Law School Admissions Tips with Stratus Admissions Counseling – Part 2: Your Personal and Diversity Statements
Trying to get into law school this year? Most schools’ applications are open by now, which means it’s time to get your materials together! Our newest partner, premiere admissions counseling firm Stratus Admissions Counseling, wants to help make this confusing process crystal clear for you. To that end, they’ve authored this Law School Admissions Tips series.
In last week’s post, we took an overview look at the law school application process, focusing on what law schools are looking for in their applicants, the components of a law school application, and what your overall application strategy should look like. This post will focus on the two biggest and most important written components of the law school application: the personal and diversity statements.
Let’s dig in…
Personal Statement
The personal statement is the single most important written component of a law school application. When writing the personal statement, you should strive to create a two- to three-page essay that presents:
- One or two key aspects of who you are
- Why you have pursued the things you have pursued to this point
- What makes law school the next logical step in your development
In addition to presenting these more resume-oriented aspects of your profile, a personal statement should leave the reader with a sense of:
- Who you are as a person
- What motivates you
- What you’re passionate about
Finally, make sure your personal statement is the strongest piece of writing you can muster. Make sure you are satisfied with not just its content, but also its stylistic and typographical elements.
Since the personal statement is the cornerstone of the application, it is important to carefully consider not only the themes you want to convey and how you convey them, but also the essay’s relationship to the other components of the application and to the overall application strategy.
Diversity Statement
In a diversity statement, applicants are asked to describe what makes them uncommon or unique, and how those characteristics will enable them to contribute uniquely to the law school community they are about to enter. Although each law school’s diversity statement prompt is different, diversity statement prompts tend to fall into one of two categories:
- A narrow diversity statement prompt seeks more traditional indicia of diversity, such as race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, socioeconomic status and sexual orientation
- A broad diversity statement prompt enables applicants to write about uncommon experiences and other traits that don’t satisfy the narrower definition of diversity articulated above
Although not all applicants write diversity statements, most of our clients do. Most people have some characteristic or life experience that allows them to show admissions committees how they would contribute to the diversity of perspective, experience, and strengths of the law school community.
When writing a diversity statement, make sure you focus on not just your past, but how your past affects your present and, most important, your future as a law student and lawyer.
In a Nutshell…
The personal and diversity statements are the two most important pieces of writing you’ll prepare as part of your application. In these essays you should not just highlight accomplishments and important experiences; you should also strive to give admissions committees a sense of who you are as a person. Finally, make sure that you think about their relationship to each other and to the other components of your application so that you create a cohesive presentation of yourself.
If you have any questions about what was covered in this email, the law school application process in general, or how we at Stratus Admissions Counseling can help you craft the strongest possible application, reach out to us at consult@stratusprep.com to talk to one of our candidate strategists. We look forward to hearing from you!
In the final post of this series, we’ll discuss what comes next after hitting submit. ?
Stratus Admissions Counseling is a premier admissions counseling firm that can help you achieve your dream of attending law school. Stratus’ unique approach has helped students gain admission into all of the top schools worldwide for undergraduate and graduate work, including Harvard University, Yale University, The University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Columbia University, NYU, UCLA, MIT, and dozens of others. Stratus authors regular columns for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes. To learn more about Stratus and schedule your free consultation, follow this link.