Hi! Like the title says, I've been struggling to navigate deciding on separate personal statement, diversity statement, and why law essay topics without them feeling too repetitive. Most of the schools I'm applying to require a PS and have "optional" diversity/perspective statements and why law statements, and some, like Harvard, forgo the traditional PS to require both perspective and why law statements.
I had planned to write my PS about where I'm from (very specific area and culture that's traditionally very underrepresented in higher education) and how that's shaped who I am, brought me to my current career, and led me to want to pursue law--and I have some PS drafts that feel successful! My dilemma is that, putting the PS aside, if you asked me how my lived experiences have shaped who I am and how I'd contribute to the school's environment or if you asked what motivates me to pursue law, my answers would also be where I'm from/my background. Obviously I'm simplifying a bit here--there are a lot of layers to my topic and many experiences and anecdotes I could pull from--but I'm not sure how to approach writing a diversity statement or why law statement without it feeling like it's largely echoing my PS.
Is it okay to have a general overarching theme across multiple essays if the specific anecdotes and internal challenges I focus on are different in each, or should I be trying to figure out a completely separate topic for one of the essays (even if that runs the risk of becoming a little less sincere)?
I hope this generally made sense--any advice is welcome!!!
5 comments
This can be a pretty common problem but you have a few options!
First things first, the goal of a personal statement is to explain why you want to go to law school and be a lawyer; the goal of a diversity statement / statement of perspective is to explain where you come from, the forces that have shaped you, what makes you tick, the things your audience needs in order to understand you, etc.
There are times that those two topics can be interwoven. The most common is your example (I'm from this community. I want to be a lawyer in order to serve this community. And in order to understand me, you have to understand that I'm from this community). But let's use another example. Let's say someone wants to work in family law because they're the child of divorced parents and they saw how much lawyers helped their family navigate this situation. And let's say that the first thing they think of when looking at the DS prompt is "well, to understand me, you have to understand that I'm the child of divorced parents."
One option you can have to separate out the topics a smidge is to remember the goals of these two docs. In the case of the PS, I only need as much information about your background as is necessary to explain why you want to go to law school and be a lawyer. Meanwhile over on the DS, what I need are the sights/sounds/emotions of being the child of divorced parents and how that shaped you into the person you are today. In your case, the PS could give enough info about your community for the "why law" to make sense while the DS are the sights/sounds/emotions of that community and how it shaped you.
Another option is to do a DS on a completely different topic. We're all complex people. While there may be a clear #1 to "to understand me, you have to understand ___," chances are that you're just a touch deeper than that and have a Top 10 list of some kind. Maybe you can write about your main hobby, your favorite sports team, your family, your hometown, your religion, or something else along those lines. One bit of advice that I give folks is that a good sign of a good DS topic is that it's something that's either therapeutic to talk about or fun to talk about, but the key is that you just cannot stop talking about this.
An option that I wouldn't put on the table is providing two docs that really tell me about the same things. If there's too much overlap, scrap the DS. There's no point in being redundant!
Thank you so much for the thorough response!! This has definitely given me a helpful new perspective and guiding questions.
Hmm yes that is tricky. This may not be helpful given your situation, but I wrote essays to the Harvard prompts (purpose and perspective) and plan to submit my “purpose” as my personal statements and my “perspective” to any schools accepting a diversity statement (as long as it’s w/in their definition of diversity). The guiding questions in Harvard’s prompts helped me narrow what to include in each.
A piece of advice I liked for narrowing your “purpose/why law” is to answer the question: why can’t you not go to law school?
This is helpful, thank you! I had kind of hoped to just lean towards not writing a DS when it's optional/pick other prompts instead to avoid this overlap issue with my PS/why law, but then I got to Harvard's application and that plan was suddenly out the window--so I appreciate your framing of their prompts!
my PS and DS were about similar things.
PS was about leaving my country where i was about to take the bar exam on short notice, bccs my family was arranging my marriage, to be w my gay partner, and how ive been trying to get back into practicing law since.
DS was about how growing up gay in a country where being gay is penalized by jail time changed how i approach people and the perspective it brought me in regards to both law and people who hold extremist views.
same thing basically: that im gay and its impacted my life and why i want to go into the law. but different aspects: the first is my life story and why im pursuing law, the second is HOW that experience brought me to my view point and interest in law.