Wanted: Advice for my personal statement strategy

iamcardibri

Hey 7sagers,

As a collection of insightful and helpful people, I thought I would ask for some general advice on my personal and diversity statements as well as my low GPA addendum. Fair warning: this will probably end up being a lengthy post so I apologize in advance and appreciate anyone who takes the time to read it and offer their opinion! First, here's a little background information..

One of the biggest challenges I have overcome was becoming a foster parent to my husbands five younger siblings during my freshman year of college. We continued to care for four of them during our sophomore year and we eventually adopted two of them who remain in our care today. This wreaked havoc on my third and fourth semesters of college but I eventually went on to graduate last year with a marketing degree and an LSAC GPA of 3.26. I like to think this is a pretty good excuse for the 2 or 3 classes that I failed early in my college career since I was a tad bit preoccupied raising 5 kids. Thus, I intend to write about this in an addendum.

Despite this very personal experience adversely affecting my GPA, it has added tremendously to my life and my husband and I have received several awards for our efforts, two at a national level. Most importantly, I believe overcoming this adversity, more than any of my professional experiences, has and will continue to translate to other areas of my life, including law school. NOW, my question is.. would it be foolish to "double dip" this topic? If I talk about it in my GPA addendum would it be considered taboo to talk about it again in my personal statement?

As for my diversity statement, I was going to talk about my upbringing on a volcanic rock in the middle of the Pacific (yes, Hawaii) and my 13 years at a very culturally immersed school for Native Hawaiian children.

Would it be too much to focus on themes of foster parenting and trying to play "URM" card throughout my application? I don't want to come off as a "woe is me" type person. I also don't want to give the impression that I'm milking my personal adversity to compensate for a lack in my academic and professional endeavors. I just truly feel that these things have influenced me in the greatest way and that I can write about them with an authentic voice. Should I sacrifice those things for the sake of highlighting my professional experiences? Which is more important for the purpose of admissions to law school?

What are your opinions? Be as brutal as an admissions officer. I know there isn't a cut and dry answer to this kind of stuff... but admission to my reach schools (and thus, the rest of my life) is pretty much depending on slam dunk personal statements so I figured getting constructive criticism from a wide range of people would be most helpful for making a decision on my strategy.

Thanks so much for your insight and best of luck in your law school journey.

LSATStudent780

Warning- I am about to just go on a rant here so please excuse any grammar mistakes that I make..also it is very late (haha).

Honestly, I feel that I would definitely highlight the fact that you got acknowledged with two awards. Try to mention that you were fully involved in your family/ community, your volunteer stuff, professional stuff, and then mention that is why your grades were not the best at a certain time. But as time went on and you learned certain skills, organization time management etc...then you were able to improve your GPA.

Do the diversity statement. At least in my head, if you are able to try to mention something...then WHY NOT? Show how you can contribute something that others may not be able to. Make yourself UNIQUE!

I feel like use all your factors. Especially the foster care aspect and include all you have learned from it and how it will help in future...and more! Then, tie it together by mentioning that heyyyyy while doing all this...I ALSO worked professionally and did this this and that. So it just shows that hey yeah, maybe the GPA isn't all the way up there, but you were doing lots of things and learning!

Again, I am so sorry for the messy rant and I promise to write better tomorrow if we continue this conversation (haha)

Seeking Perfection

I think the best thing to do probably depends on hoe you are planning to use your personal statement.

If you can find a way to mention how the experience of raising and adopting children impacted your career trajectory and decision to be a lawyer, then I think it could make a great addition to your personal statement. If you do it right, you could mention how much work it was to adopt children at such a young age and how it created strain in your academic life which made you feel more sympathetic for others. If you did that, I think you could probably just skip the GPA addendum or recap very briefly in it. Addendums are supposed to be brief and to the point anyway. Something like "As mentioned in my personal statement, my husband and I cared for and later adopted some of my husbands youger siblings during my freshman and sophmore years of college. While I don't regret the decision, it took a while for me to acclimatize to these additional obligations which resulted in me receiving lower grades from blank semeater to blank semester. I believe that my later grades from blank on are more represntative of my ability." That might actually be too long.

Then you could write the diversity statement as planned.

I guess I think you should do it this way rather than just mentioning it in the addendum because I don't think the adoption is really adversity foisted upon you. It's something you chose and probably would choose again. That is a potentially great story especially if you can connect it to why you want to be in law, but the addendum isn't a place for telling a great story.

You submit a resume so you don't need to worry about capturing all your professional experience in your personal statement. Usually you just want to get at the essence of what drives you to want to be a lawyer.

studyingandrestudying

Maybe talk about what you learned from being a foster parent and ways it ties into your interest in law--I'm agreeing with @"Seeking Perfection". Maybe consider questions like: What does foster parenting teach a person about their family relationships? What did you learn about yourself? By the way, this is a pretty good GPA for quite a few schools.

iamcardibri

@LSATStudent780 LOL thanks for the late night response! I'm at least 3 hours behind the rest of the US so I didn't expect anyone to respond til morning anyways! That's a great idea.. I'll definitely make note of how my later grades are more representative of my academic capabilities. I really have learned so much in this process and I do plan to highlight the awards.. It's sort of a random item on my resume so I feel like it deserves a more thorough explanation than my professional experiences.

iamcardibri

Solid advice guys. I spent a lot of time in and out of juvenile and family court as our family navigated the child welfare system. We also went through a really nasty criminal trial for my husbands parents who got their family into this mess in the first place... that's a story for another time lol. Having worked closely with lawyers, judges, etc. has in fact been a big driving factor in my decision to go to law school. It has in turn influenced my decision to become a volunteer with the National CASA (court appointed special advocate) program where I have the opportunity to advocate in court for foster youth. I think adding this to my personal statement about foster parenting will tie it all together.

@"Seeking Perfection" You're totally right in that I could skip the addendum altogether and I think I'll go with that strategy. Or at least , keep it a simple paragraph that reiterates why my grades suffered during my first two years rather than thinking of it as a creative piece.

@lsatplaylist crossing my fingers that this 3.26 will carry me to some top 50 schools on the west coast. I've heard stories about the outliers that sneak into T14s with a 3.2ish but I'm not getting my hopes up lol

Lsatkayy

This is a great post. I too have questions similar to @iamcardibri I finished my degree thinking I would be done there (social science) and a year later I started becoming interested in law. I wasn’t prepared, no direction and my cumulative GPA was low. The last two years of my undergrad I had increased responsibility at home which made me take uni more seriously resulting in an all a’s In my last two years. I mentored and did homework help for refugees (still so that). I applied for this fall and did not get in and I need a new angle with my statement to be considered next fall. Any advice would be great. The advice in this thread have been wonderful

iamcardibri

Hey @Lsatkayy thanks for hopping in the convo After receiving some great advice from the people above I also watched a few of the videos on the 7sage admissions site. I don't know WHY I didn't take advantage of this incredible resource earlier. So if you haven't checked out the videos there, I think they may be a helpful place to start!