Hello, Im in the beginning stage of writing my personal statement, however i am having super writer's block and i'm stuck. I dont know what direction i should take my essay. Its so difficult because i am a career changer , from medical to law and all my experience are medical related. so if there is anyone who would like to review it and maybe throw some ideas in that would be helpful.

Two schools I'm applying to want two pages max. Three other schools want approximately two pages. And the other seven schools either don't have a page limit or it's max three. I'm at about two and three quarters pages right now, and am wondering what to do. I know the "two page max" schools are a hard line, and I plan to edit shorter for those, but what about the "approximately two pages" schools. How flexible are they when they say approximately?

Having a very hard time editing down while still telling the full story I want. Any advice or help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hey guys,

One of the schools that I am applying for is having an open house this weekend. This sounds like a silly question but would it look bad to bring my mom with me? I'm very close with my mom and she will be the one who's paying for my law eduction so it makes sense that she wants to see exactly where her money is going...but I read on some other forums that taking your parents with you looks immature and can send the wrong message.

Any thoughts?

I know, i'm dramatic.

But guys i'm freaking out.

So, i'm a senior in college and my school just finished my "grad check" so that i'm set to graduate in the spring. All of a sudden they started factoring in my dual enrollment classes from high school in to my GPA. While they are Bs, they brought my gpa down .08 points, which actually brought it down a .1. As we are all prospective law students, .1 is a big deal. (Example: 2.6 to 2.5, trust me, not my GPA but you get the idea). I have not yet submitted my transcript to lsac because I caught this. Will my dual enrollment classes factor in to my lsac gpa? Because my I would LOVE to apply with my actual college GPA.

Help :(

I'm applying after being out of undergrad for 2 years. I took time off work for a few months to study for the LSAT and move back to my home state to do more meaningful work. Does that need to be explained in an addendum? I was thinking of including it in part of my "Why X" narratives, but that may be out of place.

Thanks!

On average my spring GPA was .4 lower than my average fall GPA. I have severe allergies that made things more difficult in the springtime. I always thought it was seasonal allergies, but when I moved back home after graduation I found out I am really allergic to the specific type of grass covering my college campus. Should I write an addendum or suck it up?

Hi guys,

I'm at a Canadian university (UBC) and paid to have my transcripts sent to the LSAC awhile back. My FedEx tracking showed that the transcripts were received about a week ago, but my LSAC account is showing something weird on the transcripts page. On the right hand side in the "my status" box, it shows "received: 0", "not received: 1". I think this means one of two things: either my transcripts were sent in a method that doesn't meet LSAC standards and they were not accepted even though they were received (although I followed the directions exactly), or the transcripts will be denoted as received once they are processed and "not received" just signifies that they are being processed.

I emailed LSAC about this yesterday, but I figured someone here might be able to provide some information in a more timely fashion about what this actually means. Thanks so much in advance!

Hey y'all. I'm curious to see what others would do in my predicament. I suffered direct trauma to my right eye in August; now I have a big black "floater" that follows my vision as I read. This is distracting and it impacts my speed, especially during LR and RC. So, I'm wearing an eye patch for the December test (lol).

Problem is, the patch is over my dominant eye, and it makes a difference to how fast and efficient I am taking in information as I read (try reading passages with just your non-dominant eye, which is likely your left eye, and you'll see what I mean). The seconds can add up to make a significant point difference on test day due to the general setback of performing under timed conditions without ocular dominance (even bubbling answers feels less intuitive).

Would you personally bring this up when applying to schools? Some schools in Ontario, Canada, provide optional sections for applicants to fill out for this type of thing. An example:

"Describe any personal facts or issues, relating to your application, that you would like the Admission Committee to be aware of that were not covered in your other responses. Provide docume­ntation (e.g., attending physician letter) to evidence and support any such personal issues or facts."

So I finished my first rough draft, and one of the ways I introduced the theme of my essay is through a time I went through unemployment, and how that built character for me.

Character was the main theme of my essay, and I attempted to tie it in through my work as a bilingual teacher, personal experience with one of my students' families immigration attorney and how that changed my students' character similarly to how it changed my character through my experience with my family.

One of my friends however, suggested that me writing about unemployment as adversity was a bad idea.. What do you guys think? I obviously did not proudly write about my unemployment, and I was not laid off for a bad reason or anything like that, and my focus was not on being unemployed.

I thought adversity in these essays was entirely subjective, without the obvious exception of writing about something illegal, etc.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

In high school, a community college came to my German class and said if we take a free test in the computer lab after school we could earn college credit. There was no grade on the test, but it would eventually cut you off depending on how you performed. I took it and got credit for eight hours of German. It transferred to my undergraduate university so I never saw a grade, but I just had the transcript processed by LSAC and it's showing that I got eight credit hours of a 2.0 GPA. That tanked my GPA and I'm wondering if there is any way to fix this or if anyone has had a similar problem.

Should I just keep calling the school? Is there anything they can do?

This post comes from an Ontario student, but it may apply to certain students applying in America/elsewhere as well.

U of T and Osgoode Hall, two of Ontario's -- nay, Canada's -- premiere law schools, do not want their applicants' resumes unless they're "mature" students (i.e. 5+ years out of post-secondary schooling). This presents a personal statement quandary for applicants like myself who are fresh out of the school game: do you tell that coherent, engaging story that omits several achievements, or do you try to fit in your achievements/extra curriculars where you can?

I feel that a lot of the personal statement resources offered throughout the internet are targeted towards students who can already use their resumes in the application process. Thus, they are implored to not "rehash" their achievements... but this advice does not seem as applicable to Canadian students who wish to apply to schools like U of T and Osgoode (among others).

What would you advise when presented with this difficulty? Do you sacrifice mentioning that award you received for graduating with the highest GPA in your department to talk about your (almost invariably) more personal accounts about volunteer positions/personal struggles/etc.? Do you sacrifice the telling of your accomplishments for consistency's sake?

Thanks for reading! If I could catch a glance from Mr. @David.Busis himself that'd be especially helpful :)

Disclaimer: I do have one personal experience that may be worth writing about. I had something of a nervous breakdown on campus, and it served a catalyst for beginning treatment of my depression. I'm "back to normal," now, but all the online advice I've read recommends against writing about depression. I believe I can write a compelling personal statement about my recovery from depression. But I think the risks are too high. For example, law school is going to be a challenging time in my life, and the admissions people won't know for sure I won't slip backwards. Ideally, I wouldn't write about depression.

That being said, I truly have nothing else going for me. Every personal statement sample I've seen from T14 schools is at least supplemented by noteworthy experiences, such as demanding work, internships, or hobbies. I don't have any of that. My most complicated job was working as a teacher's assistant for one semester about a subject I had no passion for, and my only extracurriculars are some very basic volunteering. I volunteered for a gubernatorial campaign and with Syrian refugees. But I was mostly posting signs for the campaign, and I was simply correcting the pronunciation of Syrian refugees who read aloud to me.

Perhaps one event that could inspire a personal statement was when I stayed over-time as a teacher's assistant to help a student who suffered a brain injury. But I can't imagine writing a long or even compelling statement based on that alone.

Thanks for reading. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

So my letters of rec are from January of 2014. I am applying most likely for this cycle or maybe the next. Is it ok to apply with these letters?

I have been out of school and not in the work force for the last 2.5 years while staying home with my son, so I have absolutely no one to get new letters of rec from.

So my dilemma is ~ should I apply with these letters or reach out to my recommenders for a new letter of rec with an updated year? I am almost positive they would remember me as i was very close with all of my professors and in a small college.

EDIT: In case it wasn't clear from my title, this is about personal statements.

In my personal statement right now, I'm trying to indicate that reading Supreme Court cases for an undergraduate law class grabbed me in a way that no other course material did. There is one particular case that jumped out at me, and I can write about it honestly without BSing. Reading this case was an especially important experience for me because it solidified law as a future for me when I was depressed and saw no direction in my life.

I see a few issues with this though:

It's pretty shallow. The impact from reading a case won't compare to the other candidates who undoubtedly have some experience in an actual law firm or other "legal position."

Georgetown advises, "... Stay away from legal concepts and jargon. You run the risk of misusing them, and even if you use them properly, legal language may make you appear pompous." I'm not sure if this applies to the arguments and reasoning found in the Court's opinion, but it feels better to play it safe. Also, is "commerce clause" a legal term?

It may indicate that I expect to deal with large, Constitutional issues in my legal career. And as that surreal short film about law school points out, "there are only three lawyers who deal with Constitutional issues. Each of them graduated in Harvard in the 1970s. Can you graduate from Harvard in the 1970s?" (Here's the film, by the way:

So what do y'all think? Is it a good or bad idea to write about a case that stuck out to me in an undergraduate class?

http://www.lawschoolpredictor.com/wp-content/uploads/Law-School-Predictor-Full-Time-Programs.htm

What are the chances JY and the gang @"Dillon A. Wright" can secure the rights to this nice little tool right here. Given that it hasn't been updated since 2013, I'm sure that the creators wouldn't mind if 7sage buys the rights and updates this and incorporates it into their site. Would be pretty badass if you ask me, and it's a shame to see something so sophisticated sitting off in the corner gathering dust like this, could be tremendously useful to most folks I would think.

Hi all,

I already all my transcripts in, including local community college courses I took for dual HS/college credit in high school. my main concern is--I don't really want admissions people to think I went to community college (because then it looks like it took me 6 years to graduate), but that's kind of what it looks like on my academic summary report (I think). Will they definitely know those were high school classes? I can't imagine it's worth writing in an addendum, but I do hope it's somehow clear.

Curious if anyone else has been in this same boat. Thank you!

Hiya!

Newbie 7sager (?) and first-time poster here. My question is regarding GPA addenda. The general advice, I see, is to write one to explain an upward or downward trend in one's GPA. What happens if one's GPA was all over the place? I was an Econ and Math major. I ended up hating Economics, and my grades in my Econ courses reflect that. I loved Math, and those courses, for the most past, saved my GPA (3.42). How do you recommend I go about explaining this in my addendum? Should I even bother with an addendum at all?

Hello all. Perhaps this was a question that was touched upon in the recent resume webinar, which I wasn't able to attend (it didn't begin until 1 am here in Iceland) BUT I thought maybe y'all could give me some guidance. I am wondering how/if it's appropriate or normal to include information about past research projects you've done on a resume (or somewhere else in the application process). While the work I did in undergrad was not law related at all, it was published in an undergraduate research journal. And I am currently working on an international law-related thesis-type paper for my grad program. I genuinely want to share with admissions committees what I've been working on because it's really interesting to me, not just because I'm looking for another way of padding my application. This is more true for my grad level writing than undergrad however. So I was just wondering if the best place to do this would be incorporating it into my personal statement? Or am I missing something?

I got credit from a local college in high school and it's been a hassle getting them to send the transcript and LSAC form (they don't do it electronically). They said they sent it on September 29th and I'm wondering how long it typically takes for LSAC to process transcripts during this time of year.

Hi everyone, have any of you subscribed to Law School Transparency Pro (LST Pro)? Is it worth $75?

https://www.lstreports.com/pro/

Hello, everyone. As you craft your personal statement, I'd like to recommend an incredibly helpful book. Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" is a classic, of course. But I think you'd be wise to supplement it with Clark's "Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer":

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Tools-Essential-Strategies-Writer-ebook/dp/B000SEIW9E/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=

It's clear, pragmatic, and filled with tiny pearls of writerly wisdom. In addition to its short but lucid explanations, it offers excerpts from various authors. These serve as exemplars to vividly illustrate each point. And at the end of each chapter, there are specific "workshop" action steps to help apply these tips to your own writing.

Of course, even a great book is no substitute for an excellent editor. So, definitely consider getting help from @"David.Busis" , as well. I gained a tremendous amount from his P.S. curriculum on 7sage and from the edits he gave my personal statement.

Currently, I am taking graduate level courses as a non-degree seeking student. Should I add this school to my list on the LSAC website? Also, should I include the school on my resume? I feel like it could help with my application, any advice is much appreciated!

Do you guys think that your resume speaks for itself or should your personal statement push some of the highlights of your resume?

I know that we're not supposed to just reiterate our resume in our personal statement, but I feel really nervous writing a PS entirely about something I'm passionate about i.e. surfing or linguistics, without making some sort of transition like this all has allowed me to develop xyz character traits which helped me excel academically/in my career.

I thought if I wrote about surfing or linguistics I can more generally talk about communication/language (it's really important in surfing) and transition into how developing communication/language skills has helped me achieve my goals at work or academically.

After writing it all out, I think it doesn't sound fluid and seems disjointed when half or 2/3 of my PS is nicely written waxing poetic about a passion and then the rest of it is more straightforward and trying to brag without bragging....and there isn't much room to really go into a specific anecdote about my job/academics and try to tie it back to whichever passion and also talk about specific work/school accomplishments. It seems like they're such drastically different topics and maybe I can't merge them together with this page limit.

Should I keep trying to more smoothly merge the two ideas together or just try to write about just one topic? or is it okay if it doesn't have the smoothest transition? Do most people's PS's ultimately end with "...and this is why I'm awesome and these are some of the good things I've done..."?

/anxiety/

idk if just coming from a philosophy/linguistics/literature background I'm over analyzing and stressing and trying too hard to make this sound like an A+ philosophy paper

sorry if this sounds frantic and all over the place

I wrote my personal statement, and I think I did a good job. However, I do not know if the content is what the admissions committee would like to see. Any advice? It would be great to be able to get feedback from people who actually served on an admissions committee.

Wash U in St. Louis accepts GRE!

https://abovethelaw.com/2017/10/move-over-lsat-another-law-school-accepts-the-gre/