Personal Statement

[hunt]

...

[Dave Killoran]

Hi,

So I just started writing my personal statement and am wondering if I'm on the right track. There is no word count or topic for this essay. Could you take a look and tell me what you think? Am I at all on the right track or is the kind of thing that everyone says? Thanks so much!!

I strongly believe the world is an unjust place and those who are able should do what they can to fix that. I have seen inequality first hand through my experience with the Special Needs Community. I coached Special Olympics swimming for 3 years in high school and continue to volunteer at swim meets, I have been employed for four years at a camp for children with special needs and I have many friends with differing abilities. Many of the people I have met experience a lifetime of injustice and mistreatment due to their differences. Some work for free, doing jobs just as well or better than others who would be paid for their work, while their employers are able to boast about doing a wonderful community service. Families who cannot afford private medical care wait years to receive the necessary services for their children. When these kids get to school, they often do not receive the education they deserve due to insufficient support for students with special needs. These are only a sample of the injustices experienced by this community. Though solvable, they remain for the most part unchanged.

I have also seen inequality when I went on mission trips to the Dominican Republic in high school and to Honduras with Global Brigades in university. Both these trips introduced me to a scale of poverty I had never previously seen. It was not just that many people in these countries did not have access to education, were dying of preventable illnesses and worried about day-to-day survival. The hypocrisy of doing “aid work”, wearing a t-shirt produced in a sweatshop in the very country that I was supposed to be helping was not lost on me. I learned so much from these trips, but at the time had no practical skills to truly effect change. Upon my return I refused to accept the platitude that was offered that I shouldn’t feel guilt about the predicament of people in these countries because my relative affluence wasn’t my fault. These experiences helped me understand that if I wanted to help those in need, whether at home or abroad, I must bring something to the table. As I have pursued my education I have increasingly come to realize that a career in law would help me to effect such change.

Growing up I had a variety of interests. Despite participating in many activities without a particular career path in mind, I strongly believe that my many experiences inadvertently provided me with the necessary skills to thrive as a lawyer. I have learned patience and understanding by coaching soccer and Special Olympics swimming, teaching dance and tutoring both French and geography. My experience working at a law firm has taught me diligence and attention to detail. Competing in French speaking competitions, music festivals, heritage fairs and dance competitions has given me confidence performing in front of others and the ability to think on my feat. My degree in international relations has introduced me to a variety of subjects such as economics, geography and history as well as giving me a strong academic background. Playing soccer competitively has taught me the importance of commitment, and how to continue persevering despite adversity and repeated failures. Most importantly, my experience with vulnerable communities has given me a sense of empathy and respect for those in all walks of life.

Hi Hunt!

Thanks for posting this. I'm going to make a few general comments and then direct you to a resource that I think will help. As with all comments I make, my goal is to help make your essay better so forgive me for being critical at times

In general, I think you are heading in the right direction but I see you struggling to grasp how to best execute the ideas in here. For example, if we go to your first paragraph, which is pivotal in any essay, it feels more like a resume than a place where I learn a lot about you (example: "I coached Special Olympics swimming for 3 years in high school and continue to volunteer at swim meets..." Ok, great experience but I don't see you taking this to the next level in terms of giving me insight about you). And that's a problem because here's the thing about a personal statement: you have to make sure the "person" is in there. What adcomms want to read is not rundown of the things you've done or even seen, but how those things affected you, and the kinds of opinions you hold and would share as a law student. One of the most important questions adcomms ask themselves after reading an essay is, "Would I want to sit next to this person in law school?" The answer better be yes! At the end of the first paragraph, I feel like you are a person who surely is involved in your community (a big plus) and have an interest in injustice, but I don't really get a good sense of who you really are.

In the second paragraph you start to get more into that flow of talking about yourself (the sentence about t-shirt hypocrisy is a good example of what your readers are looking for), but to be honest, the first paragraph caused me a lot of problems in terms of understanding where you were going and what you were driving at. The third paragraph then transitions to support the idea that you have the skills to be a good lawyer, and I understand why that is there. I'd probably try to fit that inside a bigger picture message, and unify the pieces of this essay in a more cohesive manner.

Overall, this is actually the kid of essay we see a lot of, but I suspect that given the background you reference in this essay, you could produce something way more compelling! And that's not bad news—it's far better to have that potential and not currently be meeting it than to not have that potential at all.

For starters, I'm going to refer you to a free personal statement seminar I did a while back, which is on Vimeo at https://player.vimeo.com/video/94191768. Do me the favor of watching that, and then go back to your essay and make some changes. i think that will help a lot, and get you going in a more unified and engaging direction. Thanks and good luck!