beyond the allotted number of pages, it seems safe to say... It's a judgment call. If they let you have 4 pages and you do only 1 or 2, you may look like a slacker, unless you present a (valid) new Theory of Relativity or something in your few pages. But if you do 3 and 1/2 pages instead of 4, and your work is well done, you may not look like a slacker. Quality is more important than quantity, but you can have both. (4 pages of perfection might be the ideal)

Hope this helps,
David