Most of what we see on the various admissions blogs are essays considered some of the best, the really impactful ones that might genuinely have moved the needle a crazy amount for the author.
But is anyone else interested in what the average law school essay looks like, especially for the elite schools? I think the examples we’re given create this false impression that most applicants are crafting these beautiful, breathtaking statements, but that’s obviously not the reality. I’m just curious what an average essay at a T14/T20 looks like.
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Yes! I'm kind of sick of every essay being "I saved my small town at age 12" or "I've always wanted to be a lawyer because I want to save the world." I also want to see a normal person essay.
Chiming in with the admissions perspective - the vast majority of applicants I've admitted over the years didn't have a best/impactful/move the needle personal statement. They had an effective personal statement.
To give a bad sports analogy, football highlight packages on Youtube are full of 50 yard TD passes, 80 yard touchdown runs, and punt returns where the guy makes five people miss tackles. You know what they don't show? A team running for four yards on every single play. But do you know what happens if you run for four yards every single play? You win.
So that's what I would say an average personal statement for a regular admit looks like. It's well written on a technical level, it's clear, and it's effective. And by "effective," I mean "it communicates why the applicant wants to go to law school and it makes sense when I look at the other pieces of their application."
You could try swapping essays with a bunch of 7Sagers, like a group review thing!
Why would it not be the reality? Writing is an important part of practicing law, so people being admitted to the t14 probably already have some baseline skill. I like the ones on 7sage if you look up essay bank or "7sage essays that got into harvard." A lot of them are about fairly mundane things but still very effectively done, whether or not the person has a hard story. My favourite was "Sea Turtles"
@ionicinstinct to clear things up, I went to a school that pumps people into the t14, and having read many of their essays, you’re vastly overestimating their writing ability.