I am interested!

I'm in North Jersey, but I could meet the group in NYC if you meet on a weekend. I'm not able to study full time b/c I work full time. I try to study for about 20 hours a week.

For my personal statement I plan to write about my experience as a first year teacher in a low-income middle school in Durham. I am thinking about focusing on how I when I started teaching I came in with an idealistic and unrealistic perspective about the amount of change I could affect in the students lives to eventually a more realistic yet still hopeful perspective. I also want to include how I realized that what makes teaching so hard in urban and low-income schools is the structural things that affect a student's performance in school that a teacher has no to little power to change. Ultimately, this experience has motived me to pursue a career in law for social justice reasons. I am especially interested in government/public interest work. Do you think this is a good idea?

What structure do you suggest for the diversity statement?

Are there advantages to submitting applications early in the cycle, like in September?

How can I make my application stand out to admission officers?

What are the most important components of the application? And why?

Some schools have students do video interviews, do you have any tips for those?

Count me in!