· The beginning of a solid law school personal statement ought to be intriguing, experts say. "The statement should begin with a strong intro sentence, that summarizes the applicant's goal or Author: Ilana Kowarski The personal statement provides an opportunity for you to present yourself, your background, your ideas, and your qualifications to the Admissions Committee. Please limit your statement to two pages using a minimum of point font, 1-inch margins, and double spacing. We expect applicants to use the full two pages in crafting their statement · But, I also managed to write a personal statement that said something about who I was and why I wanted to go to law school, a statement that had nothing to do with my terrible intern experience. People think that law schools want to hear how much you know about the law or how you’re going to hang your own shingle, go into politics, or become General Counsel at a large blogger.comted Reading Time: 2 mins
How I Wrote a Personal Statement that Got Me Into Harvard Law School | Accepted
The essays below, which were all part of successful applications to Harvard Law, rely on humble reckonings followed by reflections. Others are personal: a student struggles to sprint up a hill; another struggles to speak clearly. The writers have different ideologies, different ambitions, and different levels of engagement with the law. Yet all of them come across as thoughtful, open to change, and ready to serve.
I stood over the dead loggerhead, blood crusting my surgical gloves and dark green streaks of bile from its punctured gallbladder drying on my khaki shorts.
The plastic had likely caused a blockage somewhere, and the sea turtle had died of malnutrition, harvard law school personal statement examples. When the necropsy was finished, harvard law school personal statement examples, we discarded the remains in a shallow hole under a thicket of trees, and with the last shovel of sand over its permanent resting place, its death became just another data point among myriad others. Would it make a difference in the long, arduous battle against environmental pollution?
Probably not. But that dead loggerhead was something of a personal tipping point for me. I have always loved the clean, carefully objective nature of scientific research, but when I returned to the US from my native XXXX to study biology, I began to understand that because of this objectivity, scientific data rarely produces an emotional effect. It is difficult to initiate change based on harvard law school personal statement examples a passive approach.
My ecology professor used to lament that it was not science that would determine the fate of the environment, but politics. The deeper I delved into research, the more I agreed with her. Almost every day, I came across pieces of published research that were incorrectly cited as evidence for exaggerated conclusions and used, for example, as a rebuttal against climate change.
Reality meant nothing when pitted against a provocative narrative. It was rather disillusioning at first, but I was never one to favor passivity. In an effort to better understand the issues, I began to look into the policy side of biological conservation. The opportunity at the MBL came at this juncture in my academic journey, and it was there that I received my final push to the path of law.
After weeks of sea turtle biology and policy debates at the MBL, we held a mock symposium on fishing and bycatch regulations. Participants were exclusively STEM majors, harvard law school personal statement examples, so before the debate even began, everyone in the room was already heavily in favor of reducing commercial fishing. I was assigned the role of the Chair of the New Bedford Division of Marine Fisheries, and my objective was clear: to represent the wishes of my constituents, harvard law school personal statement examples, and my constituents wanted more time out on the sea.
However, that meant an increase in accidental bycatch, which could hurt endangered marine populations and fill up the bycatch quota for commercial fishermen before the season ended. There were hundreds of pages of research data on novel technological innovations for bycatch reduction that I had to wade through, but with the help of my group, I was able to piece together a net replacement plan that just barely satisfied my constituents, the scientists, and the industry reps.
Although the issue of widespread net replacement incentives for the commercial fishermen remained, there was no doubt that I enjoyed the mental stimulus of tackling this hypothetical challenge. I was able to use my science background to aid in brokering a compromise that would reduce the amount of damage done to the environment without endangering the livelihood of the people involved in the industry.
By the end of the symposium, I knew that I wanted to bridge the gap between presenting scientific data correctly and effecting change in the policy world. Although there are many ways for me to advocate for change, I believe that only legal and legislative enforcements will have a widespread and lasting effect on the heavy polluters of the world. I want to combine my legal education and a solid foundation in the biological sciences to tackle the ever-growing slew of environmental challenges facing us in the twenty-first century.
The night the symposium ended, we patrolled the beach for nesting females. As I walked beneath the stars, I thought of that sea turtle and of the repeating migration of my own life, from my birthplace in XXXX to my childhood in the US, back to XXXX and now the US again. Standing on a beach in Woods Hole, thousands of miles from home, I knew that I was on the right path and ready to embark on a career in law.
On the morning of the presidential election, my sixth-grade teacher told me to watch out for John Kerry voters in the hallways because our school was a polling station. I nodded and went to the water fountain, thinking to myself that my parents were voting for John Kerry, and that as far as I could tell, they posed no risk to students.
It was a familiar juxtaposition—the ideas at my dinner table in conflict with the dogmas I encountered elsewhere in my conservative Missourian community. This dissonance fostered my curiosity about issues of policy and politics. Even at age twelve, I was moved by his ideas and motivated to work in public service. When Obama ran for president four years later, I heeded his call to get involved. I gave money I had made mowing lawns to my parents to donate to his campaign and taped Obama-Biden yard signs to my old Corolla, which earned it an egging and a run-in with silly string in my high school parking lot.
I was amazed by the disaster and shaken by the toll it took on my community. Intent on understanding what had happened, I started reading up, inhaling books about financial crises and articles on mortgage-backed securities and rating agencies. Along the way, I also developed an affinity for the policymakers fighting the crisis. I admired how time and again these unknown bureaucrats struggled to choose the best among bad options, harvard law school personal statement examples, served as Congressional piñatas on Capitol Hill, and went back across the street to face the next disaster, harvard law school personal statement examples.
I decided that I too wanted to work in financial regulation. I thought then and believe today that if I can help protect consumers and mitigate the downturns that force people from their jobs and homes, I will have done something worthwhile. Strange though it may seem, this decision led me to join Barclays as an investment banking analyst after college. I was initially worried that I would discover financial rules and regulations to be impotent platitudes, without harvard law school personal statement examples power to change the financial system, but my experience taught me the opposite.
New regulations catalyzed many of the transactions on which I worked, from bank capital raises to divestitures aimed at de-risking. Ironically, becoming a banker made me even more of an idealist about the power of policy. I envisioned spending years in the industry before moving to a government role, and I left banking for private equity investing with that track in mind. When I began making get-out-the-vote calls on behalf of the Clinton presidential campaign, however, I realized that I needed to change my plans.
I cared more about contacting voters, about the result of harvard law school personal statement examples election, and about its policy implications than anything I did at work. I want to help shape the policies that will make the financial system more resilient and equitable, and to do so effectively, I need to understand the foundation upon which the financial system is built: the law. The post-crisis regulatory landscape is already in need of recalibration; large banks still pose systemic risks, and regulation lags even further behind in the non-bank world.
Advances in financial technology, from online lending platforms to blockchain technology, are raising new questions about everything from capital and liquidity to smart contracts and financial privacy. Policymakers need to confront these issues proactively and pursue legal and regulatory frameworks that foster public trust while encouraging innovation. will give me the training I need to be involved in this process, harvard law school personal statement examples.
Growing up, I felt that I existed in two different worlds. At home, I was influenced by my large, conservative Arizonan family, who shaped my values and understanding of the world. During middle school, my family moved, and I enrolled in a small, left-leaning school with an intense focus on globalism and diversity.
I enjoyed being surrounded by people who challenged my beliefs, and I prided myself on my ability to dwell comfortably in both spaces. InAmerican political reality disrupted the happy balance between my two worlds. I harvard law school personal statement examples this populist wave for hijacking the party, and the voters who created it. Despite my skepticism, I decided to make an attempt. As the founder of the Bowdoin College Political Union, harvard law school personal statement examples, a program that promotes substantive, inclusive conversations about policy and politics among students, I brought speakers with diverse ideologies to campus and hosted small group discussions with members of the College Democrats, the College Republicans, and students somewhere in between.
In the winter of my senior year, I helped organize a summit that brought together students with a broad spectrum of views from dozens of universities throughout the eastern United States. As a resident assistant during the presidential election, I held open-door discussions for individuals from across the political spectrum and around the globe.
Facilitating these discussions felt like harvard law school personal statement examples natural extension of my role on campus, and I learned not only that having space for open dialogue can ease tensions, but also that the absence of that space does not erase political difference.
Instead, it creates feelings of isolation and fosters ignorance. But it was the death of a family member in early that helped me understand another perspective, namely the populist views beginning to overwhelm the Republican Party.
I harvard law school personal statement examples surprised to learn that none of them had finished high school. While I had been worrying about which summer internships to apply for, they were worried about maintaining their family home. I realized over the course of our conversation harvard law school personal statement examples I had no idea what it was like to not have a high school degree and compete for employment in a rural area where wages are low.
For the first time, I was engaging with people in the demographic that was generating the populist wave that was sweeping the country. This conversation led me to harvard law school personal statement examples my studies in politics and to think beyond the left-right spectrum to consider class and urban-rural divides within my own party. Ultimately, reconnecting with my extended family informed my decision to write my senior thesis on populist movements and why economics drives them.
It also changed the way I thought about politics and its effect on people like my second cousins. XYZ gave me the opportunity to work with people from different parts of the Republican Party: both establishment operatives and grassroots operations.
This enabled me to work within the framework of Republican politics that resembles my own, while being exposed to the perspectives of people working to represent people like my second cousins.
My time at XYZ helped me see the power of the populist movement, but also understand the limitations of its proposed solutions, like a resurgence of manufacturing.
Now that I have interacted with populist groups, I see that ultimately, the valid frustrations of many working-class Americans need to be addressed by empathetic leadership and challenging but necessary evaluations of policy in the areas of economics, education, and culture. I want to apply my passion for political discourse in law school and in my career as a lawyer.
My passion for engaging with others will serve me well in the classroom and in a career at the intersection of law and politics. I hope to continue to make connections between people of diverse backgrounds and viewpoints and to engage in meaningful, bipartisan discourse. One summer, when I was eight years old, I signed up to play Pop Warner Football for my hometown. After the calisthenics, scrimmages, and the rest of practice concluded in the midst of the sweltering early August sun, I would sprint thirty yards up a hill steep enough to go sledding down.
I harvard law school personal statement examples to lose nine pounds in order to make weight for my junior pee-wee football team. A dirt path marked the grassy knoll from my countless trips up and down. I usually managed to hold back the tears just long enough until I got home. As an eight-year-old, harvard law school personal statement examples, this was the most difficult challenge I had ever been tasked with, harvard law school personal statement examples.
But the next day, I would get down in a three-point stance and sprint up the hill under the red sky of the setting sun. When I finally made the team, I was elated; I had achieved a goal I often felt impossible in those moments of sweat and tears. The excitement was, nonetheless, short-lived. In every game of the season, my first playing football, I received my eight minimum plays and rode the bench the rest of the game.
It was an unusually wet September, and I caught a cold a few times from standing there for two and a half hours in the nippy morning rain. I hated harvard law school personal statement examples, but I kept playing. I continued to play every fall through high school, harvard law school personal statement examples. My freshman year, during a varsity practice, I broke both the radius and ulna bones in my left arm and simultaneously dislocated my wrist, which required a plate and four screws to repair.
Why did I play football for eleven years?
7 Law School Personal Statement Distinctions
, time: 7:51Real Talk: The Personal Statement | Harvard Law School
· Law School Personal Statement Example: #1. When I was a child, my neighbors, who had arrived in America from Nepal, often seemed stressed. They argued a lot, struggled for money, and seemed to work all hours of the day. One day, I woke early Estimated Reading Time: 9 mins · But, I also managed to write a personal statement that said something about who I was and why I wanted to go to law school, a statement that had nothing to do with my terrible intern experience. People think that law schools want to hear how much you know about the law or how you’re going to hang your own shingle, go into politics, or become General Counsel at a large blogger.comted Reading Time: 2 mins · The beginning of a solid law school personal statement ought to be intriguing, experts say. "The statement should begin with a strong intro sentence, that summarizes the applicant's goal or Author: Ilana Kowarski
No comments:
Post a Comment