Ep 07: What Makes a Strong Personal Statement?
In this episode of Break Into Law School, I am going to talk about what makes a strong personal statement. How do you effectively sell yourself as a great law school candidate and craft an application that leaves an impact on the admissions committee? There are crucial do's and don'ts when it comes to writing a winning personal statement, and I explain why this matters.
What makes a strong personal statement? What do you need to do to make sure that your personal statement makes an impact on the admissions committee?
Welcome to another episode of Break into Law School. My name is Sydney Montgomery and I'm a law school admissions consultant specializing in working with first-generation and minority applicants.
So let's dive in.
We are talking about how to make. A really strong personal statement and I have three main points for you today. That first point is that you want to make sure that you're avoiding a single story narrative.
The second point is that you want to make sure that your personal statement is more than just an adversity statement. I don't want you to only focus on what you've overcome or the obstacle that you've overcome and how that's made you a stronger person. The more clear you are about why you want to go to law school, the more succinct that your why law statement is, the more structured and focused and cohesive your personal statement will be. Your personal statement should tie together the rest of your application. So when you get really clear about why you want to go to law school, and what you plan to do as an attorney beyond just a vague and broad statements or overdone sentiments, when you really dig down to what your career will look like, and you're able to articulate that, man, it really sends it home.
So like I said, let's dive in. That first point is that you want to avoid a single story narrative. What does that mean? I think so often candidates will reduce their entire lived experiences down to just one story or one moment and that really misses an opportunity to show the admissions committee multiple sides to you. One of the things that students often tell me when I work with them, is that the hardest part of the personal statement is "picking a topic" and again, I don't think you should just pick a topic, but picking a topic or feeling like I've lived this whole life. How on earth am I going to get my whole life into two pages, double spaced? Well, one of the easiest ways to not get a large breadth of who you are as a person, as by only picking one story, when we reduce ourselves to a single story and narrative, especially for students that are first generation or minority, we tend to focus on our trauma.
We tend to focus on our pain. We tend to not show a multifaceted individual in your application materials. When you are able instead to weave in multiple experiences, to weave in multiple stories, ideally from two different time periods, or that might be a personal and a professional story. Or maybe you have a couple of experiences when you're able to show multiple sides of you. Then they're able to learn so much more about you.
I always use this puzzle analogy with applications. Do you want to be a six piece puzzle, or do you want to be a 50 piece puzzle or a hundred piece puzzle? I mean, some of you out there are like puzzle pros, so you're like 3000 piece puzzle. But, you probably can't fit 3000 pieces in your law school application.
But if we take a very simple, like back to basics, anyone can do these puzzles. Six piece puzzle or a 50 piece puzzle. That six piece puzzle, you know, it still makes a pretty picture but I'm not that impacted by it. You've told me just a little bit about you. I feel like I don't really know you.
And that we want to avoid because while I have seen actually more schools do interviews this last cycle than previously, a lot of law schools still don't interview. So when we talk about the holistic application process, when we talk about the parts of your application that are not just your GPA and your LSAT score, they're the softer elements or the parts that make you a person.
And remember, I always say that law schools are looking to admit people. They're not looking to admit test scores. They want to know the person behind the scores, the person behind the resume, the person that they can really get to know and start to see. Yes. I think that she is going to really contribute to our campus culture or yes, I know that he's really going to get involved and he is going to make an impact in the community surrounding the law school. There's a lot of things here. They want to know who you are and what kind of alum you're going to be. They want to just get a flavor as they're trying to build a class. I think sometimes we think that admissions just happens on a very individualistic basis. Like they are admitting me or they're denying me and that is it.
But they're crafting a class of people. So they're trying to figure out how everyone fits together. They want to make sure that they have good representation of experiences, that they're going to be fruitful conversations in the classroom because of the varied experiences. And some of that, gets into your diversity statement and other optional essays in which you can leverage more experiences. But if we are solely talking about your personal statement, the more that they can learn about you and start to see your values, your character, what you believe in through your experiences. The better that is. I always like to tell students, so me the receipts. Don't just tell me, oh, I'm really passionate about this area. I want you to show me what you've done in it. I want you to show me the volunteer work. Show me
The work that you've done on a college campus and that issue or in your work life or in your family growing up, I need to see through experiences why you're going to law school. And so when you only give me one story, well it's not as convincing right? We're all going to law school and we talk about winning cases. If you only have one piece of evidence, I'm not as convinced. So you don't want to reduce your experiences, your personal statement to just one story and you really don't want to reduce it to just your trauma. And this is such an important point, this trauma point. I want to spend a little bit of time here because often I will see the advice," oh, you should just talk about a time when you overcame an obstacle."
One. We have all overcome obstacles, but not all of our obstacles are directly related to why we want to go to law school. You may say, well, that shows that I'm strong or that shows that I have grit, and that's really great. But they still want to know why you want to go to law school.
They are admitting you to professional school. They're not admitting you because you're a good person or because you're a strong person or just because you have perseverance. I mean, those are great qualities but they're like "yes and" qualities. So students really miss the mark when they write what I like to call an adversity essay. This is not what they want. It's just not.
When you tell me about a time that you've just overcome an obstacle, half of time you're spending maybe a whole page telling me about a traumatic event. I'm not learning about your strengths. I'm not learning about your leadership. I'm not learning about your accomplishments. I'm not learning about what you have done.
I really think it's okay to talk about an obstacle. It's absolutely fine. Maybe that's the beginning context of your story. Maybe something's happened and then it has sparked you to go and volunteer at certain organizations, or it has sparked you to create something or to make change or to advocate for someone else or to give back to someone else in that situation.
Maybe you have multiple experiences jumping off of that one obstacle and now you are giving me the receipts of why you are going to be a fantastic attorney. But when you do that, when you take an adversity and then you showed me all the things that you have done afterwards, you aren't centering your trauma.
You're not centering your adversity. It's not just, oh okay I overcame this. Like, this is some context for you. But the main thing that I want to tell you, is how I am using that experience as the fuel to create long lasting impact. That is what is really important. If you center your trauma and again, this happens a lot with first generation and minority students, happens in the college application process. Happens in the law school application process. You feel this pressure to focus on how hard your obstacle was and we get into this sort of trauma Olympics. And we don't even realize we're doing it sometimes, but we just feel like, okay, well I'm a young black woman from a lower income community, maybe with an immigrant mother, and this is the story that's going to get me into law school. I'm just going to tell them how hard my life is and how hard it was and maybe I've made it out now, but I'm going to focus there. I'm going to focus on telling them about how difficult it was.
Often times when we wade into this territory, we also tend to sometimes center someone else's story. Cause we might talk about how hard it was for our parents or our single mom or our grandparents. Or we might talk about the trauma that we witnessed with friends in the neighborhood or that sort of thing. And truthfully, that is all very important and some of that is probably significantly more appropriate for a diversity statement because even after reading all of that, if I read a page about your upbringing and how difficult it was, usually when students write those kinds of essays the overcoming part's not quite so large. It's like, and now I do this and I've learned X, Y and Z. I still don't really know why you want to go to law school. And even if you end your personal statement with, this is why I want to be a lawyer, so I can fix the criminal justice system, if that was part of your adversity.
Maybe your father or your brother or your mother or someone in your family, your cousin was involved with the criminal justice system and you talk about how hard that was. And then at the end, you're like, this is why I want to be a lawyer so I can reform the criminal justice system.
I still have a lot of questions. And the real thing is you don't want there to be any questions after your personal statement. So what are the questions that I have after I read an adversity statement? Well, what have you done about that? And what specifically, do you wish to do in the criminal justice system? And I have concerns that you don't fully know what it's like to be an attorney.
I mean, do you want to be a prosecutor? Do you want to be a public defender? Do you want to be a legislator? Have you ever had any experience with that? Do you just have this idea that you want to reform it but no real receipts on the fact that you understand the nuances of the system or that you understand what your role could be.
I also don't have any kind of idea about how long this passion has been of yours and whether it's solely based on this one incident, or if there are other incidents in your life that are also contributing to you wanting to become an attorney. And I think we do have to be really careful to not be overdone. And so what I mean by that is
yes, your experience is completely valid and I never want anyone to feel like I'm invalidating their experience. But also at the same time, there are so many essays on reforming the criminal justice system. I mean, there are so many essays. I have worked with well over 70 students, right? So I've probably read close to a hundred essays at least. If I can feel that I keep reading essays about the same topic, imagine what it's like for the admissions committee who is reading thousands of essays a year.
Thousands upon thousands upon thousands. How many essays have they really read about the criminal justice system? Do not make your essay just someone else's essay. If your essay could be interchangeable with someone else's essay, then you haven't written a personal statement that is impactful enough.
How do you make that essay different by including multiple experiences? It really goes back to that first point because if you have multiple experiences, then the way that you weave together, the experiences, the transitions between the experiences, how they build on each other, the theme that you're building, there's a lot of nuance here now, and now it's a unique statement and now I'm interested in how you've reframed and thought about some of these issues. That makes me a lot more compelled to keep reading and compelled to learn more about you. You want to make sure that you are highlighting your strengths that are going to be relevant to what you're applying to.
I could say that for med school. I could say that for any kind of graduate school. That doesn't seem like very specific advice: write about a time when you overcame an obstacle but that's just not law school specific advice. And I can tell you, because I have colleagues in the independent educational consultants association, and I'm a member of the national association for college admission counselors. The way that you write essays is not exactly the same for med school and other grad schools and law school. There are some similarities sure, but there's still some differences. And to give cookie cutter blanket advice that all you need to do is write an adversity statement. It's just, it's not going to do it. We can do better than that. I want you to have a strong enough personal statement. I will tell you that many admission deans have said that while the application numbers have gone up
from last cycle, there are about 32% to 35% more applications, the quality of those applications went down. One dean went as far to say applications were up 30% and the quality was down 30%. Do not rush your personal statement and do not make it overdone and trite. There's nothing worse than reading a pedestrian essay.
So I would challenge you to dig a little deeper and to find the places where you can talk about that nuance. And that kind of brings me to the third point. The more focused and clear you are about your reasons for going to law school, the more cohesive and impactful your application package will be as a whole.
I don't know why it has become acceptable for us to say it doesn't really matter if you don't know why you want to go to law school exactly. Just go to law school and figure it out.
Not exactly. Yes, you can do some soul searching when you get to law school, but it's not the same as undergrad there. Your first year curriculum is completely set. And then you have these two years, your second and third year of law school that don't really have a very strong curriculum, depending on the school you go to, it's going to be up to you to take advantage of the clinics and the journals and the courses that are going to help you with your profession. I think sometimes people treat law school like college 2.0.
And it's not college 2.0. It is professional school. So yes, you can change your mind. You can go in there and say, you know, I want to do this, and then you get exposed to it and you're like, who? I do not want to do that. Totally fine. You can change your mind. You can grow. I want you to grow. I want you to use the experiences that you've gained in law school to reshape and continually be questioned and redefine why you want to go to law school. However, I want you to go with some focus.
I don't think that people apply to med school without knowing why they want to be a doctor. They may not know exactly what kind of medicine they want to practice. And that's totally fine. I mean, there's a lot to be said for doing all the clinical rotations and figuring out what you want to practice, but med school is also longer.
It's longer than law school. There's a lot more emphasis during the school year on trying out different types of medicine, but in law school it's shorter and your first year curriculum, like I said, is totally set and you don't have as much time. You have two summers and you have your classes two and three a year, but you should try to figure out before you make a $200,000 investment or a hundred thousand dollars investment, why it is that you are going to law school. And I think that it is absolutely worth figuring out what you think, even if you come down to two or three different areas of law. Totally fine. But I think that it is worth getting specific with yourself and digging deep and figuring out why you're embarking on this path, because it is a huge investment. It's a huge investment of your time and it's a huge investment of your money. And you want to make sure that you're getting the most out of law school, because if you go in completely blind, you are not likely to be able to get the most out of law school.
The other thing is this is a persuasive essay. I am more persuaded as an admission committee member that you are going to take advantage of the resources at my school, that you are going to be a contributing member to your law school class, that you are going to be an alum who is going to do great things with their life.
If I feel like you understand what being a lawyer is all about. If I don't get that sense, if I feel like you don't know, then I am worried about you perhaps dropping out your 1L year, not graduating, not getting a job. All of these stats, very self-interested here on the law school side, these are all stats that hurt me.
My 1L retention rate's important to me, my graduation rate's important to me, my job placement rates important to me. So the more that you can convince me that you know why you're embarking on this, the better I feel about admitting you into my law school. And you want it to make cohesive sense. So think about your resume. Think about your other pieces of writing. Think about your letters of recommendation. How do they all tie together? Your personal statement should just tie all the pieces together.
I know that I spent more time here probably then others might, but it is very important to me that you are able to succinctly explain to me why you want to go to law school without using vague and overly broad statements that don't really make me feel convinced. Figure out what your "why law" is. Do you know who you want to serve? Do you know in what area you want to serve? Do you know if you want to do direct services? Are you more interested in policy? Let's explore that. Do you know what the careers are? I know that I keep saying this over and over and over again.
But every time I recruit students, this is a part where they get really stuck on. But let me tell you, when students really take the time and they really dig down and figure out, once they come up with that why law statement they feel more convicted about what they're doing. They feel: oh, my goodness this is it, this is why I'm going to law school. I have clarity now. I get it. I know what I'm working for. I know the goals that I have, and it just shows in their writing.
It shows in the way that, even their studying for the LSAT, it shows in the way that they approach their first year at school. That purpose is so powerful. So even if you're listening and you're like, I just I don't care to know. I will just figure it out. It is worth it to have that kind of conviction. That's going to make you a better student. That's going to make you a better lawyer in the future because you'll have that drive towards something instead of feeling kind of aimless. Like you're just not even sure what you want to do, cause that's not a great feeling at any stage, but it's really not a great feeling after you've already gotten to law school and you find yourself in torts or civil procedure, God help us all, and you're like, why? Why am I here? I don't get it. I don't like it. It doesn't make sense. You have to have that reminder. You have to have that purpose. I want you all to step confidently into your purpose, and that's why I keep stressing this, but it does make for such stronger essays, the clarity, the examples you're able to illuminate in your essays. You're able to weave in so much more and it just really shows in the writing. So I would really encourage you if you haven't already to take some time and think deeply about that.
I think that we need more lawyers from different socioeconomic backgrounds. We need more lawyers of color. We need more first gen lawyers. We need more women lawyers. So I am really here to help increase that representation, especially of course, my black women that are listening. There's only 2% of us.
But really guys your personal statement is so important. I can't say it enough. I was an English major from Princeton so I love writing and I loved the writing process and I love helping people tell their stories in a way that is authentic to them. In a way that captures who they are, so they feel like the admissions committee really got to know them.
This was another episode of Break into Law School with Sydney Montgomery.
Want to learn more about how you can work with me? Visit my website at www.smontgomeryconsulting.com or follow me on instagram @smontgomeryconsulting.
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