Part IV

APPLICATION ESSAY EXAMPLES

Twenty-two actual applicant essays are included in this book, all but one in Part IV. (The other one is included in Chapter 9.) The majority of these are personal statements. The other essays include those written for a scholarship, optional pieces written for schools allowing more than one essay (including explanations for weak college performance and the likelihood of being certified for admission to the bar despite a criminal record), a reapplication essay, and a transfer essay.

Thus, you have a full menu of essay types in front of you. In fact, the range is even greater than you might yet think. The personal statements and other essays reflect the diverse experiences and interests of the applicants writing them—and a diverse lot they are. There are seven men and eight women. Four are Hispanic or African-American. Several were born and raised abroad. Their experience ranges from zero to ten years of full-time work, at jobs ranging from paralegal to journalist, investment analyst to psychologist. Several have done substantial graduate work. They applied to the whole range of leading schools. We did not indicate for which school a given essay was written—since similar essays were generally submitted to multiple schools—except in the case of those written in response to a very specific question. Some of the essays describe applicants’ formative experiences, including looks at their families; some discuss their academic interests; others describe what they intend to do after law school; still others provide think pieces about law, society, and the like.

There is no magic essay topic, so do not feel compelled to choose what one of these applicants wrote about. In fact, this wide-ranging selection of essays is meant to send an opposite message: What makes a given topic an excellent choice for one applicant is likely to make it a bad one for another. The comments that follow the essays are meant to provide assistance in this regard, pointing out what did and did not work—and why—for each applicant.

Use this section to help you find what topic will work best for you, given your experiences, interests, strengths, and weaknesses. In other words, consider the lessons from Chapter 9, “Marketing Yourself,” and those that follow concerning your desired positioning, your reward-risk ratio, and so on. Keep in mind also that some topics will not need to be covered because they may already feature in your recommendations.

Not all of the essays are brilliantly written, but each demonstrates at least very good writing quality for those admitted to the top schools. If you wish to read particularly well-written essays, regardless of subject matter, consider those of Maura Wilson, Sacha M. Coupet, David P. White, Noah Pittard, and Heather (page 222).

Note how much more interesting the essays become as you proceed through this section. The essays are placed in order of the applicants’ experience, with the college seniors’ essays coming first, followed by those with more (and more) experience. Even though various of the essays written by inexperienced applicants are good, the lack of experience tends to shine through. The gap in experience, maturity, self-knowledge, and understanding of the career choices available—from the college seniors to those with real career experience—is dramatic.

To get the most out of this section, do four things:

• Read the best examples—those of Maura Wilson, Sacha M. Coupet, David P. White, Noah Pittard, and Heather (page 222)—to see how professionally someone can market him- or herself. These are textbook examples of good applications.

• To get a sense of how to write an opening paragraph that grabs attention—which is extraordinarily valuable given how many essays admissions officers have to read—consult the essays by Lisa, Tuan, Julie, Tori, Jon, and Antonio.

• Refer back to the discussion in Chapter 9 of overall marketing principles and the Chapter 10 analysis of specific essay topics, while looking at the essays.

• Then look at the efforts of the people who most resemble you in terms of their backgrounds, their chosen topics, and so on.

You will probably not want to read page by page through this whole section. The charts on the following pages are meant to facilitate your picking and choosing whatever is of greatest interest to you.

One last note: Some of the applicants wanted their full names used whereas others wanted only their first names used, or even wanted their identities lightly disguised by our using a different first name. The first three applicants, in fact, wanted no details given as to their identities. Thus there is no uniform policy followed here, except that of honoring the wishes of the applicants. A minority of the applicants were my clients. I leave it to you to figure out which were and which were not.

LISA

The day will stand out in my mind for the rest of my life. I know it will because it was one of those series of moments when past and present fit together with great significance, one of those series of moments when you stop to take mental photographs so as to absorb each minute one at a time. It was at the short acceptance speech delivered by President Nelson Mandela on my campus of Harvard University only a few short weeks ago that the trajectory of my life flashed before me. I shivered with pride when Mandela alluded to his Long Walk to Freedom. Time raced backwards in my head as I thought of the long walk of my own family which began on the same soils of South Africa. As I recalled thoughts of people, places and experiences, I began to think of my life not so much as one linear road, but as a puzzle, a conglomerate of separate pieces which somehow fit together to shape the person I have become . . .

A blurry red haze hangs over the deep clay South African soil, the soil of my birth and the base of my puzzle. Emigrating at the age of one, I would learn to love another distant soil in the United States before I would understand my African roots. Time and distance erased homely smells of milliepap and damp cool air. Yet African rhythms would always ring deep in my soul. I was connected to that land somehow. My parents tried to explain to me why near the red soil of Africa, black pieces did not fit with white pieces. They too struggled to handle the stark separation. To them, Africa meant rolling mountains, blue skies, and green trees—colors and curves, not straight edge monochromatic pieces. One day the pieces would match more smoothly, they told me. Until then, Dallas, Texas would become my new home.

In Dallas, I began to discover the world through my one eyes, and in my spirit grew a Texan pride—a reciprocal love of a new home so welcoming to my family. A warm sunny climate translates to warm friendly people in the southwest, and through my progression from elementary school to high school to university, I have forged friendships of binding ties. This is because people take time for one another in Texas. These days I take time to listen to the fascinating stories of my fellow Harvard students, who come from all over the world and each have their own interesting stories to tell. In Texas I was also exposed to the beautiful Latin culture, to the soft roll of the Spanish language, to spicy Tex/Mex food, to happy mariachi music, and to a light-hearted spirit which seeks only the enjoyment of every precious moment of life!

A soft yellow glow emanates near the center of my puzzle and sheds rays of light over all the other pieces. This is the glow of Judaism represented by a symbolic pair of candles lit in my household each Friday to welcome in the Sabbath. Friday evenings in my home are special times. The house is warm with rich smells of roasted chicken and challah bread toasting in the oven, and the calmly dancing candles spread an aura of peace over the house. It is a family time, when my mom and dad, my brother and I sit round the finely decorated Sabbath table to discuss news, events of the week, our individual hopes and dreams, and our goals we hope to achieve together. Judaism touches all the pieces of my puzzle because it touches every part of my existence. My close family ties, my strong system of values and ethics, my search to elevate my life beyond the trivial and mundane, and my appreciation for beautiful things in nature, art, music and literature, in some way all find their derivation in Judaism.

My heart rang with nostalgia and longing when the full resounding voices of the Harvard Kuumba singers sang Ngosi Sikale le Africa—a song my mom used to sing to me when I was a small girl. Mr. Mandela did not see my mouth, but as his lips formed the shape of the words, so did mine. We were singing together, he and I, and I cried. As Mr. Mandela graciously accepted the award of an honorary doctorate of law with a dignified bow and an elegant smile, I smiled too as he reaffirmed for me that day, that hard work and persistence can bring the sweetest rewards.

COMMENTS

What this candidate achieves here is difficult for most applicants of similarly “exotic” backgrounds. The applicant applies a poet’s touch and reveals a believable spirit that is not affected or contrived. Many applicants who might wish to convey a similar message would be unable to pull off this kind of essay, the main idea of which is nothing greater than “I am a product of my diverse inputs.” The detail about each of the influences—South Africa, Texas, and Judaism—help to solidify the essay’s believability and impact. In fact, it comes as a surprise midway through the essay that the applicant is Jewish; we expect her to be black, and the upsetting of that expectation adds to the essay’s multicultural message.

TUAN

In the summer of 1978, on a small, overcrowded ship carrying two hundred Vietnamese refugees, a seven-year-old boy forever lost his innocence. Separated from his parents and alone with his thirteen-year-old cousin on this journey, he stood silently while the ship was attacked by pirates who robbed and raped many of the passengers. Terror struck his soul and tears filled his eyes as he witnessed bodies being thrown overboard. He simply could not comprehend the senseless killings. But the nightmare did not stop; dissatisfied with the gold and jewelry plundered from the passengers, the pirates forced everyone overboard in order to seize the ship. The sea tossed and turned as people panicked and fought one another for empty gasoline tanks and water containers to use as flotation devices—it was a quarter of a kilometer to shore. The young boy and his cousin were fortunate; they both knew how to swim. The sight and sound of desperation and death sent chills down his spine, but all he could do was swim. To this day, the memory of a young girl calling to her drowning mother for help still haunts his dreams; and sometimes a deep sense of guilt overwhelms him for having survived when over half of the passengers perished.

I was this young boy. Two years later, I was reunited with my father and eldest sister in the United States. But life in a new country was terribly difficult. For nine years, my father, sister, cousin and I struggled to earn enough to send home to my mother and two sisters in Vietnam while trying to keep our heads above water. The situation was such that I had to sew piecework for the garment industry after school to supplement my father’s small income. As a result of his perceived inability to provide for his family, my father resorted to alcohol to escape the loss of dignity and sense of shame. Racial intolerance also added to our difficulties. Derision such as “chink” and “gook” by fellow classmates induced feelings of inadequacy and selfhatred on my part; and because of my poor English skills, I responded by fighting, which further exacerbated the problem. In addition, an assault on my father by three youths who told him to “go back to China” and the subsequent burning of my sister’s car forced us to move from our apartment. Such experiences reinforced my resolve to succeed in school in order to escape both poverty and the stigma of being a foreigner.

With the arrival of my mother and two older sisters to the United States in 1989, after eleven years of separation, my financial obligation to the family was eased slightly, which enabled me to concentrate more on my studies. However, the dual necessity of work and commuting to school did not allow me to take advantage of extracurricular activities provided by organizations on campus. Nevertheless, I did gain extensive experience working as a self-employed commercial artist during my undergraduate years. Unable to find a job suitable to my school schedule, I decided to put my artistic talent to work. I bought ads in local Vietnamese newspapers offering my services of designing and painting posters, signs, and advertisements at half the price of competitors. Most of my jobs are on a small scale that include painting windows and banners, and designing menus and advertisements for Vietnamese businesses. While working within the Vietnamese community, I became aware of the pressing need by small businesses as well as individuals in the community for affordable legal assistance. Because of their immigrant background, many Vietnamese lack an awareness of their rights and obligations in American society, which often lead to misunderstandings, confusion, and insecurity. Given the opportunity to attend law school, I hope to alleviate some of the friction and distrust that Vietnamese immigrants have in the law by broadening their knowledge of the legal system.

COMMENTS

This essay starts off well with a jarring story that emphasizes the applicant’s background and the difficulties he has had to overcome to get where he is today. The story of the applicant’s struggle against discrimination and insecurity also helps to show his attraction to the legal profession. The essay would have been substantially strengthened, however, if he had gone much further into his current work to show that his sentiments are sincere enough that he will indeed play the role he imagines, helping Vietnamese immigrants deal with the legal system. Not only could he have made stronger, more concrete connections between his experiences and observations and his legal future, but he could also have worked in nonlegal capacities to help fellow immigrants.

JULIE

Meet, first, my grandmother, Lea. She’s eighty-six now and lives across the street. By leaving Germany in 1935, when the public schools of her hometown were closed to Jewish children, she escaped the Holocaust. She treasures American liberties; her favorite song is “God Bless America”; and she reminds me . . . I don’t know how good I have it.

Now let me introduce you to the classmate who changed my high school campaign posters from “Vote Julie” to “No Jews.” Then to the Neo-Nazis who sporadically demonstrate in front of the synagogue three blocks from my house. Next to Representative David Duke, selling The Hoax of the Twentieth Century in my backyard. These are some of my neighbors, and they have caused me to examine those rights which theoretically will prevent Lea’s story from becoming my own.

My focus is the freedom of the press: its allotted latitude and resulting ability to shape social discourse. I observe, for example, in my research for my senior thesis, disturbing trends in the coverage of Mr. Duke’s senatorial campaign. The New Orleans Times Picayune runs article after article on his growing support, his charisma, his nationwide sources of funding. It is only in mid-August that I read of racist and anti-Semitic comments made as late as 1989. The Picayune, I discover, has known of these remarks for ten months. For nine months, as the campaign gained momentum, they weren’t considered newsworthy. A staunch opposer of censorship, I wonder: Should there be some guidelines for what is and is not printed?

My own journalistic experience reinforces my concern. I worked as a stringer for the Associated Press. I know that its editors will accept a story on Princeton’s nude olympics and reject one on Louis Farrakhan. They realize that Farrakhan has caused one of the largest controversies on campus this year, they say, but he’s doing it for the publicity. Don’t cover it. I also know that The Bridge-water Courier-News, a USA Today subsidiary, isn’t interested in the speeches of Catharine MacKinnon or of Abba Eban or of the American ambassador to El Salvador, but will pay me for ten to twelve inches on Princeton’s cheerleaders.

I complement my interest in the societal influences of the media with close studies of our legal and judicial systems. My junior independent work, awarded more than once and published by the New Jersey Department of Higher Education, concludes that women should not turn to the judicial system for protection from the sadistic sexism of hard-core pornography. This semester I chair a Woodrow Wilson School policy conference that examines alternative means of dispute resolution, asking whether the current system truly provides justice. I direct the efforts of eighteen juniors toward a cohesive policy statement which we will present to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

I do not confine my analysis of the functioning of the law to the classroom. Summer work with the prosecuting office of the District of Columbia taught me that the system is easily manipulable. I answered motion after motion by defense attorneys who knew that if they delayed long enough, the case would be dropped for want of prosecution. I prepared cases with the knowledge that because they were going before Judge X¹ instead of Judge Y¹, the fifth-offense drunk driver would be dismissed with minor penalty.

Back at Princeton, my term on the University Discipline committee offers a different perspective on justice. Four students, along with a group of faculty and administrators, hear charges of violations ranging from plagiarism to alcohol policy infractions to vandalism. I benefit from a view of, and a say in, yet another level of judicial structure.

Law school is a natural extension of these experiences. My professional goal is both to practice public interest law and to continue as a writer of social commentary. It is a goal that allows me to assure my grandmother: I not only value “what I have,” but I aim to protect and to strengthen it.

COMMENTS

This candidate’s approach is to paint quick portraits of her experiences with “ justice,” and then draw the conclusion that she belongs at law school—a natural extension of her interests and pursuits to date. This is a valid strategy. Furthermore, the initial stories she tells grab our attention and sympathy. The problem is that she over-gilds the lily. Even the first two paragraphs are rendered a bit melodramatically; they make a reader feel that the writer might be crassly taking advantage of her Jewish roots, trying to win over the admissions committee with a simplistic claim to felt discrimination. After that, Julie demonstrates a basic intolerance of others, which cannot help her cause. Even though any one of the foes she targets could be lambasted, the net effect of objecting to all of them suggests that she is a shrill, neurasthenic sort. It is one thing to object to Farrakhan, another to insist that you have the only acceptable way of dealing with him. Thus, insisting—as a journalistic intern, no less—that your paper must report his activities in full rather than ignore him sounds a bit strident. Similarly, announcing that any and all speeches of Catharine MacKinnon are newsworthy, and that pornography is sadistic sexism against women, is painting with a very broad brush, indeed.

Julie should have eliminated some of her complaints and tempered her portraits with an admission that she realizes discrimination against Jews is not actually common at Princeton (her current home) or at the top law schools to which she is applying. In addition, she could have altered her tone a bit to sound less naive or incredulous that such acts of discrimination indeed occur to this day.

Julie is all too ready to see injustice and evil everywhere, with herself all too often the victim of it. She comes across as immature and lacking in the perspective that real-world experience would provide. Compare her overdone tone, and the limited nature of what she personally has had to confront, with the personal statements of David P. White and Tuan. They faced much more substantial difficulties, weathered them with more grace, and reported them more matter-of-factly. The results are much greater reader sympathy and respect.

TORI

My grandmother says that to the day my grandfather Ted died, she could still see my cousin Anita’s pink handprint smeared across his right cheek. After Ted had a stroke and a heart attack in the same week, my family and his doctors decided to let him die a peaceful death staring with a half-opened eye at a silent flickering television hanging from the hospital ceiling. Anita returned early from a European vacation just in time to witness the impending death that the rest of my family had grown to accept, and when she entered Room 204, she walked right over to my grandfather and smacked him in the face. As his face burned, Ted ate food again for the first time in days and decided not to die.

 

Ted lived twenty years after that slap. My family spent half of every other weekend visiting my grandmother and him, bringing them food. Many of my earliest memories are of the way my face felt against a cold vinyl backseat of a car as I slept through the Lincoln Tunnel on the way back home to New York. I would only be a fraction of the person I am now had Anita not been courageous enough to hit her uncle as the nurses gasped in astonishment.

When I was young, Ted used to tell me all the things we would do together when he recovered from his paralysis. He taught me to imagine the two of us walking through art museums and sharing blankets at cold football games. I always knew that his fierce desire to walk again was what got him out of bed every morning. Bruises and cuts were commonplace as Ted would pull himself up from his chair, take one step, then tumble forward until his face hit the cement floor. I used to wonder what he thought each time in the instant between the fall and the landing, knowing not enough of his limbs worked well enough to break his fall.

As I grew up our conversations gradually shifted from what we would someday do together to what I was doing without him. He taught me to live a life passionate enough for both of us, to perform enough good for both of us, to have enough fun for both of us. When his nightly phone call would interrupt my dinner I’d feel embarrassed if I had nothing noteworthy to tell him. When I left for college, he cried and told me to learn enough for him to feel his own enlightenment.

The summer after I graduated from college, Ted pulled himself up from his bed in his nursing home and tried one last time to walk. He fell sideways to his left, and his paralyzed left arm could not protect him from the floor. His left leg twisted grotesquely but painlessly and one of its bones snapped in half. Lying in the hospital afterwards, he no longer could convince himself that he would be able to walk again. When he died soon after, I realized that after heart attacks and strokes, diabetes and seizures, a broken leg killed my grandfather.

My favorite image of my grandfather is one I’ve only seen abstractly. When my mother was a girl Ted would bring her to the same park bench every night to stare at the Hudson River. Every night all the other men from their apartment building would hover around him and listen to his jokes and stories. My mother calls those his nights of holding court: they were probably the best times my grandfather ever had. In all the smiles I ever saw on my grandfather’s face, the left side of his mouth fails to rise along with the right, but what I actually remember are all of my grandfather’s teeth shining, big like an easel, like he smiled by the river as a painless and hopeful young man.

I saw my grandfather hold court in nursing home after nursing home. He’d sit in his wheelchair next to the nurses’ station surrounded by other men and women in their wheelchairs. The other residents would hear stories about all the things he and I were going to do when he got well once more. They told me that when I wasn’t there he’d talk about all the things I was doing, how I was living a life, in his words, grand enough for both of us.

The day my grandfather died, I went from the hospital to his nursing home to retrieve his belongings. Every person there, from cooks to residents to visiting volunteers, asked me how he was, and it invariably sounded like the most important question they would ask anyone that day. When I told them he died, and I saw their eyes water, I also saw my grandfather’s handprint across their cheeks. I realized how profound an impact my grandfather had on everyone he met. As my cousin succeeded in doing twenty years ago, my grandfather tried to slap life into everyone around him, and I lie awake at night hoping he is no longer held captive inside a body.

COMMENTS

This is a nicely wrought essay about a rather ordinary and commonplace influence on a young person: that of a close family member. This essay helps us learn several things about the candidate: She is dedicated to her family, she is compassionate, sensitive, inspired, perceptive, lyrical, and humane, and she is capable of forging connections with and learning from others. The “handprint” theme (developed in the first paragraph and returned to in the final one) helps make this essay memorable.

Most essays that focus on people other than the candidate are failures because they do not teach us much about the candidate. This essay is a rare exception.

JON QUEEN

“Why are you not packing up my house? I am leaving tonight, and you have to pack everything up right now,” Diane yells at me as I try to fade into the wood floor—not an easy task for someone six foot six and two hundred fifty pounds. Later, I will bathe her and change her clothes after she has another biological accident. It is Sunday night at the Pogson house, and I must remind myself why I remain here.

Not very long ago, I was one of a large pool of ambitious graduates with big dreams of entering law school, learning the necessary tools, and contributing something positive to this world. However, at that time the closest I had come to the pressures of real life was the semester I spent interning on Capitol Hill. I felt ready for new challenges, a proving ground other than the traditional classroom. I opted to make it on my own for a while, prove that I was self-sufficient, and recover my focus as a student. What I never anticipated was that during this time, working as a home aide for a disabled woman, I would face challenges that would define my character and test my dedication to its fullest.

I had little inkling of the emotional commitment necessary to care for an elderly lady with multiple sclerosis. I was unprepared for her dementia, incontinence, or confrontational personality. In fact, her husband had committed suicide two years earlier, and the turnover rate for her home aides was very high. Recently, her son casually mentioned that I am the one thing delaying Diane Williams from entering a home, and that touched me deeply. So every night I clean up her excrement, and listen to her disjointed commands and angry outbursts. To further complicate matters, she has been unable to compensate me for the past week due to her financial situation.

Working with Diane has taught me many important lessons. Through her, I have learned the value of a positive outlook on life. I have also learned that in life, challenges never disappear; they merely change shape. I now regard the world from a different perspective, from the viewpoint of a contributor who has faced life’s harsh realities, and has done his best to shield another from them. I feel that this new insight will serve as an excellent complement to the knowledge I will gain in law school. In addition, I have proven that I have the tenacity to overcome adverse and stressful situations, a skill that will help me excel in school as well as in life.

I am two years older and ages wiser than I was as a fresh graduate. Although I found my work as an economics major meaningful, I have grown much since then. I have learned the importance and satisfaction of contributing in a real world, one of poverty and disability. After all, life provides a different kind of education, and such experiential knowledge enriches classroom study and conceptual mastery.

COMMENTS

This essay explains how the applicant has spent his time since college, and helps position him as a compassionate and mature adult with more perspective on life than the usual college graduate. Jon benefits from the uniqueness of his experience as a home aide for a disabled woman, and is wise not to try to grope for specific connections between his job duties and his future as a lawyer. An applicant would be hard-pressed to group the two careers into a single framework, unless he or she had had other serious exposure to working with the disabled or disabilities law, and thus was better able to forge a natural link between these pieces.

Jon illustrates that he has both the heart to try to help others and the willingness to work hard at unpleasant tasks. (Note, however, that Tori does a better job of capturing her inspiration in words.) The implicit message is that this combination can be powerful; also, that one can trust that he will indeed enter public interest law practice.

ANTONIO

Our family gatherings were always full of entertainment provided by the youngest attendees. Cousin Alby was the magician. His brother Nelson was the contortionist. Our cousin Maria from Hartford was vying to be the next Celia Cruz at nine years old. The family talent shows that would spontaneously erupt at each barbecue, christening, or birthday kept the children occupied and allowed the adults to appreciate the spoils of parenthood. My contributions did not involve pulling a rabbit out of a hat, wrangling my legs behind my head, or singing salsa songs octaves too high. I had the gift of enthralling my family members by answering correctly any scientific question posed to me.

“How many planets are in the solar system?” “Why is the sky blue?” “Name the parts of the human digestive system.” These were (and still are!) the classics of my repertoire, and year after year my animated answers became a lot more entertaining than the prosaic explanations offered by textbooks and teachers. I developed a sense of identity around my ability to explain everyday observations and occurrences simply and completely. More education brought increasingly sophisticated answers to the same questions and resulted in my characterization as The Scientist. When important conversations during college invited a perspective from the natural sciences, I reveled in being able to contribute substantively.

These very conversations made me question, among other things, my identity, and compelled me to find answers by continuously striving to build community among Latinos at Yale. Much hard work was involved in overcoming the barriers to sustaining that community, and I developed an ability to assess my surroundings more critically than ever before as I became more committed to student activism. Ultimately, I turned this critical eye to the study of science, and realized the profession would not highly value or productively use some of the personality traits that I would bring to it. While Antonio the Scientist fit in well within the confines of the laboratory, Antonio the Communicator did not.

I saw that, like me, most scientists valued communication, but very few cared to interact with individuals outside their own specialty, much less with non-scientists. I lamented the absence of undergraduate scientists in the broader discourse at Yale, especially in those areas that were most important to me, such as the diversity of Yale’s student body. This often made me feel isolated, and the ramifications of that feeling, once understood, prompted self-examination and the exploration of alternative career paths. I left college with a greater appreciation of how important it was for me to communicate science to non-scientists, and to urge those that I left behind in the laboratory to do the same. The maturity I gained during this process made me value the exchange between the lay and technical, not for the validation I could receive from relatives or employers, but rather for the larger impact that I could have by being the intermediary between these two groups.

Although I left Yale with the tools for life-long learning, I did not leave with a crisp personal vision. This has developed during the two years since I finished college, and is due in large part to my experience at [large Wall Street law firm]. Here, I have found that the law will allow me to be the communicator that it is natural for me to be, and that the law provides an audience that is interested in communicating about technology’s growing impact beyond the laboratory. I have seen that lawyers employ an even more rigorous standard for truth than scientists that fits in well with my technical background. And I also see that the unexpected ambiguities and unanswerable questions of the law will keep things interesting.

I have not even started working as a lawyer, but I already have the feeling that my impact is significant. I have awoken several mornings in the past eight months to hear the first public announcement of the deal on which I was working the previous evening. As one of a handful of paralegals who work on intellectual property due diligence at the firm, I play a role in most “high-tech” deals for which it is necessary. Assisting with patent prosecution and litigation has given me an inside-out view of the law while enhancing the technical competency of the firm’s work product. My internal sense of accomplishment has been reinforced by the feedback I have received from the attorney with whom I work, and I can confidently say that the firm looks at me with an eye to the future.

With this experience has come a renewed confidence and desire for academic success, which, in turn, leaves me with an unclouded vision of the type of impact I can make. I am excited about the prospects of taking a biotechnology start-up public, securing protection for a large pharmaceutical company that allows it to post industry record profits, negotiating licensing contracts for a university that allows it to increase the size of its financial aid awards, or acquiring the international influence to figure prominently in developing countries’ enjoyment of the full promise of the AIDS triple therapy. All of these are possible in my lifetime.

To borrow a phrase from microbiology, I am in the “logarithmic-phase” of my career. That is to say, the incremental steps in my development as a lawyer over the next several years will lead to explosive leaps in ability to contribute to the profession. In the process, Antonio the Communicator will become Antonio the Advocate. Three years at [law school X] will be an ideal start to that transformation.

COMMENTS

The majority of law school applicants have backgrounds in the humanities or social sciences. Those with science backgrounds automatically stand out a bit, albeit not always to their advantage if they suffer from the archetypal problems associated with scientists/engineers: poor communication and social skills. Antonio does a fine job in positioning himself: He shows that he is indeed a scientist, whose work makes him a natural for intellectual property law (a very hot field at the time of his application). He avoids the negatives associated with his science background, moreover, by showing his desire to be part of a field that requires substantial communication skill.

Much of Antonio’s writing is superb. The opening paragraph, for instance, shows him to be a minority candidate without dwelling on the subject. The penultimate paragraph is loaded with examples that lend credibility to his candidacy. The one weak part is the third paragraph, which lacks a clear message and which does not fit comfortably within the flow of ideas here.

Despite this fine effort, however, one major problem remains: It is unclear why Antonio wishes to go to law school. After all, even if he wants a career in which communication skill is crucial, he could more readily choose a field other than law. For example, he could opt for scientific journalism or biotech marketing. He could have dispelled this issue by elaborating on how much and why he enjoyed his law firm experience.

MAURA WILSON

I shifted my feet uneasily as I listened to President Reagan’s “evil empire” speech. That evening my six-year-old world was dark, and the yellow glow of our kitchen light did not dent the long ominous shadows that lurked outside our windows. I slowly continued setting the table, the television flickering, and I learned to fear people half a world away, whom I had never seen. My fear made me angry because I was not used to such feelings. I was an independent, confident child, accustomed to facing my few problems directly. The fact that I could not talk to the leaders and citizens of the Soviet Union, and explain to them that Americans were really very nice, infuriated me. I wanted to make things better. I hated being afraid.

Seven years later, elation pumped my heart as I sat in that same kitchen and watched sections of the Berlin Wall come down. I had never been to Berlin, or touched that wall, but the legacy of the Iron Curtain was burned into me. Every current map that I had ever seen of Europe was half red: half feared, half evil. I never considered that it would be any different in my lifetime. Yet there, right before my eyes, concrete slabs were cut and the world swirled with change.

I became an international studies major because I was so excited by this new world we had entered. I chose to focus on United States diplomacy and security because I was intrigued by the opportunities of the post–Cold War era, and I was concerned by the many knotty problems that had emerged out of the disintegration of the formerly bi-polar world. The rules of the Cold War no longer applied, but what would the new rules be? The legacy of the decades-long standoff allowed the world to return to an era of fragmentation and militant nationalism, yet it also provided an unprecedented chance for countries to join together in positive political and economic agreement.

During college I worked for Gensler, an international architecture firm, to learn about the realities of operating a modern global operation. Gensler faced many challenges with its large Pacific Rim clientele. To open an office in Japan, it had to form a business alliance with a Japanese keiretsu, one of the powerful families that control economic operations in Japan. It also had to address corporate culture issues, such as altering marketing presentations for Asian clients, who prefer to see very detailed, full-color mock-ups of buildings before they will agree to close the deal. The company learned to carefully navigate the many obstacles, misunderstandings, and difficulties that are a regular part of operating a successful international operation.

After graduation I chose to work for the Department of Commerce because I wanted to help the American government operate more efficiently, especially on a global scale. Among other issues, the Commerce Department is concerned with international trade, along with world-wide problems such as the maintenance of the oceans and atmosphere. I performed in-depth research and reviews of Commerce agencies and programs to identify any operational deficiencies or violations. I reviewed a program within the International Trade Administration that helps American companies to expand their operations overseas. I also evaluated an agency that performed most of the research on the El Nino phenomenon—a topic that could not be effectively and completely examined without input from scientists around the world.

Our home planet is a much smaller place than it was ten years ago, or even ten months ago. Helping the federal government to react and adapt to the increasingly interlinked world we are creating was a very valuable experience. I now look forward to utilizing that experience in obtaining a legal education and practicing law. To ignore the increasingly international scope that law must encompass is unreasonable.

The uncharted political and economic intricacies of the post–Cold War era have created a cacophony of legal viewpoints. This confusion is compounded by the advent of the Internet age, whose international legal ramifications have barely begun to be addressed. I am so excited by the possibilities of international law. I hope that those who create and enforce it can eventually form a set of regulations, precedents and institutions, where lasting and fruitful political, social and economic understandings (instead of wars or decades-long stand-offs) can be forged.

The University of Michigan Law School offers exactly what I want: an excellent, innovative education in international law. The opportunity to meet and learn from law professors from around the world through the Center for International and Comparative Law is unmatched. The comprehensiveness of the program’s curriculum expresses a deep understanding of how the future of society, economics and the law are inextricably moving towards a global society that requires international legal expertise. The University of Michigan Law School would shine with the addition of my experience, intelligence and zeal.

At a very young age, an international conflict touched my life with fear. But as the world left the Cold War behind, I left my fear with it, and emerged with a dedicated interest in international relations. The legacy of that fear sparked my concern for protecting and maintaining our efforts in forming a global community. I do not want to slip back to a time when the menace of an “evil empire” is broadcast into our kitchens. The law is a very important caretaker for this exciting, hyper-linked new world, and I want to be an essential part of shaping and caring for it.

COMMENTS

Maura does an excellent job making sense of her interest in internationalism and the law. Her opening paragraph—showing her as a young child watching Reagan’s “evil empire” speech on her kitchen TV—is memorable, and helps her to set up the trajectory that would cause her to become an international studies major, work for an international corporation, perform research for the Department of Commerce, and now prepare for a career in international law. Notice the deft way that she placed her work at Gensler into this “thematic” buildup. Rather than writing off that experience as unmentionable here (as some, viewing it as “architecture” or “design” work, might have), Maura realized the potential to utilize that job to further explain her understanding of our globally connected world. By the same token, her fourth and fifth paragraphs are somewhat wooden: résumé-like recounting of her experiences, told without adequate transitions.

Michigan Optional Essay #1. “This essay should focus on aspects of your background and past experiences that will contribute to the diversity the Law School wishes to foster. This essay should offer information not included in your personal statement.”

My stomach felt like it was somewhere in the middle of my chest, and it threatened to move further up at any moment. What had I done? What was I thinking? I had chosen to attend St. Ignatius Prep, a previously all-male institution that had gone co-ed. I would be one of the 175 freshman girls, who would buck an over-century-long tradition, and mingle with the thousand or so boys that roamed S.I.’s halls. I was terrified.

I had attended an all girls’ elementary school, and not had a class with a boy since pre-school. Yet I chose to continue my education with hundreds of them, many of whom did not like the idea of females entering their enclave.

High school is tough, and my decision to go to Saint Ignatius made it tougher, but I have never regretted it. Besides being an excellent school, S.I. taught me that I could rely on my intelligence, quick instincts, and sense of humor to get me through many difficult situations. The first few weeks were the most awkward. Girls were greeted in the halls with quick, intense gazes that ranged from hostile and affronted, to amused at our novelty. I discovered that meeting these gazes directly would make my male classmates at least stop staring. With that victory, I faced the rest of my time at S.I. in the same direct manner.

I endured cat calls and whispers every time I entered my freshman science class, where, due to a scheduling glitch, I was the only girl. I discovered that consistently doing excellent work, and providing intelligent answers to questions, eventually earned me respect in that class. I had my first surprising encounter with a urinal, in the hastily converted women’s bathroom, and decided they were nothing to fear. I was quietly amused that the girls’ locker room was painted pink. The transition had its bumps, but by the end of my freshman year, we had smoothed the way for all the other girls to come.

At thirteen years old, I stormed a tradition, and stretched my comfort zone to unprecedented proportions. My high school experience had the usual highs and lows, but I treasure the uniqueness of my four years at Saint Ignatius. The self-confidence and maturity that I gained there will be with me for my entire life.

COMMENTS

For a white “mainstream” applicant who has had a fairly ordinary life, the topic Maura chose works well. Since she has no tales to tell about a harrowing immigration journey to the United States and no cultural or ethnic “tags” by which to sell herself, she is smart to focus on her courage and tenacity, especially as they were evident as she “stormed a tradition” by entering the first class of females to attend a formerly all-boys school. The little details—the pink painted walls in the girls’ locker room, for example—help to make this effective. So, too, does the sense of perspective she brings to her history—the fact that she can smile about what happened, and see how she benefited from it. Her sense of humor and lack of self-pity, when combined with an exemplary use of detail, make this highly successful.

Michigan Optional Essay #2. This essay “should reveal, in a way that an LSAT score or a grade-point average cannot, something about the way you think. For example, you might choose to discuss an intellectual or social problem you have faced or a book or film that has particularly affected you.”

I disagree with the concept of “children’s literature.” A book that is well-written and compelling appeals to me, regardless of the section of the book store where one can find it. I can still curl up with E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed- Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and thoroughly enjoy myself. I love reading about the exploits of Eloise or Madeline. I still get chills when I revisit A Wrinkle in Time. These books were my friends when I was growing up, and as an adult I have not forgotten them. Today, I have an even greater appreciation for the skill and deftness with which my favorite early writers serve their craft. They never patronize their readers, and with just a few phrases, they can translate complicated ideas and feelings into something equally meaningful to a child or an adult.

These excellent qualities are found in the increasingly popular Harry Potter series. J. K. Rowling has created a wonderful world, with complex and interesting characters. She employed the clever trick of creating a fantasy world that parallels and mixes with the world that we already know. She makes it easy to believe in witches and wizards, flying broomsticks, and a boarding school that teaches magic. Her descriptions are brief and vivid, and she always leaves her reader wanting more.

The media is shocked by how widely embraced Harry is. It is a “children’s book” after all. I read a discussion of Harry in which the reviewer admitted embarrassment about reading the book in public. He kept his laptop close at hand to prove to any passers-by that he was working. I would read Harry Potter in public with pride! I have read plenty of recently best-selling, and critically acclaimed books that were boring, awkwardly written, or just plain tedious. Rowling not only entertains but also challenges her reader. Averaging around 300 pages, the books are much longer than most written for kids, the vocabulary is advanced, and the plots are complex “who-done-it puzzles,” with wonderfully unexpected twists and turns.

Children and adults love the Harry books because they are exciting and funny. But adults also enjoy them because the books give them access to a kid’s world. This is a world no less confusing, complex or heart-wrenching than an adult world—it is often more so—but often out of reach for adults. The fantasy, imagination and pure joy of the series inspires nostalgia in adults for their own childhoods. At the same time, adult readers can create a connection with children who are experiencing Harry Potter.

I hope that those adults who eagerly anticipate and enjoy each new Harry installment will branch out and sample some of the many other quality books that children have loved for years, and that too many adults quickly forget. These books can help adults to connect to their pasts, as well as their present situations.

COMMENTS

This is a refreshing way to write about “the way you think.” Maura decided to write not on an international concern or political issue but a fairly simple idea close to her heart: adults’ enjoyment of so-called “children’s” literature. She is sure to remain memorable with this, since it’s highly unlikely any other candidate would have written on this same topic. (On the other hand, applicants who write on the importance of human rights, feminism, and other hot issues are sure to remain unmemorable to admissions officers.) The thoughts laid out here are not particularly complex, but they are fresh and compelling.

BRENDAN

For the past two years I have lived and worked in Latin America. I have seen firsthand both the potential for development that exists throughout the region, and the mistakes that foreigners make in Latin America for lack of local experience. However, I am also deeply attached to my home state, Rhode Island, and I believe in my responsibility to development opportunity locally. My aim is to find a way to connect the opportunities that exist in Latin America to the growth of my home state.

I was one year old when I made my first visit to Latin America—traveling with my parents to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. That trip marked the beginning of a lifelong fascination with South America. My formation as a Latin Americanist—my consciousness of the layers of society and history in the region, began within the ambient orientation of my family toward Latin America, and has been informed by my own experiences there since before I can remember.

From my earliest memories the region’s language, art, food, and music were part of my growing up. As a teenager, I spent several summers in Mexico: traveling with my parents or staying with family friends in the slow, hot city of Kampuchea. When I was thirteen, my parents adopted my sister Maggie from Honduras and we spent the summer in the rainy, unrelenting poverty of Tegucigalpa. My childhood, in sum, was a steady exposure to the variety and contrasts of Latin American—the wealth of nature and ancient civilization, the poverty of the people, the army, the complexity of feeling towards the United States.

Since finishing college, I have been fortunate to experience unusual successes working in the capital markets at a time when these markets are fueling historic changes throughout the region. In the emerging markets of Latin America, the political, economic, and cultural lives of each country ebb and flow around the markets to a pronounced degree. In Buenos Aires a cabdriver can tell you where YPF’s stock closed the day before. A waiter in Sao Paulo will know the daily change in the Consumer Price Index. Because of these markets’ central importance, I have had a glimpse of both where these countries are coming from, and where they are going.

I have observed that three core misunderstandings mark the missteps that foreigners, particularly Americans, make in Latin America. The first is the most obvious, yet poses continual difficulties for foreigners, especially in business: Latin America is not a monolith—cultures vary as widely between Latin countries as they do between the U.S. and any one Latin country, maybe more. Differences range in subtlety from racial and gender attitudes to simple use of language. Thus, Mitsubishi wasted months of effort and uncountable brand value trying to introduce its Pajero sport utility vehicle, which had enjoyed great success in Brazil, to Argentina. The company, in its monolithic view of Latin America, didn’t know that the word “pajero” has a sexual meaning in Argentine Spanish that it does not in Brazilian Portuguese.

Secondly, foreigners tend to mistake the meaning of their “rights” in Latin America. They often assume that the same ideas of contracts and obligations prevail in Latin America as they do in the first world, and that the courts occupy the same exalted place in society that they do in the U.S. They often fail to realize that in Latin America, possession is the chief determinant of ownership (thus the ferocity of land battles between peasants and landowners throughout Latin America). It follows that the prestige of the courts is often less than in the U.S. Power tends to rest much more directly in the hands of politicians and labor leaders. This has been the source of endless tension between the governments of the U.S. and several Latin countries, arising most recently with regard to the ownership of intellectual property rights. Governments in Chile and Argentina have questioned the American assertion that development of drugs and medicines connotes ownership, and that therefore cheap and easy replication by local firms should be prohibited.

Finally, Sam Rayburn’s admonition to “go along to get along” holds special meaning in Latin America. The systemization of relationships that makes the U.S. a very efficient society does not yet exist in Latin America. Personality and background play a very important role in transactions ranging from social to official to professional. The importance of individual relationships, especially those arising from family background, is difficult to overstate. Personal relationships are the lubricant of business and society, and the failure to develop them is a principal mistake made by foreigners.

One of the benefits that I have derived from living and working in Latin America, and witnessing first hand the mistakes made and opportunities missed by others, is that I see how the mistakes can be avoided, and the opportunities seized. I hope that this knowledge will allow me to continue to be a part of the evolution and development of Latin America.

I have Latin America in my heart, and I have no doubt that my professional future lies in the region. However, I am from Providence, R.I., and I am strongly committed to the values of place and home. I feel bound by my family and my upbringing to the place of my childhood, and I believe deeply that opportunity is not to be followed elsewhere, but created locally.

One of the principal challenges that I foresee for myself in my professional life is to connect the dynamism and opportunity that the development of Latin America represents, to the stagnant Rhode Island economy. The way is far from clear. Rhode Island’s areas of economic strength, tourism and oceanography, bear little relation to the needs of the Latin countries—infrastructure, telecommunications, financial services. As a market, Rhode Island, with fewer than 1 million inhabitants and little cultural attachment to Latin America, is too small and too remote to represent a great attraction to Latin exporters.

However, I am convinced that the flow of knowledge in the interconnection of the Americas will be two ways. Clearly, the Latin countries can learn much from the U.S. in terms of industrial and social organization, investment, etc. I believe that there are also important lessons that the U.S. can learn from the growth of Latin America as well. Examples abound of lessons learned by Latin countries during the course of their recent development that would be well applied in the U.S.

In the mid 1980s Chile privatized its state-controlled pension system. The result was fiscal havoc for the government for four or five years, but out of the chaos emerged a stable base of local capital that has financed the double-digit growth rates that Chile has experienced through the 1990s.

Similarly, in the early 1990s Mexico decided to finance the replacement of its aged highway infrastructure by selling toll-taking concessions to construction firms. In many ways the effort was disastrous (toll revenues failed to meet expectations for reasons that should have been easily avoided, and the concessionaires received a government bailout). However, a new infrastructure was built, and the government demonstrated that private capital and public need could successfully be joined for the benefit of both.

There are clear lessons for the U.S. to learn from the experience of Latin America during the heady growth of the early 1990s. I would like to see Rhode Island benefit from these lessons, and to begin to look beyond its own beverages for engines of growth. For my part, I intend to continue to seek a way of creating opportunity in my state by linking Rhode Island to the continuing development of Latin America.

COMMENTS

Overall, this is a compelling portrait of both the applicant and his passions, what makes him tick. He demonstrates substantial understanding about several topics: Latin American cultures, economic development, and so on. Similarly, his use of detail—in the discussion of the Pajero sport utility vehicle or his family’s trip to Honduras, for example—brings the piece to life and helps to make him memorable. So, too, does his perceptive discussion of the different meanings attached to the word “rights” in Latin America and the United States. There is no doubt that admissions officers will remember “the candidate from Rhode Island interested in forging connections between his home state and Latin American development.” This will likely describe no other candidate in the pool.

There are, however, three fundamental problems with Brendan’s personal statement. He should have spelled out how he would attempt to link Rhode Island and Latin America, rather than just express a vague ambition to do so. His essay reflects the inherent lack of linkage between these ideas; the last third of the essay seems to be almost a new essay, all too casually linked to the first part of the essay. In addition, he should have made clear that law school is indeed the right place for him. Frankly, from this essay one would think that the candidate should be planning to attend an MBA program instead. He should have explained, even in just a sentence or two, how a law degree would help him achieve his goals.

AMY CRAWFORD

I wish to attend law school in order to practice public interest law. This decision is based upon a number of influences and experiences, some of which go back to my childhood, others of which are of more recent origin.

I grew up in rural Southwestern Virginia, where my father was an attorney. My father’s law practice is probably unique. It is not unusual for him to handle a divorce in exchange for a load of wood or to represent a client in a child custody case in return for having our house painted. Although my father has never been very financially successful, his work as a lawyer has always been characterized by a great and abiding generosity. Over these years I have seen in my father a genuine enthusiasm for helping people who would otherwise be shut out from the legal system.

In my hometown I also witnessed the silent divisions of our society along racial and economic lines. Why, for example, was the town’s curfew only enforced in a neighborhood where the majority of the black community resided? Why did a public school divide kindergartners by their parents’ social position or educational level, rather than by the children’s capacities to learn? Why were students at one school offered a choice of four foreign languages for study, and students at another school, in a poorer neighborhood, offered only one? I later came to believe that these once puzzling questions are best addressed through social policy or litigation, and though shifts may seem small they can achieve profound and long-term consequences in a given community.

At the University of Virginia, I majored in Sociology and African-American Studies, with a special emphasis on the dynamic between social policy and law. I saw that the questions which had troubled me as a child in my hometown did indeed involve issues of discrimination and social and economic equality. I think that being one of the few white African-American Studies majors gave me an unusual opportunity to examine institutional biases based upon race, gender and class. While in college, I also worked in an alternative sentencing program which provided education, job training and drug abuse counseling to prison inmates. As an intern case manager, I was responsible for interviewing inmates to determine their eligibility for the program. The program was an innovative one, but it was realistic as well, and I saw the tangible benefits which the men and women who participated in it received. Just prior to graduating from college, I prepared an extensive recidivism study which was used to demonstrate to the Virginia Department of Corrections the real impact the program was having on the lives of the inmates after leaving prison and completing our program.

After graduating from the University of Virginia in 1993, I moved to New York City to work for the Legal Aid Society. For the past three years I have been a paralegal with the Legal Aid Society’s Civil Appeals and Law Reform Unit. One of the first cases to which I was assigned at Legal Aid was Jiggets v. Dowling, a major affirmative litigation case in which Legal Aid challenged the adequacy of the shelter allowance paid to welfare recipients in New York City. The case has been pending for a number of years and has not yet been decided; however, the presiding judge granted the interim application of one family for preliminary relief while the decision is pending. Since the original grant of preliminary relief to one family, more than 25,000 families have applied for and obtained housing assistance and protection from eviction through this interim preliminary relief system.

A primary part of my work at The Legal Aid Society involves coordinating the efforts of Legal Aid attorneys and their clients to take advantage of this system of preliminary relief created by Jiggetts particularly in emergency situations. I am one of the individuals for the litigation team designated to contact New York State officials in Albany to ensure proper and immediate processing for relief in emergency situations. Legal service attorneys throughout New York City often ask me to assist them in applications for relief with evictions as imminent as the next day. I have conducted various seminars for Legal Aid and Legal Services attorneys, law school clinics and community based organizations on the benefits available through Jiggetts. I have also intervened on behalf of individual Legal Aid clients. For example, one client I worked with recently was a woman who had been a victim of domestic violence and who consequently needed help obtaining housing. First I advocated on behalf of my client pursuant to Jiggets v. Dowling by finding a home for her and her family—safe from the batterer. Then I was able to help her with other issues as well, such as correcting her disability payments and obtaining admission of her child to a gifted student program. I saw how the lives of this client and her children were materially improved, and it was significantly based on the judge’s interim order of preliminary relief. My work with Jiggetts has confirmed my belief that through the legal process our society can be forced, albeit reluctantly, to confront the issues of injustice and inequality which blight the lives of so many individuals.

Another case I worked on at The Legal Aid Society which has demonstrated to me the power of the law to improve people’s lives is Rivera v. New York City Housing Authority, an ongoing class action suit on behalf of mobility impaired tenants challenging the New York City Housing Authority’s implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In this case, I have been assigned to act as the informal liaison between the defendant’s Law Department and Legal Aid’s individual clients. I have seen first-hand how the lives of mobility impaired people and their families have been changed for the better by Rivera. For example, in the case of one family with a daughter confined to a wheelchair, I successfully argued that the family must be relocated because they lived in an apartment building with no elevator. This family’s move to an accessible apartment improved the family dynamic by enabling the daughter to attend school independently and by granting her parents more freedom.

Outside of my work at The Legal Aid Society, I have also had to address issues of race, gender and class as a volunteer teaching a weekly class on Civil Rights and Race Relations to students in New York Civil Rights Coalition, which began in 1989 in the wake of the race riots in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Volunteer teachers like myself go to public high schools in the five boroughs to initiate a dialogue about issues of racial and cultural bias with students. These discussions are frank, and range from specific experiences which students have had (e.g., what it is like to be scrutinized by a security guard in a store or to be ignored by a cab driver) to general concerns about discrimination in employment or housing. My experience as a teacher leading these classes has demonstrated to me that some of the same concerns which I had as a child in Virginia are still troubling the youth today. I hope that I have exposed students to the legal system’s role in confronting their concerns.

Year by year, case by case, client by client, my commitment to public interest law has broadened and deepened. My passion is to serve disadvantaged and underrepresented people as an attorney advocating for their interests.

COMMENTS

Amy’s approach is simple and direct, yet highly effective. She shows how natural it was for her to become a civil rights advocate by highlighting her interesting family background. Many candidates try to do this, in fact, but few succeed fully. The difference in her case is not that she has written more persuasively on this topic, but that she has lived more persuasively in this regard. She followed up her father’s example by majoring in African-American studies, an unusual choice for a white person, as she notes here. After that, she stopped working in the corporate world after one year at Lehman Brothers in order to pursue her passion for civil rights work. In her case, the passion she expresses in this essay does not lack the necessary correlative for credibility: full-time work in the trenches.

It is easy to claim an interest in civil rights law, or other public interest fields, and even to walk that walk while in college. After all, few college students feel that they are making major sacrifices in college by spending a few hours a week in some volunteer activity. After college is when the crunch comes. Applicants who claim a great interest in lesser-paid public interest work are never entirely believable until they have indeed spent some years in the field.

Amy is particularly effective because she combines a lengthy history of involvement with an essay that conveys the nature of the lessons she has learned. The great detail she brings to the stories about her positions with the Legal Aid Society and teaching for the New York Civil Rights Coalition demonstrate both her commitment and the extent to which she will bring a well-developed perspective to the law school classroom (and clinical programs).

This is, however, an essay that suffers the faults of its virtues. It is a résumé-like recounting of her career, complete with dull introduction. It would therefore function better as an addendum (addressing “why I want to be a lawyer” or “why I want to do public interest work”) than as a main personal statement.

SACHA M. COUPET

Monique is a fourteen-year-old going on forty, a survivor of incest whose delinquent behavior is a plea for help. Jamie, barely five and in foster care, insists that he should be able to take care of himself and his younger siblings as he has done, he says, since he was “little” and living with his “forever mom.” Sarah, four, was rushed to the emergency room three years ago, severely bruised and minus several teeth after her mother’s boyfriend attempted to “discipline” her. Today, this same mother and boyfriend plead before the court for her return. In our legal system, who speaks for these children, too young to exercise any power or to comprehend the magnitude of the decisions that concern them? What is the fate of these children who face an adolescence in juvenile detention, a childhood in foster care, or worse yet, a childhood cut short? Who acts “in the best interest” of these children in whose faces we may see our own sons and daughters? I believe we are all vested with a moral responsibility to advocate for the needs of children and am eager to lend my voice.

My decision to pursue a legal education has emerged from my collective experiences as a psychologist, an advocate, a scholar, and an observer of society. Contrary to my colleagues in psychology who suggest that my decision to study law is tantamount to a defection to “the other side,” I do not feel I am abandoning my field, rather I am incorporating it into another much in the way an artist might combine two media. I am a creative person, intellectually and artistically, whether in a classroom or at a potter’s wheel, and welcome the challenge of improving on traditional methods by combining the best elements of many techniques. While the theory, language, and practice of clinical psychology and law differ, I do not believe these disciplines are at odds, but rather complement one another. On a micro level, clinical psychology focuses on the transformation of the individual psyche into a structure of operating and understanding one’s world. The law is an expression of a similar process on a broader scale, with a focus on the transformation of societal values into social structures. In my experience, the most rewarding challenge has been examining the interface between psychological and legal issues, identifying the points of convergence and divergence, and integrating the two.

Although I began my undergraduate study with the intention of pursuing a career in medicine and complemented my high school curriculum with a number of medical-related volunteer experiences, I broadened my focus in the helping professions one year into college. After two grueling terms in a pre-med curriculum I declared a major in psychology. The research and practice in this discipline more closely reflected the way in which I understood and preferred to work with people, particularly those with socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. Years later, in my graduate research, clinical work, and teaching, I continue to develop a more comprehensive knowledge of how sociodemographic and psychological factors influence the lives of marginalized, oppressed, or underserved populations.

While I admit to a fair share of idealism, my desire to successfully integrate a background in psychology with the study and practice of law has not developed from a visionary notion to right all injustice and cure every social ill, but from a number of positive experiences I have had in the real world. As a family and child therapist, I have counseled numerous persons whose lives have been profoundly impacted by events in the courtroom. Whether working with victims of domestic violence, child abuse, divorce and contested custody, assisting adults and children during prolonged legal disputes, or serving as a representative of the court, I have learned a great deal from observing and participating in the legal process.

Increasingly, as the court becomes the arbiter of America’s most intimate family decisions, judges find themselves in need of input from a number of sources. Information gathered about a variety of psychological issues, including child development, parental capacities, attachment relationships, or family functioning has become critical in such legal decision making. From the beginning of my professional training I have had many opportunities to assist the court in searching for and providing this information. My interest and involvement in the legal process has only deepened since.

As a consultant to law students in the University of Michigan Law School’s Child Advocacy Law Clinic, I assisted inexperienced attorneys to develop an understanding of the psychological issues inherent in child advocacy, particularly as they relate to child protection, parental termination, permanency planning, and foster care. More recently, my work with the Child Welfare Law Resource Center has afforded me continued opportunities to share a psychological perspective with representatives of other disciplines interested in highlighting the importance of child welfare law. My dissertation research reflects this interdisciplinary theme as it combines legal and psychological issues in an examination of the impact of child welfare and foster care policy on family functioning. In addition, I continue to publish and present professionally in areas related to interdisciplinary work in child abuse and neglect.

I have faced each of these experiences within the legal system with the utmost degree of curiosity, excitement, and enthusiasm. I have grown both personally and professionally, having wrestled with philosophical elements of the law that have challenged me to think critically in my role as a psychologist and to flexibly adapt my skills to a legal context. As a psychologist in a legal arena, I felt at first like a foreigner in a new unfamiliar environment, uncertain of the climate, culture, or language. I developed a psychological index applied to the legal system that included such diagnostic categories as “adversarial angst” and “expert witness hysteria,” conditions which I observed to afflict many persons whose professional obligations brought them, often reluctantly, into the courtroom. Fortunately, I was spared from such afflictions and found myself, instead, quite intrigued. While I learn from every new legal experience, each exposure has left me feeling particularly limited in my capacity to effect significant change because of my unfamiliarity with the law. Although cognizant of the changes I have helped to bring about in my work as a psychologist, I feel drawn to the broader level of change that a law degree would permit me. Having developed an extensive background in psychological theory and practice, I am now compelled to turn my efforts towards the pursuit of a legal education.

My long-term objective is to facilitate an integration of psychology and law with the goal of enhancing the lives of children and families. As an African-American female, I feel particularly invested in the plight of the growing number of poor and minority children who are over-represented in the child welfare system and intend to play a key role in developing both legal and psychological strategies to assist them. I have committed myself to remaining involved, as a community volunteer and a professional, with children and families whose opportunities in life have been much more limited than my own. While I am conscious of the fact that the course of my life has been significantly shaped by the privileges of a middle class upbringing, I am not too far removed from the experience of those for whom I seek to advocate. My parents were immigrants who left Haiti over a decade before I was born to find opportunities in the U.S. They arrived with few resources, but much determination to succeed. By their word and their example, they have instilled in me the virtues of compassion and respect for others, the importance of hard work and commitment, and an appreciation for all that I have received. With this, I feel it is incumbent upon me to give back to my community in every manner possible.

As a law student, I seek to be an active participant in an educational setting enriched by more than the practical elements of law, but also the philosophical, contextual, and social dimensions of jurisprudence. The University of Pennsylvania Law School is nationally recognized and respected for providing this kind of dynamic learning environment. My life experience, breadth of knowledge in psychology, and commitment to an interdisciplinary approach and public service would allow me to contribute greatly to the diversity and the strength of the University of Pennsylvania student body. I possess the intellectual capacity, perseverance, and maturity to meet the challenges of a legal education and a professional career and look forward to continued opportunities to work on behalf of children like Monique, Jamie, and Sarah.

COMMENTS

This is a superb essay, created from Sacha’s wealth of knowledge about her former field of psychology and extensive experience with child advocacy and family law. In one coherent essay she shows:

• Her passion for serving the interests of children

• How and why she got into psychology

• The evolution of her career

• The depth of her involvement and expertise (she presents and publishes in the field)

• How she will contribute to this field in the future, with the addition of her law degree (She does a particularly good job of showing that she is not so much changing careers as adding another dimension to what she already does.)

• Her reasons for wanting to attend Penn (although these could have been better developed)

Her personal statement is well balanced, giving the right amount of space to each aspect of her presentation. It is also easy to follow her intellectual journey; she uses detail to make her points memorable and believable, without cluttering up the flow of her material. (Note how much better a résumé-like essay she has written than Amy has; it is more subtle and much more effective.)

Sacha’s statement shows how convincing an applicant with real expertise in a related field can be. There is no doubt that she really knows her field. Similarly, it is clear that she will stay in this field and make more of a contribution with a law degree than she can without. She will have no trouble finding relevant employment, given her experience to date. In addition, her experience has presented her with ample opportunity to make sure that law is the right field for her.

Not only admissions officers would find her an appealing candidate; so, too, would career services officers. After all, they know that they will not have an unemployable person on their hands in three years and, far more important, they will not have an emotional wreck to handle. Sacha has sufficient relevant experience to know what she is getting into, and to know that it is right for her.

DAVID P. WHITE

My older brother is a drug addict. On April 4, 1995—two months before I took the LSAT—this fact changed my life. After returning from my first vacation in years, I came home to a frantic phone message stating that my brother had disappeared. “What are we going to do with the kids?” my mother’s message asked. As a young Executive Director of a youth and family-empowerment organization, my response was immediate: “I have room at my place—I’ll take the youngest two.” Now 28, I have been the physical and legal guardian to Adam, now eight, and Taylor, now five, ever since.

With the humor and insight that distance provides, those first months with the kids almost seem nostalgic. There were dirty faces to wash, walks in the park to take, stories to read and many lessons to teach to these new little people in my life. But I also remember the trauma. My agency, born of grassroots movement, nearly closed down because of my reduced work schedule. Every day, at 5:30 p.m., I went home, no questions asked. I quit playing the saxophone and I resigned from several boards of directors on which I served. Money became a scarce commodity and my non-work life was a blur of cooking, cleaning, laundry and discipline. At times, I was bitterly resentful of my brother and his ex-wife’s inability to get their lives together. When asked by others, “how are you handling all this?” I used to tell them, “there are dark nights.” Day after day, through laughter and pain, we trudged through.

Now, after nearly two years of heroic effort, my brother has pieced together his life and will regain custody of his children soon. Sometimes, as I sit in the nearby park cheering for Adam’s soccer team or as I scold Taylor for practicing her gymnastics on our furniture, I can scarcely believe that time has moved so quickly. Our family has actually benefited from the experience. Through a collective determination to keep our children out of state custody, my oldest brother (who also took two kids), mother and extended family members have become part of a stronger family unit. Following the shock of losing his children, my brother has successfully arrested more than a decade of behavior infested with drugs and violence. Most importantly, four of my nieces and nephews have been given a chance to succeed in life without the fetters of a childhood devoid of love and commitment.

For me, parenting my brother’s children has never felt extraordinary. As a student of philosophy, I have the tendency to view life’s events as connected to each other, as part of a fuller mosaic where each act is understood only within the context of the whole. This belief, that somehow the storm front of my new parenting responsibilities—and the opportunities in my life which I was subsequently forced to delay—would one day make sense to me when placed within the matrix of my whole life, was often the only thread on which I could hold. This belief was also critical to my success in my first job experience. My position as Director of Y.O.U. was a major undertaking which few of my friends expected me to survive. I was chosen from a national group of 52 candidates and was by far the youngest and least experienced of the group. As it turns out, my selection was due more to my lack of political relationships and connections than to anything else; the previous two years of the agency’s history had been filled with tension, closed relationships and a visible lack of progress on any programmatic front. In fact, Y.O.U. was not even an agency at the time but rather a network of community-based organizations and activists who were openly divided along racial, financial and neighborhood lines. Apparently, they wanted a fresh start and, with a 24-year-old, cherub-looking face, I represented that.

The first several months were difficult. Few members of the network showed up for the first steering committee meeting that I organized. Many of them wanted me to visit them on their own turf in order to check my “grassroots credentials” before they would accept me as their new staff person. One of those who did show up brought his morning newspaper, whose pages he flipped and read throughout the meeting. It was the first of many frightening experiences and by the third month I was so demoralized that I was ready to resign.

I did not resign, however, and instead took a bold step: I hired staff and started to construct programs. It occurred to me that we could fulfill the original intent of the grassroots movement that had established the Y.O.U. network by molding the stated priorities of the steering committee into a coherent mission statement and a set of non-traditional services. So we did. The result was both unexpected and remarkable: success. Within a short period of time, and through a combination of politics, begging, will-power and luck, we built an organization that merged together the various agendas of opposing committee members into a full-blown initiative, one that could contribute to the larger system of youth and family services in our area while providing direct services to a number of young people.

I have been with Y.O.U. for nearly four years now. During my tenure, and by working with a host of others, I have overseen the development of the following: an incorporated agency in the state of Kansas; four community-/school-based programs; a core of professionally trained staff; an active Board of Directors; and a budget that has tripled in size and that now includes funding from public, private and contractual sources. In a move that could never have been foreseen before my arrival, the original network of agencies opted to become members of a larger coalition that has grown to over 100 members. In addition to providing services to over 500 youth and families annually, Y.O.U. received an award from the Governor of Kansas in 1994 for “Outstanding Community Service” and in that same year was described by the Kansas Office for Community Service as a “pillar” in the field of service-learning. Our success has included something as large as a transportation project that successfully transported 400 youths to jobs and enrichment-related activities, to something as localized as developing an academically failing, clinically depressed youth into a frequent public speaker and school leader through the sustained guidance of our leadership programs. We have accomplished much with the simple concept that agencies make better decisions regarding their services when they work together, and that our whole community is improved when our agencies make better decisions. Ironically, this is the basic idea that stood behind the establishment of the original network long before I arrived but it took a political novice to help them achieve it.

The past four years have been a time of relentless activity and significant accomplishment. Now, looking towards the future, I believe it is time to move forward and to build new skills. I plan to do this in two phases. First, I have recently accepted a position at the Chapin Hall Center for Children, a research and evaluation agency associated with the University of Chicago, to help initiate a city-wide project that focuses on youth development through large collaborative efforts. The position is for six months only and begins in early 1997; my role will be to develop the strategy by which the sponsor organizations can implement their expansive vision. My time at Chapin Hall will also serve as a period of reflection and transition into the second phase of my plan, which is to attend law school in the fall of 1997. I have looked forward to entering law school for some time now and believe that I can significantly enhance my professional abilities through the process of earning my law degree. The method of thought, the actual content of the information taught and the chance to review the accumulated statutes and thoughts that have shaped our society—all of these are things that excite me and that will improve my ability to bring about positive change in the world around me. In particular, I want to expand my understanding of how laws are constructed, interpreted, enforced, marketed to and understood by the public in urban areas across the country. As one who expects to be intimately involved with children’s issues and urban community development throughout the duration of my life, I firmly believe that my experience in law school will help me become a better advocate for issues of concern and, ultimately, a more effective man of action.

Aristotle teaches that there is a path to success in life, one that involves a constant dialogue between hardship and joy, family and career. To date, my experiences have confirmed his teachings; my joy and sense of accomplishment have been the direct fruits of a determined struggle to overcome the obstacles in my family and professional life. Now it is time to take these experiences and build on them so that I can continue to contribute to a society that, I believe, is capable of being a safe, humane place for all of us. It simply needs constant advocacy and pressure from those of us who care. I do and I look forward to the challenge of law school which I believe will provide me with the tools to continue to contribute in ways that make a positive difference in the lives of others.

COMMENTS

This essay is remarkable in several ways. First, of course, the writer’s remarkable family tale overwhelms readers. Second, David succeeds in tying together his adult life history with his career to date and his future. Few applicants to law school have as interesting a personal history to relate, or as clear a professional impact to offer, let alone personal histories and professional efforts that work in concert—and that show where they will head after law school. Third, David conveys this in a matter-of-fact tone that does not ask for readers to pity him, or indeed to admit him because of unusual circumstances. His positive, understated approach actually gets the most mileage from his position. Most applicants would overplay their hands, risking a negative reaction from admissions officers in so doing.

JAMES M.

If someone had told me eight years ago that one day I would find something beneficial in the mistakes of my adolescence, I would have laughed. But with maturity came a fresh perspective that gave me the ability to see value in my darkest moments, while revealing social opportunities to which I otherwise might have been blind. My formative years are bittersweet in that they created significant obstacles for me, yet also gave me a worthy cause to champion and ultimately inspired me to pursue a law degree.

I picked up alcohol at an early age, not heeding steady warnings from my family concerning drink. As a dedicated honor student, Boy Scout, altar boy and all-star baseball player, I had a false sense of sanctuary. Conned by youthful illusions of invincibility, I lost perspective early on, putting sociability before responsible behavior. The consequences came swift and harsh, by age fifteen a debilitating lethargy replaced my dreams of being a person of energy, character, and responsibility. By seventeen, my interest in education and athletics waned at the onset of an embarrassing series of legal encounters. By nineteen, tangled amidst throes of addiction and unable to devote proper attention to my studies, I requested time away from school.

Fortunately, on January 29, 1996, I had the clarity of mind to see my malady in proper perspective. Tears of surrender welled within as my eyes focused on a sign reading “Talbot House Treatment Center.” With the benefit of a supportive family and candid self-evaluation, I was able to summon the courage and humility to walk through the door of fear, embarrassment and doubt lying between me and triumph over substance abuse. I chose a life of abstinence from alcohol and drugs that day—a decision I never regretted.

I never could have imagined the absolute catharsis I was to undergo. Upon completion of Talbot House, I met with a counselor regularly and joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a fellowship that supported my aspirations for change. As importantly, I met my mentor, an animated and energetic U.S. Merchant Marine officer, Ivy League doctoral student and high school teacher who overcame similar obstacles in his youth. Invigorated by a new sense of direction and focus, I re-engaged myself academically and became involved with my community.

In the fall of 1996, I returned to the university, primed and finally poised for the rigors of academia. I reaffirmed my original decision to study psychology; I enjoyed the research and analytical thinking the psychology curriculum demanded and found it benefited a newfound ambition of helping misdirected youth. After a year or so back in the groves of academe, I decided a business education would be a practical supplement to my university experience. The real world applicability of economics, finance, and technology complemented the largely theoretical foundation of psychology, making for a robust education. Rallying back from my earlier poor performance, my final six semesters more accurately demonstrated my true capabilities (3.75 GPA).

At about the same time, I began volunteering at local AA church groups that supported youths recovering from substance abuse. I remember the first ride home I gave to Kenny, a gaunt, scrappy-looking character with dark leather skin, slicked back hair, and a patchy mustache. Fresh from the jailhouse, his shifty personality alarmed me enough that I kept a close eye on him, worried something of mine might make its way into his pocket. A year later, with structure and direction, he was thirty pounds heavier and as fine a specimen of integrity one could hope to meet. When I see him now, I often joke with him about the “scrawny hoodlum” I drove home that night. In the process of helping others I discovered that my own struggles made me useful to society in a capacity I never anticipated: as a tenable advocate for recovery. My two-year tenure as chairperson of a recovery group called the “Sunday Night 1, 2, 3” capitalized on this qualification while affirming my aptitude for leadership.

At college graduation, I entered the software industry, accepting a position as a Systems Engineer for the industry leader in clinical software development. I assumed complete responsibility for several multimillion dollar system integration projects in the Southeast, and was soon promoted to Senior Systems Engineer. Touted for my technical prowess, I found my real strength to be my ability to gain client confidence and trust in high stress situations; as a result I was awarded the “Technology Approach” and “Key Contributor” awards and was named “Distinguished Performer” for my leadership in challenging situations. I was actively sought by other companies and, soon after, was recruited by my current employer. Originally hired by Lighthouse Business Solutions as a consultant, I took on many additional administrative responsibilities including researching, quoting and documenting an interactive voice response system and help desk. I also developed the System Disaster Planning guide for a product quotation that was successfully marketed to General Electric. After proving my value in the private sector, I was promoted to Government and Clinical Services Program Manager, a position responsible for managing relations for all government and healthcare contracts. In this position, I enriched my management, writing, and oratory skills while formulating functional and technical specifications for government and hospital computer systems.

As my professional life flourished, my social involvement evolved and intensified. I spoke regularly at recovery meetings and rehabilitation centers all over the country, explaining how I overcame addiction. Public speaking engagements challenged me to tell stories with serious themes, something that had at one time made me uncomfortable. I enjoyed this valuable opportunity to give back to society. Also, I began visiting county correction facilities to talk to inmates. I told them about my life, the polarity between my new circumstance and my rocky adolescence, and the methods I used to change. As rewarding as this work was, it was tarnished by an ugly reality. Some of the men I spoke with claimed innocence, but could not appeal due to financial constraints and lack of county resources; the public defenders were engulfed in caseloads numbering hundreds. The men all shared two common characteristics—they were young and disadvantaged. Echoes from the steel doors clanging behind me rang long after my visits with the inmates, as did my awakening to the specter of injustice.

My work for S.T.O.P.—a prison diversionary program designed to help inmates develop structure and positive contacts upon release from jail—confirmed the presence of injustice outside of the walls. After trying to help inmates assimilate back into society, it became clear that proper legal representation played an integral role in rehabilitation. Upon release from the detention centers, the men had trouble getting jobs due to perfunctory adjudication, feeding the cycle of abjection. I watched cynicism oust enthusiasm when the only legitimate jobs they could obtain paid minimum wage. Even in freedom they dwelled behind bars of poverty and ignorance.

My experiences and respective awakenings revealed weaknesses in the justice system. Though I recognized that some of the men’s claims of innocence may have been fabricated, the idea that even one had merit roused a hunger to act on their behalf. For the first time, I saw a place where my professional ability and skills could complement my personal ambitions and passions. My eyes have been opened to the power and responsibility of lawyering, yet, lacking credentials, I remain an impotent advocate. An education from George Washington Law School can give me the credibility and training I need to take action and maximize my effect of these problems.

I am fascinated by criminal law and excited about my future in it. My collective community experience has molded me into a staunch proponent of ensuring that youth and poverty do not inhibit impartial justice; my professional experience in business, government, and healthcare has honed the leadership skills and acumen needed to navigate the legal cosmos. Armed with a Juris Doctorate from George Washington, I will be prepared to pierce the dense fog of legalese for those in straitened circumstance.

COMMENTS

A résumé-like essay—“first I did this, then I did that, and next I did something else”—is a good bet to bore readers. This is particularly true when an essay covers at length everything from the applicant’s college education to his whole career history, related in depth, to his extensive community involvements. This essay, however, is anything but boring. The depths to which James fell, and his subsequent rehabilitation, make this gripping and powerful. In addition, he builds a successful argument for why his personal challenges and community involvement have led him to law school.

Ordinarily this range of experience would not call for an all-encompassing résumé-style essay, but James faced the need to show that his alcoholism (and criminal record) had been transformed into personal, professional, and community success over a substantial period of time. This meant that focusing on only one element of his past would be insufficient to demonstrate conclusively his rehabilitation.

CONTRIBUTION TO DIVERSITY

You could say I grew up in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). My first exposure to it was by way of my father. He started attending when I was around 10 years old, following a devastating bankruptcy that stripped us of our vehicle and my childhood home. For years I accompanied him to the meetings. It was a jovial place, a stark contrast to the ridiculous portrayals seen on television. There were no trench coat–shrouded men, no “brainwashing” or whiney neurotics; just a group of people enjoying a better life. I watched with admiration as my father rebuilt our lives.

At age 20, I concluded that AA would benefit me. The first few months attending on my own were awkward and lonely. I had to distance myself from some lifelong friends who were not heading in the same direction as I was. To successfully turn my life around, I needed a new and solid foundation of quality people in life. I found AA to be brimming with such people, though they certainly did not take the form I envisioned.

With an average age of 35, I was by far the youngest member of the groups I attended. Initially, I had difficulties relating on an emotional level. Soon, though, I learned to appreciate the wonderfully motley crew, and found myself with a host of unique friends. Among them: a professional mountain biker, a dreadlocked Jamaican, a paralyzed art professor, an offshore fisherman who lived for Kierkegaard and Kerouac, a rocket scientist, and a fully tattooed biker, none of whom were under the age of thirty. Their grounded autonomy and open-mindedness encouraged me to re-examine my ideas on everything from calculus to karma.

I never realized my preconceptions of intelligence before my friendship with Todd. The scraggly offshore fisherman blew me away with his knowledge about literature and culture. I would never have guessed he had visited over 40 countries, owned a massive personal library of books (each of which he had read and could recall in scary detail), and could captain any boat on any ocean in the world. A1, the rocket scientist, gave me a glimpse of the realities of being homosexual. One evening, at a dinner party, a man made a crude reference to the gay pride parade. A1 confronted him and said, “I’m gay, and I didn’t really find that funny.” A1’s reddened face alongside the man’s shaken composure decimated my idea that our society is “tolerant.” Paul, the paralyzed art professor, gave me a graduate level lesson in handicapped accessibility. Regularly carrying him up the stairs to my house gave me a new appreciation for the railed ramps and blue signs that had grown transparent in my daily haste. These are just a few examples of how the people of AA awoke me from the sleepy social cobweb of prejudgment and complacency.

People are often confused when I explain that AA is not strictly about forsaking drink. Not drinking is just the keystone to a fellowship that promotes personal development. The transition I made was difficult but rewarding. Watching my father grow in AA exposed me to the fellowship, yet it was not until I joined AA myself that I reaped the benefits in my life. Subconsciously categorizing people and ideas expended less energy, but limited me to a monochromatic world with rigidly drawn plots and one-dimensional characters. Experience tells me that when I set aside the things I think I know, I am usually humbled before a colorful spectrum of society that was once invisible.

COMMENTS

Most diversity essays focus on someone’s nationality, race, or ethnicity (or, occasionally, someone’s poverty-stricken upbringing). The Alcoholics Anonymous focus of this essay is therefore quite unusual, but it certainly works. The AA perspective James brings is clearly out of the mainstream of applicants’ experience, but it is hardly irrelevant. Not only has he learned a great deal from his exposure to the camaraderie of AA, but he is well placed to help others who may need to deal with their own demons during law school.

STATEMENT REGARDING INTERRUPTION OF STUDIES

During the 1995–96 school year, I requested a voluntary one-year leave of absence to re-evaluate my goals and reflect on my reasons for attending college. Prior to this, I had two years of serious academic underperformance. During these two years—fall 1993 to spring 1995—I struggled, not yet possessing the focus needed to succeed in academia. I did not truly understand the privilege bestowed upon me, and accordingly did not apply myself in the classroom. After two years of wasting the resources of the university, I decided it best to take some time to work at my family business and deal with personal difficulties. One year later, I returned to the university fortified with the clarity of purpose and scholarly ambition needed to succeed in a collegiate setting.

ADDENDUM: FITNESS OF CHARACTER CERTIFICATION

One area that surely will be of paramount concern to the admissions committee is my qualification for admittance to a state bar. This is also a source of apprehension to me, as I have no intention of making the financial, temporal, and emotional investment in three years of education, yet be unable to practice law. I desire to practice in Georgia, so I contacted the state bar to discuss my ability to be certified of fit character. The Board to Determine Fitness of Bar Applicants in Georgia stated that although each individual is handled on a case-by-case basis, and they could not guarantee membership over the phone, I am eligible to be a member of the bar. The bar entrance manual explicitly states that the candidate must be currently of fit character. As long as I am completely candid on my law school and bar applications, and am able to show rehabilitation, the board states that there is a high probability I will be admitted. Since 1977 only 31 hearings out of approximately 11,000 applications resulted in denial of certification. By the time I am finished with law school it will have been ten years since my misconduct. I am very involved with my community and have countless upstanding business and community leaders who are willing to state their support for me.

COMMENTS

James’s two addenda address the fallout from his period in the throes of alcoholism. Both are straightforward and both are necessary. The “fitness of character certification” shows that he has done his homework and that he is indeed likely to be admitted to the Georgia bar if he succeeds in law school. Given his criminal record, this was by no means evident absent this explanation.

OLUWABUNMI SHABI

This time I decided to take my usual jog uphill past the tennis courts and the playground and straight to the tall obelisk that sits at the center of Fort Greene Park. Out of breath, I squatted against the monument and thought about how the array of colors of the Brooklyn/Manhattan skyline had never been seen by the soldiers who fought here during the Revolutionary war. I also wondered what the skyline must have looked like when Ralph Ellison sat in this park and crafted his novel Invisible Man. Focusing my eyes on the Williamsburg Bank clock tower, I realized that it was nearly 7:00 p.m. I snapped myself out of the daze and started the jog home.

I began thinking about how much the neighborhood and I have changed since my awkward and nerdy days at Brooklyn Technical High School on Fort Greene Place. The blocks that were once filled with dilapidated buildings and crack addicts are now filled with coffee bars and young black professionals. But somehow, the neighborhood has been able to maintain its indelible Brooklyn edge, which consists of one part hospitality and two parts attitude. Maybe that’s why someone like Spike Lee—who could afford posh midtown digs—chose Fort Greene as his company’s home base.

As for myself, I cannot say that my own transition has been as dramatic. There are the usual superficial changes that accompany the shift from adolescence to adulthood. I went from donning bright green coke-bottle glasses to sporting contact lenses. My 16-year-old size six body has become a svelte size eight (or at least I’d like to think so). And of course there are the obligatory Generation-X transitions from chocolate milk to caffe latte and from being an omnivore to being a vegetarian. But beneath the surface the changes have been much more significant. The sure-footed vigorousness, with which I used to argue black and white ideals on my high school debate team, has become an understanding and an appreciation for the complex nuances that envelop even the smallest of issues. My grasp of world politics has shed some light on why in high school my Muslim Egyptian friend and my Jewish Israeli friend were constantly at each other’s throats. And my teenage cockiness and self-congratulatory spirit that were often dependent on making good grades or hanging out with the coolest kids, have transformed themselves into a self-awareness and an inner-confidence that is part of me regardless of how I do on my next exam.

Over the past couple of years, much of my worldly deliberations have taken place at a local Fort Greene coffee shop, the Brooklyn Moon Cafe. When I walk in I am greeted by friends and acquaintances. Everyone from artists and musicians to bankers and lawyers patronize the place. They muse over their existence or take a break from the burdens of work and life that await them outside this safe haven. The burgeoning writer exchanges numbers with the up-and-coming actress, and the recent MBA grad conspires with cohorts about starting up a new business. This, I think to myself as I sip my cappuccino, is the new Harlem Renaissance.

There are even times when Brooklyn Mooners can act as a very opinionated surrogate family. While sitting in the Moon after Sunday brunch, I pull out some of my pictures. I had just returned from an eight-week trip to Paris, Cairo, and Lagos. It was the first time I had left the country since I was ten years old. I talked about how my trip had opened my eyes. I discovered the extent to which millions around the world are suffering. But unlike my old days on the debate team, I had decided that my energized words must be followed by decisive action—hence, my desire to practice international human rights law. I speak about the fact that though I love business journalism, I believe the true vehicle of change lies in the law. This of course begins a dispute among dilettantes. But I can’t complain. As much as I enjoyed humus in Cairo and crepes in France, there was something comforting about returning home to heated conversation over spicy fries.

But even Fort Greene is not without its own share of distress and tragedy. The neighborhood is occasionally mentioned in the news. It is the location of the funeral procession of Christopher Wallace, aka rap artist Biggie Smalls. It is the site of the electronics store that was robbed at gunpoint several times over. Fort Greene is also the neighborhood where a 12-year-old, who was molested by her stepfather, had lived. But it is also where I had my first kiss. It is the neighborhood that has the McDonald’s where I spent countless afternoons with classmates. And it is, of course, where I take my daily run.

These days I see many who are fleeing the high costs of the nearby Park Slope and lower Manhattan for the more affordable Fort Greene. This neighborhood may just go from being a tree-lined haven for a young community of artists and professionals to a gentrified, watered down version of Greenwich Village. Who knows? But as with all neighborhoods and people, in another few years both Fort Greene and I will be something else. Maybe something completely unexpected or something highly predictable—but most definitely something else. As I walk home each day and acknowledge this uncontrollable spirit of change, my only hope is that some day someone will stand in front of my building as she takes a breather from her evening run and muse about what my skyline must have looked like.

COMMENTS

The applicant uses her neighborhood of Fort Greene (Brooklyn) as a lens through which to examine herself—an interesting and effective way of discussing one’s self and one’s own development while also making connections with larger movements and developments of local, national, or international importance.

The weakness of her effort is in claiming that she will practice international human rights law, a future that she apparently discovered during a single trip abroad. This of course is not convincing; in addition, it sits poorly with an essay devoted to her local neighborhood.

She is very perceptive about the neighborhood—and herself as well. This, combined with her light, humorous touch, makes her someone a reader would like to meet. Her light touch serves another function as well; it camouflages the fact that she is making references (to Ellison, the Harlem Renaissance, the Revolutionary War, and Brooklyn Tech) meant to demonstrate that she is very well educated. The light touch allows her to do so without seeming to be tooting her own horn.

BILL

For between five and ten months of each of the past nine years, I have lived in Buddhist monasteries and retreats, devoting myself to the cultivation of insight and moral strength. During these periods, I have maintained silence—speaking, as a rule, only to teachers for ten or fifteen minutes two or three times each week. During these periods, I have given up many pleasures, including movies, television, and music, in order to focus more fully on this contemplative labor. I have sought the kind of wisdom that comes from looking within, from paying attention to and staying aware of the immediate experience of life, of the body, feelings, thoughts, etc. This particular type of introspection, which has been practiced in Buddhist monasteries for more than 2,500 years, has also been taught in medical centers throughout the United States, at Monsanto Company, and to the Chicago Bulls; it will soon be taught at Yale Law School. My goal has been to learn what can be learned, to develop the kind of understanding that comes from a calm and concentrated mind’s studying life as it unfolds moment by moment. I have aspired to live, in the words of one famous lawyer, “with malice toward none; with charity for all.”

Doing so for so long has not been easy. I have had to find the courage to live by my convictions and to follow a path seldom tread; I have not pursued wealth or prestige. I have had to endure the inconveniences of subsisting on very modest means and not having a home of my own. I have had to persevere without the support of my society’s culture, the dominant American culture. I have had to find the strength to face life directly—even when it was unpleasant or boring—without distraction and without the dullness that comes from alcohol, drugs, or refusing to acknowledge the truth.

As a result of my efforts, I now more often feel happy and peaceful, more often feel good, than I did before—even when circumstances were trying. I face adversity with greater strength. Feelings of laziness, fear, and discouragement less often defeat me, less often slow me down or sway me from my course. Less often than before do I find myself the servant of loneliness, envy, or craving, acting at their behest, following their dictates. I more quickly notice my own feelings and less often am driven blindly by anger or ill will to speak or act in harmful ways. Even when provoked or insulted, I am more likely to recognize any feelings of hurt, sadness, or shame, and so retain the freedom to choose how to respond. I am less likely to become a slave of anger, immediately and unthinkingly striking back with spiteful words, for instance, heedless of the consequences. Not only do I enjoy greater self-awareness, but also I observe others more perceptively than I did before. My commitment to acting ethically is stronger than ever, and so is my ability to honor that commitment.

Some who have devoted themselves to seeking wisdom now live as monks. Others, including many Westerners, have married and now work in a wide range of fields, as professors, writers, lawyers, political activists, etc., leading dynamic lives that contribute visibly to society. I have decided to become a lawyer.

Embarking on a voyage of legal education appeals to me. I wish to exercise and further strengthen my powers of precise thinking, analyzing, and reasoning, of careful reading, and of persuasive writing and speaking. I believe that knowledge of the law will aid me greatly. I look forward to the opportunity to study and think about the resolution of conflict and the American legal system.

However, I am applying to [law school X] not only because I want a legal education, but also because I wish to have the professional opportunities that a law degree brings, because I believe that a JD will help me find work that is meaningful and satisfying to me and beneficial to others. I enjoy paying attention to detail and being thorough. I am capable of excellence in analyzing, reasoning, reading, and writing. Working as a lawyer will allow me to use my talent. Though I am not yet sure exactly which of the paths that leads from law school I will choose to take, several of them appeal to me, especially employment in the not-for-profit or government sectors.

Since high school, I have felt a strong pull towards public service. During college and after, I felt drawn in two directions to help prevent and alleviate causes of suffering and happiness, and sharing my understanding with others. In the past, my interest in political matters led to my being elected and serving as Chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union. I spent time inviting, listening to, and questioning guest speakers about political issues and exploring and debating policy questions with my fellow students. Also in college, in a spirit of public service, I founded and directed a program to bring Yale student tutors into the New Haven public schools. I learned first-hand about education in the inner cities and succeeded in convincing dozens of Yalies to use their time and intelligence to help poor children learn. After college, I worked for Greenpeace. There I had the opportunity not only to learn to train and manage others, but also to go from door to door, from living room to living room, speaking with strangers about my concerns about the environment, informing and educating them, and persuading them to act by donating money, writing letters to their political representatives, and continuing to learn. I encountered some people who were hostile, and others who were sympathetic; I met some who were interested, and others who were not; I engaged and spoke persuasively even to some of those initially skeptical or unfriendly. More recently, I founded a religious not-for-profit corporation and organized six-week retreats with Sayadaw U Pandita, a highly respected Burmese Buddhist monk. This demanding work allowed me to make available, in the United States, opportunities to cultivate insight under the guidance of one of the world’s foremost teachers in this field.

Whatever direction my legal career takes—whether I choose to safeguard the environment, protect children, or help in some other way—I will bring to my work a keen intelligence and a certain eloquence, as well as the qualities developed in my rare training: character, strength, compassion, and awareness. Much of the understanding I have is the result of a sustained encounter with, reflection on, and testing of teachings of the Buddha as well as an extensive observation of the human mind. These teachings and the particular form of introspection that I have engaged in are, to the legal profession, largely unexplored sources of knowledge and wisdom. To the discussions of a profession troubled with relatively high levels of dissatisfaction, depression, and alcoholism, I hope to bring interesting ideas, drawn from these sources among others, about which conduct and mental habits contribute to happiness and which to suffering. In a profession sometimes portrayed as dishonest, greedy, and selfish, I hope to swell by one the ranks of those who live with integrity, kindness, and altruism and inspire or convince others to live likewise. To interaction with clients, negotiations, and attempts to resolve disputes, I hope to bring a valuable sensitivity to unspoken needs and to the inner sources of conflict and disagreement. And in a society and to a profession that lavishes affluence and prominence on those who honor their duty of zealous advocacy on behalf of clients, especially rich clients, even if those advocates neglect their duty to third parties and to society, I hope to bring a strong dedication to justice, fairness, and public service.

My commitment to academic excellence is much stronger now than when I was in college, when much of my time, energy, and interest were drawn to the search that led me after graduation into monasteries and retreats. I feel ready to devote myself to the study of law. And I look forward to developing the skills, acquiring the knowledge, and earning the credentials that will help me find a position as a lawyer to help many, to share the fruits of my quiet cultivation of wisdom and virtue in action for the welfare of others.

COMMENTS

Although a bit long—a shorter statement would have been more effective—this does a good job of putting the candidate’s “alternative” lifestyle into perspective. It is important for someone with big gaps in his or her employment record—in Bill’s case, the result of a commitment to Buddhist retreat practices and his philosophical quest—to explain the record to admissions committees. Bill does so by using his knowledge quest as the single most important theme in his profile. He does a good job of explaining the unique difficulties of his passion while also making it known that he is not “loony”—indeed some corporations and mainstream groups have begun to cultivate similar practices in their ranks. Incorporating his interest in public service (which is backed by significant tangible evidence of that commitment) makes sense because it is somewhat related.

After a strong first half, however, the essay runs into problems. Paragraphs five and six border on the trite, and his admission that he does not know what he will do upon graduation is worrying for someone who is already in his mid-thirties. Paragraph seven lapses into regurgitation of his résumé, and the start of paragraph eight is simply too self-congratulatory.

NYU DEAN’S SCHOLARSHIP ESSAY

Five of the opportunities available at NYU particularly interest me. First is the opportunity to study with NYU’s faculty. NYU seems determined to attract outstanding law professors; I hope to feast at the table that has been—and is being—prepared. Second is the opportunity to study at a school seriously committed to public service. I expect to benefit from the Public Interest Law Center and NYU’s excellent public interest faculty. I expect, too, to benefit from my fellow students. Finding like-minded classmates in an environment as demanding as law school can make the experience of school not only more enjoyable, but also richer, as a result of friendly discussion. NYU’s commitment to public service, its generosity in supporting those committed to public service, and its reputation as a school dedicated to public interest law insure that NYU’s class will contain more than the usual percentage of people dedicated to such work. The third opportunity at NYU that particularly interests me is the opportunity to participate in NYU’s excellent clinical education program. I intend to make clinical education an important part of my legal education. Fourth, the opportunity to study the law in New York City interests me greatly. The opportunities in New York for internships and for studying with adjunct professors who are leading practitioners are unsurpassed. Much of my family and many of my friends live in New York. Also, though a JD from NYU should serve me well wherever I go, law degrees seem to be somewhat more geographically sensitive than medical or business degrees. Since I think it likely—though not yet certain—that I will settle in New York, can I do better than attend law school there? Fifth is the opportunity to receive an outstanding legal education. I would rate the likelihood of my seeking a job at Cravath as extremely low. Still, I know that such jobs are highly sought after. Some research revealed that an unusually high percentage of Cravath lawyers were NYU alumni. While speaking with an attorney who was once an associate at Cravath, I mentioned my discovery and hypothesized that the NYU network at Cravath was particularly strong. No, he corrected me, it is not just that the NYU network is strong. Rather, the partners found that, as a rule, NYU graduates have been trained exceptionally well. Though I expect to serve different interests than Cravath’s lawyers, I do seek excellent training. NYU can provide me with that.

COMMENTS

Bill’s Dean’s Scholarship Essay for NYU is nicely, albeit simply, constructed. There is no room for creativity here, so it is best to state one’s argument clearly and succinctly. Bill shows that he has done his homework, that he really understands NYU. A nice touch is his incorporation of the information gleaned from research at Cravath—arguably New York’s most prestigious firm—despite the fact that this is a path he personally is unlikely to follow. It shows him to be active in learning about the school. It also shows him to be in touch with the real world of law, which is particularly valuable for someone who has been off meditating for the last decade (and is therefore vulnerable to a charge of not knowing much about the real world, let alone legal practice).

NOAH PITTARD

TRANSFER APPLICATION

While I am pleased with my first-year performance at Hastings and fully aware of the advantages accruing to me as a result of it, I am convinced that transferring to Boalt Hall would create opportunities and yield benefits that are simply not available to me at Hastings.

Primarily, I would prefer to attend a smaller law school with a more intellectually driven student body. I write this not as a first-year applicant filled with brochure ideals, but as a rising “second-year” who has just completed his first year at a large, academically multifarious institution. I do not suggest that Hastings lacks bright, exceptional students; indeed, a substantial portion of my section consistently contributed to a vigorous dialectic, both in and out of class. This notwithstanding, I believe Boalt Hall’s higher admissions criteria are bound to produce a materially higher percentage of students who share my interest in legal scholarship.

Secondarily, because I arrived at law school with a successful background in entrepreneurial business, as well as a keen interest in the law of commerce, I cannot overstate the appeal and value of student-level access to Boalt’s nationally recognized business faculty. Although I would very much enjoy taking more classes with my first-year Hastings professors, I am more excited by the prospect of enrolling in corporations and international business classes with Professors Mel Eisenberg and Dick Buxbaum, to name but two. Furthermore, Boalt’s curriculum includes a number of programs (e.g., financial services) that Hastings’ does not.

In sum, my decision to apply to Boalt Hall is compelled by a strong preference to be part of a law school where interested, intelligent students, and a dynamic faculty, are the rule. This past year I learned the difference between mere competitiveness and competition, and it is the latter that I hope to find—and contribute to—at Boalt Hall. If admitted as a transfer student, I am confident that I would make as meaningful a contribution to your second-year class as I made to my own first-year class at Hastings.

COMMENTS

Noah was wise to focus intensely on a few reasons for wanting to transfer, rather than discussing each and every benefit of Boalt. Going overboard—using a laundry list approach—would have diffused his message, making him a less appealing candidate as a result. He is also smart not to insult his current school. It is better to discuss the attractions of your prospective school than to criticize your current school. For one thing, your prospective school wants to believe that you will be a full and enthusiastic supporter of it down the road.

Noah did miss one important trick, however. He is clearly attracted to business and should have used this as part of his rationale for seeking out Boalt. Hastings, his current law school, has no business school affiliated with it whereas Boalt’s sister school is Berkeley’s highly ranked Haas School of Business. (In fact, he later applied to Haas to do a joint JD-MBA.) His successful entrepreneurial experience would have been especially valuable in this context. He should have elaborated on it and explained exactly how he planned to take advantage of Boalt’s and Haas’s resources in this regard. This would have fitted well his basic argument that he was hoping to transfer to Boalt because it offered much that Hastings did not.

 

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