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by Charlton D. Rose
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Essay Packages

For the tenth anniversary of the web page, I've completely rewritten this section.  Over the last decade, essays have evolved into a much more complex organism than they used to be.

• Ten years ago, most schools only asked for a personal statement.  

• Then, in an effort to help select qualified minorities, many schools added a diversity statement.

• Then, in an effort to keep from being sued, many schools went to asking about disadvantages and discriminations.  

• By 2007, when I'm writing this, many schools ask something like, "If anything not nice or culturally unusual ever happened to you and you'd like to tell us about it, please feel free to share."  

You think I'm kidding?  Here's a sample: (I decline to name the school lest someone point my sarcasm out to them.)  

An applicant will be regarded as potentially contributing to student diversity if his or her background or experience would not ordinarily be well represented in the student body or the profession. Examples of applicants' background or experience which may be considered for diversity purposes include (but are not limited to) the following: an applicant who has struggled against prejudice, economic disadvantage, family or personal adversity or other social hardships (perhaps as a result of disability, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation or religious affiliation); an applicant who has lived in a foreign country or who spoke a language other than English at home; an applicant who possesses unusual career goals, employment history (perhaps military or law enforcement experience), or educational background (including graduate study); or an applicant who demonstrates unusual extracurricular achievement (including school or community service).

An applicant who believes that his or her background or experience can contribute to our goal of diversity and educational enrichment—and who wishes to have this considered in the admissions process—should provide written detailed information about his or her background or experience as part of the application.  

As these "diversity" statements have evolved, the function of the personal statement has changed with it.  I now no longer think in terms of an essay; instead, I think of an essay package.  

To create an essay package, I have my clients write their whole life story.  When I feel I know a person thoroughly, I assemble everything that person has written to me in to a single long document.  I edit, toss, parcel out and cut some more, until I have about 4,00 words -- almost twice as much as we'll ever use. After the client and I agree on which parts of that 4,000 words we'll use, I look at what the target schools permit and require.  Then we start the complicated mixing and matching process that I think of as crafting essays.  

In this new essay section, I'm going to walk you through that mixing and editing process for several of my clients. After rewriting this section, I was struck by how dry and boring it seemed. There are no quests for a black superhero, tales of Olympic performances, South Pole explorations, or real life dramas of freedom fighters. One of the biggest complaints we received from our previous essay set was that these were extraordinary people and did not serve to show the average Joe what type of essays a normal person might write. I have tried to answer this issue by using essays which are not extremely unusual, but are still well written and interesting (at least the first time through).

 There are links at the top of the page to take you to the different essay packages.  But before you wander off to look at the structure of essay packages, let's take a few minutes to talk about content and style.  

Topics to Avoid

Good essays work for a reason.  They show who you are, explain weaknesses in your file, and tell a good story.  Great essays do all three. The admissions officer who reads your essays should not just feel informed; she should feel entertained.  

No one can tell you what should be in your essays without knowing your entire personal and family history. However, there's general agreement on what law schools don't want.  

The commonest bad personal statements are:

The expanded resume: “I did this, then I did that; afterwards I joined X, formed Y, and won award Z.”

Why this is bad: all of that stuff is on your app and your resume. Your personal statement contributes zero to your file.

Bad Advice: Several students have mentioned hiring one of our competitors for essay advice.  They were told to write an expanded resume.  I  said it was bad advice, and made a different recommendation.   So what's an applicant to do? One of them went  with us to a Law Forum; we  imposed on two different admissions officers to look it over.  They both agreed with me -- bad.  So I don't care what you-know-who at you-know-where says.  An expanded resume is not a personal statement.

My Most Unforgettable Character: “Mary is homeless. She carries her possessions in two shopping bags, which she never lets out of her sight. She wasn’t always homeless. Once she had a husband, three children, and a suburban home. What happened? .... And that’s why I want to work with the homeless.”

Why this is bad: This is often a really interesting statement -- about Mary. If the school is looking primarily for a writing sample, this will do; if it wants to learn more about the applicant, it won’t.

What I did on my summer vacation. Whether you went backpacking through Europe or worked as a Congressional page, this essay tries to make a single event into an essay.

Why this is bad: If it tells what you did without discussing why it was important, it will be no better than an expanded resume. This essay can work if you turn it into a Major Event essay (see below).

Why I want to be a lawyer.  Any explanation of why you want to study law is a bad topic, unless you have a very specific goal already connected to your experience.

Why this is bad: This is a terrible essay for anyone who wants to say ”I love to argue,” “Law will give me a lot of options,” or “I want to get rich.” All of these may be true, but you can surely find a better way to present yourself. It is not generally a good essay for a young person with little practical experience in a field. This essay can be very successful for a person who already has a career track and wants to advance by using legal skills. It can also work for a person leaving a field to work on legal issues related to that field, such as a nurse who wants to work in hospital administration or malpractice litigation, a forest ranger who wants to work for environmental legislation.

So why are all those “great personal statement” books filled with essays like these? Because people make the mistake of thinking that if a person got accepted to a top school, their personal statement must have been good. Even at top schools, people get accepted with mediocre personal statements; their biographical info and recommendations make an adequate argument for them. But personal statements like these won’t get you into your reach schools.

What makes a good personal statement? Here are some starting points:

• Your proudest personal achievement.  Look for something that doesn’t show on your resume or transcript -- learning to swim, saving money for a long-range goal, making a bookcase, painting a picture. Explain why it was important to you: why was it a goal, why had you failed to do it before (or failed to try), what was different that enabled you to accomplish it now, and what you learned about the world or yourself from having accomplished it.
• A major event in your life, either good or bad.  This could be a trip, a family illness, a move to a new city. Explain what life had been like before the event, how the event changed you, and what you learned from it.
• A changed belief.  Explain where the old belief had come from -- family, peers, life experiences. Tell what made you rethink the belief, and what you believe now. Explain why the new belief is important to you.

These topics will show something about you that’s not already in your file, and will give the reader something to relate to and to like about you. This kind of personal statement can significantly increase your chances at your “reasonable reach” schools -- the ones where you’re just a few points below the medians.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

The magic word.  The one right thing that needs to be in your essay so that law school X will admit you.  

There's no such word.  

Poetry can have a perfect word -- rhyme, meter, and tone all merging to create exactly the right effect.  Essays, on the other hand, rarely hang on whether you say "eat," "dine," or "feast" (although I would avoid "pig out" unless you're trying to create a very particular tone).  

Let's step inside the admissions office for a few minutes.

It's Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. and the director of admissions is picking up your file.  (S)he's looking at the application itself first, then the LSDAS report.  Now the resume and recommendations.  Finally, those carefully crafted essays, perhaps as many as three of them.  (S)he thinks about it for a minute, decides yes, no, or maybe, scribbles a note, and puts your file in the appropriate stack.  

It is now 10:04.

Well, give or take a minute.  But think, folks, how much time can an original reading of a file take?  Let's do some math.  Between, say, January 1 and March 1, the admissions officer must make an initial review of 2,400 files.  That's 8 weeks, so 300 files per week. Assume 30 hours a week for initial scans.  That makes 10 files an hour -- not counting phone calls, meetings, rest room and cigarette breaks, refilling the coffee cup, etc.  

The math varies, of course.  Some schools have half that many apps, and others have double that number.  But I think you get my drift.  An initial reading of the file is intended to grab the reader's attention.  The use of the perfect word in paragraph 7 just ain't gonna do that!  

The opening paragraph should be a real eye-catcher.  The content should make the reader want to read more, so you make it into the "maybe" stack.  That's what your essays buy you -- a promotion from "no" to "maybe."

"Wait a minute, Loretta!" you shout.  "There's six more weeks after March 1 that you're not counting."  Those six weeks, boys and girls, are the time allotted for reviewing the apps in the "maybe" stack.   So let's do more math.  My law forum interviews one year included questions on the number of presumptive admits, presumptive denies, and discretionary apps.  The typical answer was about one-half discretionary.  So now we have 1200 apps to review in six more weeks, or 200 a week.  At 40 hours a week, that's still 5 per hour, or 12 additional minutes per application.   

What is the admissions officer looking for in those 12 minutes?

• Content that answers questions about weaknesses in your file;
• Content that says you have something fascinating, delightful, or intellectually engaging to offer, that isn't apparent from your resume and transcript;
• A style that shows you are funny, friendly, or insightful;
• Evidence that you've been careful in writing and proofreading the essays.

So what is important?

•  Topic selection is crucial.  You definitely want to write an essay that says something noteworthy.  
• You definitely want to avoid the kind of mistakes that make people laugh at you.  (This month I've seen "meager" savings turned into "merger" savings, a dozen accidentally omitted words, and more "to-too-two" errors than I can count.)
• And you definitely want to avoid subtlety.  Subtlety takes too much time to catch.  

You also want to avoid being boring.  People who cannot resist the urge to add one more sentence simply because the space exists tend to forget that that sentence may not be as important to the admissions officer as it is to them.  Here's an example:  

"In 1969 I ran my right hand through a shredder.  It took six operations over two years to repair the damage; the result was functional, but not perfect.  Fortunately, I am left-handed."

"On October 23, 1969 at 2:00 p.m., I suffered an accident in which my hand was caught in a wool carding machine, resulting in severe lacerations to the second, third and fourth fingers as well as the top third of the palm of my hand. A series of six operations, including several Z-plasty's, two skin grafts, and an attempted (but failed) nerve reconnection, were conducted over the course of the next two years.  With subsequent intervening physical therapy I was able to regain almost full use of my hand.  The resulting physical limitations, however, are minimal, since the hand in question is not my dominant one."

Both paragraphs say the same thing.  The first says it more simply, and without the two grammatical mistakes in the second ("were" instead of "was" after "series," and the redundant or contradictory phrase "subsequent intervening").  

Which one works better between 10:00 and 10:04?