Personal Statement Examples - Sample Law School Personal Statements

It requires a lot of effort and thought to write a personal statement that effectively captures your greatest qualities and stands out to admissions committees. While we have an entire article on writing personal statements, one of the best ways to assist and inspire your writing is reading and learning from several personal statement samples. Although writing personal statements requires that you reflect upon what is unique and exemplary about your background, the following personal statement samples will provide insight into how other applicants have successfully crafted their statement. Below several of the free personal statement examples I have included sections on why these personal statement samples are strong and also how they could have been improved upon. More personal statement samples can be found at www.essayedge.com.

 

Sample Personal Statement # 1 (accepted to many top law schools including the U. of Michigan)

 

Senior Design is the yearlong capstone course and college-wide competition that engineering students learn about on their first day and do not stop thinking about until their last. It forces them to draw from all they have learned. It is a test of perseverance, creativity, and technical knowledge. It was also, rather unexpectedly, the catalyst in my decision to study law.

 

The philosophy of the Senior Design course was to foster a spirit of entrepreneurship. To that extent, we had to conceptualize, design, build, and test our project considering real-world constraints such as time, cost, and technical feasibility. Finally, we had to “sell” it to a panel of industry judges during a poster presentation.

 

My team agreed to implement an idea I had for years but didn’t have the know-how or resources to build. We designed a point-of-sale (POS) system for restaurants where customers could place their own orders and pay directly from their tables. It consisted of a graphical touch-screen display unit at the table, pager units for wait staff, and a kitchen unit where all orders would be displayed and managed. All communication was wireless, using state-of-the-art Bluetooth technology. We dubbed it TruePOS.

 

The professor feared our project was too ambitious. Even now, it is difficult to say if this was true. My team meshed together well, but like any fabric, there were bound to be rips. We were almost torn to shreds the last few weeks: sleepless nights, arguments piling up, parts not working, and families tested to the limits of their patience. But our sacrifice paid off. Among 21 teams from civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering, as a whole considered to be the best group in the history of the competition, we won grand prize. At the awards banquet, almost every professor, student, and industry invitee told us that we should get a patent as soon as possible.

 

As we stood on the stage accepting our award, I could tell we were feeling many of the same emotions: elation, relief, and gratitude. As I looked at my teammates, with their earnest, eye-scrunching smiles, I came to a realization. I was not the same person I was a year ago. It was as if Senior Design was a glowing, red-hot crucible, and I was a placed inside, melted down, and tempered in a new mold. My basic substance was the same, but I had taken a different shape. I had grown complacent, but I now felt a renewed fervor. Although I hadn’t given it much consideration earlier, I knew the next step in my life: we would get that patent.

 

My teammates and I met with the Director of the Office of Technology Transfer, Ken Sherman, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Ken explained the basic patent process including the concept of prior art and asked us to do a patent search on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website. As I conducted this search, I realized that, to my own shock, I enjoyed it. I found myself wondering what it would be like to sit down with the engineers and scientists behind many patents, hashing out the technical details and helping them draft the document that would secure their intellectual property. Most inventors lack the necessary skills to protect themselves. I would be good at helping them, I thought.

 

My interest in patent law, and now the law in general, has only continued to grow. I have been devouring information on law school, and I cannot wait for the challenge. I believe that Columbia Law School presents the best opportunity for my legal education and is undoubtedly my first choice. I have contacted several students and alumni who attest to the challenging, yet rewarding experience Columbia provides. Many of my friends and most of my family live in New York, many just minutes away via train. I have always relied on a strong support network, and Columbia would allow me to not only continue this habit, but also strengthen it. My plan is to practice law in New York; Columbia’s placement history would help me realize this goal.

 

My decision to study law came from an unlikely source. My strong academic record and background as an electrical engineer provide a pragmatic foundation for my success in law school. I feel prepared to study law at Columbia University, and I feel that I can offer Columbia something in return. I look forward to beginning my legal career at Columbia.

 

 

What’s Strong:

 

This essay has all the best elements of an exceptional law school essay. It has enthusiasm, building excitement, and triumph. The applicant gives the reader an aha! moment, when he announces his idea for the Senior Design competition. It is a great idea, in our age where a lot of people do not like interacting with random strangers such as a server. It saves money for restaurants, and could even eventually offer services such as the news or sportscasts. This candidate has achieved greatness, and he offers great promise to achieve it again through creativity, technical knowledge, and drive that makes him willingly stay up all night to accomplish his goals. He has a reason for wanting to go to law school: to learn about patent law, because he is sitting on a patent that could potentially make him millions of dollars. This applicant has worked with a team, and more than that, he is naturally both the leader and the glue for the teams he organizes. He gets passionate about what he is working on. He is motivated, ambitious and clever. He has substantial intellectual and analytical abilities. This statement is a pleasure to read. It uses the description of one key event to showcase the applicant’s array of talents.

 

What’s Wrong (Not Much):

 

The last two paragraphs are not as strong as the previous paragraphs. He needs to create as much desire as he can in the Columbia admissions committee to want him as part of their class. If possible and/or plausible, he should compare the Senior Design competition at his university to one at MIT, or some other well-known university, so the committee has a clear frame of reference for his great achievement. The committee would like to think they are getting one of the best and brightest engineers in the country. When describing the design process, the applicant might want to say which parts he was responsible for creating. He also might be able to look up how many patent applications are pending or came out of this program, and use that number to his advantage.

 

 

(Note that this personal statement was for U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, which allows up to 4 pages. Most law schools only accept 2 page statements, but this one is well tailored to Boalt, to which the applicant was admitted.)

 

Seven Impossible Things

 

Spending much of my childhood in casinos has certainly been a formative experience. For one, I didn’t know the entire arcade floor of Circus Circus, known as the Midway, closes at midnight on weekends. For another, it is illegal for a ten-year-old child to be walking through the casino gambling area with his eight-year-old sister in tow. Fortunately, the casino employees were very helpful once I explained to them that I was looking for my father. It was not very surprising then, years later in my freshmen year at college, my parents divorced, and I was told the family was bankrupted, mired in gambling debt. After all, the time I spent in casinos has taught me more than the operating hours of Circus Circus or the Nevada state laws. It has prepared me for the details of my father’s gambling and, oddly enough, it has prepared me for law school as well.

 

Most Saturdays, my father would leave my sister in my care at the Midway with twenty dollars each for the arcade. Although the money was for entertainment, in a family where the financial tension is palpable, money becomes sacrosanct and the desire to save is very strong. On one hand, there was the guilt of spending. On the other hand, however, I was usually left at the arcades for eight hours or more. I may have been the only child to methodically apply a risk-return analysis to every arcade game at Circus Circus. My solution was to excel in skill-based games because those games awarded good players with continuous play. A game that allows players to compete against each other with the winner continuing indefinitely was perfect for my budget. As it turns out, this is very conducive to cooperative learning. The arcade is a very friendly atmosphere and opponents are always helping and teaching each other. It is ironic that my father unwittingly fostered a love of collaborative learning by leaving his children by themselves.

 

My preference for collaborative learning is largely the result of my time at the casino - I have constantly sought to understand myself in an effort to avoid the same mistakes as my father. I avoid drinking, smoking and gambling because I may be predisposed to addictive behavior. According to Black, the oldest child in an addictive family is labeled the family hero and behaves as “the little adult.” The child is responsible and typically very intelligent, the mediator, the perfectionist and the caretaker. It was painful to realize that a complete stranger could describe aspects of my personality so accurately with a turn of a phrase, but I have learned to leverage and appreciate the traits that arose from my unique experiences. I have been the family negotiator, translator and mediator since I was ten. My parents did not speak English so I was the de-facto conduit between my family and the Western world. I was also the caretaker. I watched over my sister whether we were at the casino or at home, and since I graduated, I visit my mother every week and give part of my salary to her every month. Caring for my family has nurtured a desire to serve in a boarder context.

 

I have always held a fascination with the implications of technology on our laws and conversely our laws on technology. Today, the law is seen as a barrier to technology and innovation. More often, instead of “the law and technology,” the attitude in the media and the forums of technical communities has been “the law against technology.” The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is almost universally hated in the technology world. Understandably, incidents such as when the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) censored Princeton Professor Edward Felten under the DMCA contribute to the outcry of academics and technologists. These incidents and controversial patents such as Amazon’s 1-Click patent have raised many concerns. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has declared itself under siege, unable to stem the workload crisis. Critics argue the current system is stifling innovation with too many vested interests to affect real change. Undoubtedly, the rabbit hole goes quite deep. As a technologist, I may only be able to sympathize with the plight of Professor Felton, but as lawyer I will be able to understand our legal system and participate in the reform.

 

I am inspired by the humor and energy that exudes from Boalt’s faculty, from Dean Berring’s quip on how he may hold a record as one of the few students to transfer out of Harvard Law School to Robert P. Mergers’ jab at the government when he wrote, “My proposals are directed primarily at the PTO, the courts, and Congress. Because there is very little chance that any of these entities will act on them, I can be bold.” The humor and energy is also evident in Boalt’s balance between strong education and relaxed quality of life. Dean Berring’s remark on how he throws out his notes each year to ensure that he thinks about the issues afresh with the students and to explore them as a group, is a testimonial to this balance. Furthermore, I am passionate about the public interest and constitutional implications of emerging technologies, such as the explosive growth of Internet gambling. The Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and the student group at boalt.org are ideal institutions to explore the ethical advancement of technology. These institutions will also allow me to help others explore their passions and work toward the school’s success - ultimately, it is a symbiotic relationship, and I can only take as much as I’m willing to give.

 

According to Freakonomics the following three factors correlate with higher test scores: the parents are highly educated, the parents speak English in the home and the parents are involved in the Parent Teacher Association (PTA). My parents did not finish high school nor did they speak English in the home. My parents did not participate in their children’s lives, much less in the PTA. But it is because of these factors, and not in spite of them, that I was valedictorian of my high school, graduated from college in the top eight percent of my class while working twenty hours a week, and improved my LSAT from the 48th percentile to the 95th percentile with three months of preparation. In his essay on business concepts and patent system reform, Robert P. Merges references the White Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There:

"Now I’ll give you something to believe[" the White Queen remarked.] "I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day."

"I can’t believe that!" said Alice.

"Can’t you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again, draw a long breath and shut your eyes."

Alice laughed. "There’s no use trying," she said, "one can’t believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven’t had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

 

The Midway was my prelude to Boalt’s collaborative atmosphere. It may seem impossible to believe that Circus Circus is a breeding ground for Boalt Law students, but perhaps if I was admitted, the White Queen will make time for seven impossible things before breakfast.

 

 

What’s Strong:

 

This applicant chooses to structure his personal statement as a combination of a personal narrative of overcoming odds and a meaningful quote. There is also a light undercurrent of problem-solution analysis, which could be made more palpable. This is a great structure, but the three elements need to be melded together into one organic whole. The main topic is how the applicant made the best of growing up in the Las Vegas casino Circus Circus—potentially a wonderfully unique topic. It is excellent that this applicant researched UC Berkeley Boalt School of Law and gives specific reasons for why he has chosen Boalt. This statement has a strong conclusion in which the applicant discovers the theme of his essay, which he has been setting up all along the way: In the final sentence, the audience learns the full meaning of the title, which is about daring to achieve seemingly impossible goals, including getting into a top law school. The conclusion pulls together all aspects of the essay and ends with a rhetorical flourish that leaves the reader smiling with comprehension at the clever rhetoric.

 

What’s Wrong:

 

All the elements of a good personal statement are here, but they need to be supported by more academic accomplishments, and the rhetorical links between the elements need to be strengthened. Nearly half of the personal statement presents the memories of a ten-year-old, and the central quote comes from a children’s book. These aspects raise a red warning flag for the admissions committee, who might wonder if the applicant has made the transition to mature adulthood, or if he has had trouble moving beyond the abandonment he experienced in the casino as a child. So, the applicant must clear away the doubt in the reader’s mind, and to do this, he can cut back on the amount of space given to descriptions of the casino and use more evidence from his adult life in college and beyond to demonstrate that he has all the mature qualities law schools value.

 

The story the applicant tells is, at its heart, a sad one. That sadness is best balanced by humorous and witty rhetoric, so that the audience experiences both joyful playfulness and poignancy. The applicant’s choice to compare himself to the White Queen in Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass employs mythos because everyone knows the basic story of Alice in Wonderland. The White Queen sees possibilities where everyone else sees impossibilities. She is both ridiculous and wise in Through the Looking Glass. The applicant quotes one of her wiser comments to Alice just before the White Queen turns into a sheep: “Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” For the White Queen’s powerful quote to link the beginning, middle, and end of the essay, the White Queen’s quote needs to be connected to Las Vegas somehow. One way to do this would be simply to use the word “impossible” in the introduction, since that is the keyword in the essay. For example, the writer could describe Las Vegas as, in some sense, an impossible city, a city of larger-than-life illusion and enthralling spectacle, where many gamblers want to believe they will beat impossible odds.

 

Now if the White Queen took her belief in the impossible to Las Vegas, she would probably bankrupt herself before breakfast. The author, on the contrary, would not, because he knows the difference between the impossible that is worth fighting for, and the impossible that is not. To make this more evident, the applicant should structure his essay around six impossibly difficult circumstances he has overcome in his life; for example, these could be neglect, gambling debt, a language barrier, no educational precedents, and two other circumstances he overcame in college, such as uniting a diverse group of people for a common academic goal, or solving a difficult technology problem by using analytical skills and thinking outside the box. Each of these problems should be given a paragraph, with specific evidence showing that each was solved, and with each solution came the development of valuable qualities, including intellectual ability, analytic ability, imagination, motivation, maturity, organization, teamwork, leadership, self-confidence, and oral and written communication skills. The seventh impossible thing he currently believes will come to pass is, of course, that he will be admitted to UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law.

 

As the personal statement stands now, the applicant seems to be a loner. Law school admissions committees would like to see more evidence that he can both work with a team and delegate. He explains that he developed collaborative learning skills from being abandoned in the arcade, but he needs to give a specific example of how he has used his skills in collaborative learning as an adult.

 

The fourth paragraph is not integrated into the personal statement, and it is not personal. It should be integrated into the paragraph on some “impossible” aspect of technology the applicant has overcome. The applicant needs to explain what relationship he has had with patent law as a technologist, and what makes him desire to reform the laws. It’s great, however, that he described the quagmire of “law against technology” as “the rabbit hole,” because this choice of words continues to pave the way for the White Queen. This would be a good paragraph to expand on future goals. For example, does the applicant see himself as a patent lawyer?

 

Finally, instead of footnotes (originally included) in a personal statement, one should just mention the name of the author and the title in the main body of the text. The personal statement genre is more like a cover letter than an academic essay, so footnotes are out of place.

 

 

 

 
People of faith are often told to “be in the world, but not of the world.” Unfortunately, no one ever specifies which world. For me, there have always been two. The Mormon world and the world outside seem ever in conflict, and I’ve lived caught between them. My fight to inhabit both worlds without being defined by either has made me who I am today and set me on the path to law school.

My struggle with the Mormon world began on my first Friday in kindergarten with five words from a particularly reverent six-year-old named Matt Hansen. My dad was finally taking me to the zoo’s new shark exhibit that weekend, and I just couldn’t hold in the news. “I’m going to the see the sharks,” I practically shouted as my class gathered in a circle for large group. My teacher asked when I’d be going, and I enthusiastically replied, “The day after tomorrow!” Enter Matt Hansen, sitting cross-legged at the opposite end of a circle that included nearly every acquaintance I’d made in my short life. As a now familiar look of dismay played slowly across his face, he offered his five-word condemnation: “But Daniel, that’s a Sunday.”

So began my alienation from and struggle with the Mormon world. I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in name but not necessarily in spirit. My mother raised me in the church, while my agnostic but supportive father encouraged me to form my own beliefs. My beliefs did not prohibit me from visiting the zoo with him on the Sabbath, while my classmates’ fathers--both heavenly and earthly--forbade it.

My actions clashed with those of more devout Utahans many more times in my childhood. Sometimes these clashes were humorous, as when I found myself defending Darwin’s theory of evolution against widespread ridicule from a lunch table full of high school classmates who subscribed only to the six-day theory. More often, they were tragic.

The most harrowing experience I’ve ever endured was explaining to my ecclesiastical leader who was also my Grandfather that I would not be serving a mission for his church (as all 19 year-old Mormon males are expected to do), but would instead be continuing my education at the University of Virginia. After years of struggling against a culture that desperately wanted me to share its beliefs, I had finally decided to take my father’s advice and seek out my own. Knowing I couldn’t do this in Bountiful (yes, it’s really called “Bountiful”) under constant pressure to fully convert, I disappointed my friends, my congregation, my grandfather/bishop, and half of my family by forgoing a mission and leaving Utah in search of what we used to call the “real” world.

I came face to face with that world on my first Friday of college as I watched my particularly irreverent roommate named Richard Gavin Knowles III pour three beers down his throat through a funnel. An impressive feat, to be sure, but not one I hoped to emulate. I had left Utah in search of a place where one’s faith need not define him and where differences are embraced. As I became ever more immersed in college’s culture of celebrated cretinism, I realized that such places don’t really exist.

I was as much at odds with the “real world” as I had been with the Mormon world. I didn’t drink or smoke, I thought it was a good idea to stave off sex until marriage, and my idea of a “party” was viewing all three Back to the Future movies in a row while a rousing game of Scrabble raged on in another room. Though the University preached a message of understanding and acceptance, my personal mores were as much under fire there as my doctrinal edicts had been in Bountiful. Making the difficult daily decisions to forgo alcohol and resist the hook-up culture, I once again found myself estranged from the world I inhabited.

This Friday, as I sit in my Charlottesville law office, overlooking the colonial outpost’s historic downtown, I realize that it’s only thanks to my struggles against those two worlds that I am now able to live in my own. The obviousness of my differing values forced me to maintain them without apology. Others eventually came to respect that, and, while I never truly felt a part of either culture, I learned to thrive in both. I graduated Bountiful High School as a popular student body vice president with good friends who had stopped trying to convert me. I finished college (after just three years of identity crises!) with good grades, a strong sense of self, and a core group of friends who understand and respect my beliefs. Though difficult at times, my perpetual isolation from a cultural identity forced me to form my own and taught me to stay true to it.

It also made me fall in love with law for the most visceral of reasons. In law, my problems do not exist. There are no Mormons and no agnostics in law. There is no culture and no doctrine. Law concerns itself only with blind justice and the maintenance of a fair system. As someone who had always been defined by his faith or lack thereof, I’ve longed to work in a field where it is not an issue. More importantly, my social alienation has taught me what it’s like to be the one against many. I know how it feels to defend a harmless zoo trip to a room full of hostile kindergartners, to espouse Darwin against fundamentalist teenagers, and to be the only guy holding a root beer at a frat party. I know what it’s like to stand alone against an unfriendly system, and I find it truly inspiring that Americans are never forced to do so. Instead, the accused faces the system with an advocate legally bound to be as infinitely trustworthy as he is loyal. I can think of nothing nobler or for which my life has better prepared me than to spend my career as that advocate, against whatever world my client and I face next.

 

(Accepted at Cornell, Georgetown, UCLA and several others)

 

Home for me is a small, sturdy town in West River South Dakota—whose conflation with the comparatively gentrified farmland east of the Missouri River is to be made at the risk of rough correction by residents of both banks. My mother, however, draws her roots from Omaha, Nebraska, a city that earned its mark on my personal map as the site of my school holidays. Although separated by a length of exactly six hours seated in the right-hand backseat of the family car, it is in the overlap of these two places that I have found two of my most important resources, curiosity and determination, with which I confront both obstacles and opportunities.

When in Omaha, I would often explore the childhood bedrooms of my mother’s eight siblings. These old rooms with their shelves and closets filled by books became for me miniature, delightfully idiosyncratic libraries. Tucked away from the cheerful din of the waves of kith and kin washing through my grandmother’s doorway, I pilfered these goldmines and in doing so discovered the vista of my mind’s eye—a landscape that would powerfully influence my intellectual world to come. Through the course of countless Thanksgivings and winter breaks, I gobbled down stretches of Nancy Drew adventures (every mystery solved by that titian-haired sleuth before 1979). Eventually I passed from Nancy Drew to de Quincy and Dickens

I brought my fascination with literature home to ***, where people are most seriously interested in reclaiming that 1996 state football championship and by whether it would rain enough for the sunflowers to get ahead of the weeds. Although I never did manage a tight grasp on football’s finer points, the capacity for persistence that I gained while growing up in *** became the foundation on which I later laid my academic pursuits. The bulk of my academic personality may be defined by “try”—the word people in rodeo stands use when they refer to the rider who is jumping over the arena fence, trampled hat in hand, after a particularly valiant if unsuccessful ride. The word is, of course, just another way (ungrammatical at that) to refer to passion and hardihood. Still, the noun form of “try” has been in my lexicon since childhood, and it is thanks to the special circumstances of my modern-day rural upbringing in the Midwest that I developed my sense of steady perseverance. The many ranching and farming friends and family who confront daily both natural obstacles and, increasingly, upheavals in the very structure of the agricultural way of life have shown me the worth in working, and in working hard.

Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, another signal six-hour drive brought me to Nebraska’s small capital city, where I enrolled in the state’s flagship university. A short distance from the scene of my childhood holidays, I now had at hand the resources of the region’s largest educational institution. One history professor in particular influenced my academic perspective. With predictable regularity each morning, he would arrive thirty seconds late to class, park a bicycle in the corner of the room, and, still lightly perspiring at the temples, launch into his lecture. The professor assigned his students no textbooks but rather first-hand accounts and contemporary interpretations. Later, he encouraged me to delve further into the nexus between literature and society. Through the succeeding years my conception of literature transformed from escapism to vital experience as I became acquainted with thinkers like Homi Bhabha and Walter Benjamin. Rather than slavishly follow titian-haired sleuths across multiple authors and decades, I have learned to pursue rational trains of inquiry, and I anticipate with pleasure the further development of my intellectual capabilities that the study of law will bring.

 

 

This applicant was accepted to everywhere including Yale, Stanford, NYU ($63,000 scholarship, etc. Great statement, but having a 4.0 and a 178 LSAT score certainly did not hurt.

I am a thinker, but not one to think out loud. I love myself, but am not in love with the sound of my own voice. I want to be loved, but not at the cost of not loving myself. I want to know everything, but realize that nothing can ever be known for sure. I believe that nothing is absolute, but I can absolutely defend my beliefs. I understand that chance is prevalent in all aspects of life, but never leave anything important to chance. I am skeptical about everything, but realistic in the face of my skepticism. I base everything on probability, but so does nature...probably.

I believe that all our actions are determined, but feel completely free to do as I choose. I do not believe in anything resembling a God, but would never profess omniscience with regard to such issues. I have faith in nothing, but trust that my family and friends will always be faithful. I feel that religion is among the greatest problems in the world, but also understand that it is perhaps the ultimate solution. I recognize that many people derive their morals from religion, but I insist that religion is not the only fountainhead of morality. I respect the intimate connection between morality and law, but do not believe that either should unquestioningly respect the other.

I want to study the law and become a lawyer, but I do not want to study the law just because I want to become a lawyer. I am aware that the law and economics cannot always be studied in conjunction, but I do not feel that either one can be properly studied without an awareness of the other. I recognize there is more to the law than efficiency, but believe the law should recognize the importance of efficiency more than it does. I love reading about law and philosophy, but not nearly as much as I love having a good conversation about the two. I know that logic makes an argument sound, but also know that passion makes an argument sound logical. I have philosophical beliefs informed by economics and economic beliefs informed by philosophy, but I have lost track of which beliefs came first. I know it was the egg though.

I always think very practically, but do not always like to think about the practical. I have wanted to be a scientist for a while now, but it took me two undergraduate years to figure out that being a scientist does not necessarily entail working in a laboratory. I play the saxophone almost every day, but feel most like an artist when deduction is my instrument. I spent one year at a college where I did not belong and two years taking classes irrelevant for my major, but I have no regrets about my undergraduate experience. I am incredibly passionate about my interests, but cannot imagine being interested in only one passion for an entire lifetime.

I love the Yankees, but do not hate the Red Sox. I love sports, but hate the accompanying anti-intellectual culture. I may read the newspaper starting from the back, but I always make my way to the front eventually. I am liberal on some issues and conservative on others, but reasonable about all of them. I will always be politically active, but will never be a political activist. I think everything through completely, but I am never through thinking about anything.

I can get along with almost anyone, but there are very few people without whom I could not get along. I am giving of my time, but not to the point of forgetting its value. I live for each moment, but not as much as I worry about the next. I consider ambition to be of the utmost importance, but realize that it is useless without the support of hard work. I am a very competitive person, but only when competing with myself. I have a million dreams, but I am more than just a dreamer. I am usually content, but never satisfied.

I am a study in contradiction, but there is not an inconsistency to be found.

 

 

 

The above personal statements for law school all effectively conveyed what was unique about the author and what distinct attributes they would bring to law school.

 

How important is effectively writing personal statements? So critical that the personal statement is the first item in an application that is read by Ed Tom, the Dean of Admissions at U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. In our exclusive interview, Dean Tom states that “[P]utting together an entering class is like organizing a choir; we want distinct voices. There are hundreds of similar applicants, but only one of you; so take the opportunity provided by the personal statement to let us hear your voice.”