Nailing the Personal Statement

[MUSIC] Welcome to our fourth episode of Navigating Law School Admissions with Miriam and Christy. I'm Christy, the Dean of Admissions at HLS, and I'm here with my colleague Miriam from Yale Law School. We are both thrilled to welcome Matthew Lee, the Assistant Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid from UT Austin this week. For an episode, we are calling nailing the personal statement. Love it or hate it, you've got to write it, and we will talk about what works and what doesn't. Matthew, welcome. I want you to take a minute to introduce yourself. Hello, everyone. I'm really excited to be here and thank you so much to both Christine Miriam for the invitation to join your podcast. I've been the Dean of Admissions here at Texas long now, going into my third year, and while I still consider myself to be a recent transplant to Austin, this is actually my second time around here in Austin as I attended UT for undergrad. So in many ways, it's a homecoming of sorts as my entire family live here in Texas. Prior to joining Texas law, I was the Dean of Admissions at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle for almost a decade, and overall, I've been in law school admissions for about 15 years now, so I've read a lot of personal statements to say the least. I bet you have way more than either one of us. We're going to lead on you today. All right, let's get to it. Matthew, we start every episode with a game, and we thought we would do a high school favorite for this episode. We're going to call it admit wait list deny. You may know this game by another name, but this is a family podcast. Since today's podcast is all about personal statements, I thought we could each describe a personal statement that we want to admit. One, we'd would wait list and one to deny. So let's start with wait list. What is the one of those personal statement that had lots of great qualities, but maybe didn't get quite over the finish line or had a fatal flaw. So I'll go first with a personal statement that left me puzzled this past year. The applicant described two of her mentors and then ended with a sort of a conclusory statement that those mentors inspired her to attend law school. It showcased really strong writing skills and it could have worked, but I was left with just very little sense of the applicant herself. So I would throw that into my wait list category. That's a good one. I remember one personal statement in particular that stood out to me from several years back. The applicant was a former professional baseball player who wrote about his injury, played career that ultimately resulted in him having to make the difficult decision to leave this point that he dedicated nearly his entire life for. It was a beautifully written piece that I just remember being deeply moved by its essay. You felt the sacrifices he made and what I remember most was that he were pulled into his world in his thought process. But where I felt that he missed the mark was the community just wasn't sure why he was pursuing law school. There was nothing on his resume that had the traditional indicia of someone who had fun about going to law school and his personal statement didn't give us any real insight into his professional pursuits other than his baseball career. So we ended up putting him on our wait list. All right, so I'm cheating a little bit. I hope you guys will forgive me, but the one that popped him on with this question was actually a 250 word essay, which is a Yale specific short essay. And I absolutely, absolutely loved it. And it is someone we admit it. So it is cheating in multiple ways. But the reason I'm putting it here is because it's someone who took a really huge risk. And I think it did have perhaps what I would call a fatal flaw. In this case, it was someone who was an artist and their work really revolved around racial justice and social activism. And so the essay revolved around their artist statement. And they in fact included a photo of a piece of their one. Very, very risky. In this case, the risk played out well for them. It's someone that the whole thing just came together. But that is a big, big risk. And I would say that generally, that's going to lead you to a wait list and not to an admit high risk, potentially high reward, but very unusual for that to work out well. All right, let's turn now to those definite admits, those personal statements that just stand the test of time. And I will start here. So I recently re-read an essay that an applicant just nailed. He described his background doing manual labor. He had started out coming from a very low income background. He worked at a mill. And he talked about how his education really began as an apprentice. And he was planning a really long-term career. Actually, in that job following in his family's footsteps. And he spoke just incredibly movingly about how he aspired for more, transition to college and how his family really supported him through that transition, even though not a lot of them had followed in that path. And how we really wanted to live up to his full potential, go to law school and give back to this community. It was beautifully written. It was really just perfect. All right, I'll go next. So I can think of a lot of essays I've read that fall into the admit category, but I'm going to pick a really beautiful one I read in the past year. So the applicants spent their elementary school years in their parents take out restaurant in New York City. I'm going to paraphrase the applicant's opening paragraph. I went back and looked at it because it's just really stuck with me. Food always seemed like a resource that was infinite and accessible. Everyone who came into the restaurant left with some. The applicant's parents tragically lost the restaurant during their 2008 financial crisis, leaving the family food insecure and sparking the applicant's lifelong commitment to food justice. In two pages, I learned so much about the applicant's background, motivation for pursuing law school, and it all connected with their extracurricular and professional experiences to date. Needless to say, it was perfectly written. I felt honored to read it. It was a slam dunk. That's fantastic. Okay, for me, I remember reading an essay from last year that was exquisitely and also beautifully written. She wrote about her adolescence growing up in Cuba and the reverence she had for Fidel Castro in the Cuban government. But it wasn't until she moved to Mexico as a teenager and then to the US soon after that all of her deeply held beliefs of Cuba began to unravel. And she quickly realized that what she experienced wasn't really freedom at all. And what she thought was freedom turned out to be oppression instead. It was wonderfully written. It was a beautiful narrative that you took that took you on a journey from beginning to end and tied into why she was pursuing law school. More importantly, she accomplished it within the confines for page limits. To me, it was a clear admin. There's so many good essays. And both of those comments are amazing. No, I'm wondering if I read those last year or two. All right, time for tonight. Matthew, you're going to go first. Okay, this one was easy for me, although I'm sure we've all read our fair share of applications and personal statements that fall into this category. So this applicant decided to write about being on the stand by the list. I mean, over so flight during the holiday break already. As I'm reading this, I'm thinking to myself, where is she going with this? I'm continuing moving on and I'm finally towards the end of the piece. In my new, she's already over the page limit. So I'm a little okay already. She's a sentence acknowledging that she's, you know, over the page limit, that she asks us to hang on because it gets better. Spoiler alert, it did not get better. She was taken off the stand by the committee home to see her family, which I'm very happy for her. She wraps it up by saying how this experience demonstrated her resilience, patience, and ability to overface the colleges. And therefore, she would do the same in law school. Unfortunately, we denied her. Oh, no. Oh, gosh. I can go next. Matthew, you talked about a sports injury for someone who played a sport professionally. My kind of bugaboo is the high school sports injury essay. I fully believe, and I understand that sports injuries when you're in middle school or when you're a teenager can be life-altering in a lot of ways. And indeed, shape your perspective and showcase some resilience. But they always feel like the applicant just dusted off their college admissions essay and uploaded it straight to LSAC. If it's something you could have written for college, don't submit it for law school. Yeah, so I have that was one, the one that immediately came to mind. Plus, it was also kind of bizarre. It was a high school focused essay that was just so weird. It would be totally identifying if I said much more than that, but you can trust me. It focused on a very niche and very odd extracurricular activity. And it was a single anecdote about that extracurricular activity in involved an animal. And I'll just leave it there. I actually have a personal bugaboo about being careful not to focus on a single anecdote, because often they just don't show us enough about who you are. So if you're picking one anecdote, first of all, don't make it about high school. Second of all, really be thoughtful about whether that anecdote is going deep enough and showcasing enough of your story. Miriam, I think I know which essay you're talking about. As soon as you got an animal, I knew. It was a very odd animal, too. Does that make it even more? Yeah, so you know who I'm talking about. This was not about a cat. No. All right, let's talk a little more generally now about the personal statement. First, Christine and Matthew, how important is a strong personal statement to a successful application? Matthew, as our guest wanted, you kick us off. Sure. The personal statement matters a lot. And I'll give you a few reasons why I think that's the case. First, it is one of your best chances to help the admissions committee members reading your file to get to know who you are as a person, potential law student, and future lawyer. Also, the personal statement is a place where you can really shape your narrative. A lot of the application is dictated by either the specific questions asked or by things you may no longer be able to control, like your undergraduate performance, GPA, or your extracurricular activities during college. In contrast, the personal statement is totally within your control. You should view it as a major opportunity. I really like that framing, Matthew. A personal statement is an opportunity for applicants. And I also want to say that writing your personal statement is a time to really reflect on why you want to go to law school and why you want to go to law school now. So it's a personal opportunity as well. The reader should be able to answer those questions after reading your application as a whole. And the personal statement is often the key linchpin that brings it all together and helps the reader understand your path. It's also a chance to put yourself in your audience's shoes. Is there a big unanswered question that the rest of your application raises? Sometimes, though not always, the personal statement is the place to answer it. So my husband always calls me the devil's advocate because I always point out the opposing point of view. So in this case, I completely agree with absolutely everything both Matthew and Christy said. But I also want to reinforce that you really shouldn't tie yourself into not over the personal statement. Generally, good applicants are writing strong personal statements. And applicants with less impressive applications have less to say. It's very, very rare for a personal statement to be the game changer, although I think in the game that we played, we gave a few examples of where they that might have been the case. More often than not, the personal statement just reinforces the other elements of the application. That's not to say, of course, that you shouldn't put your absolute best effort into it, write multiple drafts, get some feedback, and make sure that it's type of free. But rather that you shouldn't put so much pressure on yourself that you make yourself absolutely crazy. Before we dive into what we think makes for a great personal statement, let's talk about the basics of formatting and some nitty gritty. Matthew? Sure. Generally, a personal statement is approximately two pages, double space, unless a specific school asks for something different. And Matthew, can I ask you about whether Texas has specific page limits? I know that neither Harvard nor Yale does in a wondering if you have a different set of requirements. We don't have a specific page limit, but we do encourage students to not submit a personal statement over three pages. So somewhere between two and a half pages to three pages is usually what we receive. And so, you should always read and follow any school specific directions very carefully about formatting. I'm sure it is a common pet peeve when an applicant doesn't follow directions. But if you aren't given any guidance, use some common sense. Normal size on 11 or 12 point, a standard font, like Times New Roman, normal margins, one inch all around, no funny business. We can tell. And just one small point on length. I agree with Matthew. I would usually say about two pages, double space is a good guideline. When I see a personal statement that is way longer than two pages, and that includes two pages single space, or multiple lengthy agenda, or no margins. I always ask myself why the applicant thinks that they're worthy of so much more space than anyone else. I always end up wondering, are they going to be that person who sits in class with their hand up constantly and doesn't see the looks from everyone around them? Oh my god, it's that guy again. Trying to insert themselves into every conversation. Don't be that guy. Keep it to a normal length. I read a personal statement in this past year that was four pages single space, and I had that exact reaction. I cannot imagine how long the comments would be in class. Matthew, do you encourage applicants to use the same personal statement for UT as for other schools? Yes, definitely. So that raises a question for me at Harvard, and I believe the same is true of Yale. We tell applicants that we don't expect or want or need them to include anything specific about why Harvard in their applications, either in their personal statement or elsewhere. Is that also true of UT Austin, and if not, how is that information incorporated in their application? Yeah, I think with that same advice, particularly when it comes to the personal statement, the committee is not interested in rereading marketing content that is readily available on our websites. Oftentimes, we're the ones who produce that content. I will say, though, that where it can be effective is when the applicant ties a school-specific strength into their overall story arc. An example of this might be where an applicant's narrative is largely about their commitment to public service and social justice, and their interest in that particular law school is because of that school's public service offerings. To me, that's different than just adding a general boasting statement about why you want to attend that specific school that truly don't relate to the overall personal statement or anything of substance to the application. Yeah, I think we very much strongly discourage people, except in pretty limited circumstances from doing a quote-unquote "why" Yale type of essay. All right, so I want to change direction a little bit and focus on how applicants should choose a topic for their personal statement, because I know that can be a really, really tough but important first step. So let me start just by giving my general advice. I often tell applicants that there are three very common approaches to the personal statement. They can focus on the past, which really delves into their background, their experiences, and their identity. They can focus on the present, their current work, or their current school, and interests, or they can focus on the future and the type of law they're interested in studying and the kind of lawyer they want to be. All of those approaches can be very successful, but often the most successful personal statements I find have a sense of movement. And by that, I mean that they touch on more than one of those. For example, how your past is driving your future goals, or how your present work has really inspired your law school studies. Matthew, do you have a general approach you usually tell applicants to work on? Absolutely, and I think the advice that you gave me was very sage advice. I think choosing the topic is perhaps the most difficult part of the personal statement. I generally tell students to approach the personal statement by first asking themselves some fundamental questions, questions that as readers we often are seeking answers to when they're reading a personal statement, such as why am I pursuing law school? What problems do I want to solve with my law degree? What experiences have I had and how do they shape and inform the way that I view the world? How have these experiences motivated me to pursue law school? I think that by asking these questions and writing short essay responses, it forces the applicant to do some introspection, to think deeply about their experiences, and to figure out ways to tie it to the professional goals. This exercise is not meant to have finished product by no search of the imagination, but instead it gets the applicant to think of ideas and themes that might work for their personal statement. For me, I just want to emphasize that there's no objectively right topics or objectively wrong topics, but it's important to remember that admissions officers, we read thousands of personal statements each year, and the process is kind of comparative. I think too many applicants think we are all looking for a straightforward narrative of how I overcame adversity, which isn't necessarily the case. If you do choose to write a personal statement on adversity, make sure it's the core story you want to tell, and that you connect your narrative to your reasons for going to law school. For example, it's really compelling if you write about your personal experiences and a mixed status family that includes some undocumented individuals, and how that's driven your interest in advocacy for immigrants and refugees. It's much less compelling if you write about how your grandparents grew up with a very tenuous connection to your law school goals. I think that gets Christy to a larger and very important point that authenticity is really important, and we all I think become very good at sniffing out when a personal statement feels inauthentic. One key here for me is to think about showing versus telling. It's one thing to say I have a strong interest in international human rights, and that may in fact be true, even if you have no real experience or background in it, but it is so much more impressive and feels to the reader so much more authentic. If you can back that up by talking about how you were a member of a related student organization or you have relevant work or volunteer experience. If there's a disconnect between what you say you care about and how you actually spend your time, that can be a problem. All right, so we talked a little bit about how to choose a topic, and I think another big area that people often have questions about is how do you actually draft the thing once you have a topic, and any advice people have on editing. Matthew, what do you usually tell people about those topics? Well, let's start off with some basics. First, don't expect to have the perfect personal statement in your first draft. It's unrealistic for many applicants. Start the drafting process months in advance before an application deadline. So don't wait until the food days before the application is due to begin thinking of ideas. Second, I would encourage you to create an outline of what you plan to write before you even begin writing. In the same way in college you have to create an outline for an essay, the approach should be no different. This will allow you to see if there's a beginning, middle, and an end to your story and make some editorial decisions while ensuring that you remain connected to your thesis. And when you start drafting, don't worry too much about the link at this point and get comfortable having someone drafts before you end up with a plan of product. And with each version of your draft, there should be continued refinement, ruthless editing, and removing typos along the way and making sure you're within the school's formatting instructions. And well, it might be a bit awkward to share an essay that is inherently personal. Get a few people to read it and offer their feedback. You might even talk through potential topics with a mentor or colleague or friend or loved one before you put pen to paper, finger to keyboard, as it were. And before you press submit, find at least one person and probably more than one to help you with that final proofread. And final tip, read the whole thing, but backwards, one sentence at a time. It's easy to find typos if you read it that way. Yeah, that's a great way to find typos. That's all such good advice. I'm just going to add one small note on tone. Applicants should remember that law school is professional school. On the one hand, it's really important that after reading your personal statement, we have a sense of who you are as a person. On the other hand, do not venture into TMI territory, please. Not many applicants do that, but when they do, it is really bad. And TMI is about tone. It is not about topic. You can write about pretty much any topic professionally. That includes very sensitive topics. However, the more sensitive your topic, whether it's a political topic or a very difficult personal experience, the more careful you should be to ensure that the tone and the way that you're writing it is professional. Alright, so let's talk about some no-nose. I know that we all have them, we all have our pet peeves and the things that we hate. So what are the things that absolutely drive you crazy when you see them in a personal statement? I have one and it's very specific. It really wrinkles me when an applicant uses the word downtrodden. What? What did downtrodden ever do to you? Well, as in, I want to go to law school to help the downtrodden. I have read that sentence or a variation on it so many times. And I don't know if you two have this reaction, but I find that word sort of condescending. It makes me think the closest that the applicant has ever come to service work is Charles Dickens and it raises doubts for me that they're sincere in their commitments to social justice. Maybe they're just overusing the fissaurus. A pet peeve is a pet peeve. I don't want to touch it. I'm very glad that the fissaurus, yes. Very bad news. You know, no, and I'm sure we've all seen this, you know, version. It's the classic. I've always wanted to be a lawyer since I was eight years old to care in a briefcase and playing underneath my mother's or father's desk watching them practice law. That's part of being a practice law. So, something along those lines. I'm not saying that that can't be true. I'm just saying that I have a good old reaction in the same way that Christy has a reaction to the word. A personal statement starts off that way. And I don't know why it's always eight years old. Why not nine? Why not ten? It seems to be the magic age that a lot of applicants have decided to pursue law school. And I think we've underscored this. Anything related to high school, I just, you know, it just makes me feel a certain way and it's not a positive way. Okay, so I have so many. I'm like the queen of pet peeves and Matthew just made me think of another one. That's the, I want to go to law school because I like to argue or everyone's always told me I should go to law school because I love to argue. And all I can think is, wow, you must be so unpleasant. I don't have a lot of people who love to argue. The lawyer isn't really about arguing. Even when you're a litigator like I used to be. And so that's a, please, no, I love to argue essays. All right, but that wasn't even the ones I was thinking of before that just popped into my mind. Long quotes, really any quotes. Nope. Don't include them. We want to hear what you're saying. Not what other people have to say. Tiny fonts, tight margins, single spacing. I literally have the worst eyes in the world. Please make it easy for me to read. Footnotes are just apporant. Do not drop footnotes. I mean, occasionally I'll give one exception to my exception. That's if sometimes people will want to just not disclose people's names to protect people's privacy. So they'll drop a footnote saying, name changed to protect privacy. Okay, you can use a footnote for that. It's very hard to imagine another circumstance where a footnote is ridiculously bad. I don't even like those. Just no footnotes. Please don't put notes. You feel even worse about footnotes than I feel about them. And that's hard. It's two pages. It's two pages. It's two pages. I know sometimes people put them in the 250 word essay, which is less than a page. And they'll drop footnotes. And I'm like, what? Those can't force the words. Does that say, yeah, they should force the words. Oh, let me ask a question. Do you like a title on a personal statement? I have strong feelings. Hate it. No, it never worked. I know. I'll just say Matthew shaking his head too. I can see it. I thought of more. Okay, getting cutesy is terrible. No poems. No pictures. No hyperlinks. I once had one where someone highlighted it in white. And I had to unhighlight it to read the text underneath. Why? Why? Let's end by busting a few personal statement myths. Matthew, you first. Bustameth. All right. So even though we all hate typos, one typo isn't going to mean you'll be automatically rejected. So take a deep breath. As long as it doesn't reflect all of our sloppiness and mix as question or judgment, don't stress too much about the typo. Be fine about it later. And I think that if there's a typo, you don't need to email the admissions office. Please don't. Please don't. Our staff are so busy. If there's one typo, you don't need to rescind it in and tell our staff to substitute it. It's okay. It won't be negatively. Sometimes it draws more attention to the typo because then one of us goes, I guess forwarded to me and I go and look at the typo. Exactly. So just let it go. Let it lie. All right. This is one of my big ones. Your goal is not to be memorable. I have so many applicants every year say what stands out, what makes a memorable personal statement. And in my mind, it's the one about the animal, that high school animal. That's really memorable and not in a good way. Your goal is just to be solid. That's it. You just want to tell us who you are. You want to explain why you want to go to law school. Memorable does not equal good. All right. I've got a myth to bust. You will not head straight to the genie bin if you name another law school in your personal statement. Don't do it. Don't do it. It's avoid it. Read that personal statement backwards a bunch of times before you upload it, but it happens. We get it. And that's another one where I please don't email the admissions office and further highlight that error. Yeah. We're trying to overlook it on your behalf. Don't bring it back to our accent. Now it's time for some questions from you, our listeners. So these were submitted through the HLS admissions account and through Instagram. Here's our first one. It seems that many people apply to law school because of personal experiences with the justice system. Like having incarcerated parents experiencing police brutality, navigating the court system as a child, et cetera. Do you have suggestions on how to write about these topics in a way that is fitting for the personal statement? And how would you advise someone to set an appropriate tone? So, you know, for me, I think the key phrase there is appropriate tone. And I think Miriam, you mentioned this earlier and that is striking that balance between sharing enough information to tell your story, without sharing too much information where you lose sight of your story. To underscore the point made earlier, you're applying to a professional school and you should use that as your guide in line to navigate that line. Oftentimes applicants who choose to write about complicated experiences can get wrapped up into, you know, deep into the details and into the trauma that leads the reader emotionally drained and the reader's left wondering what to do. I think the applicants that have been successful in trying to that line were able to pull it back and tie it back to their motivations for law school. You want to leave the reader with some sense of optimism and helplessness. I do think those personal statements can sometimes be the most powerful ones that we read because they just, it feels so clear to the reader why that person wants to go to law school and it can be very moving and very, really wonderful to see this person as a member of your community who's going to use these very difficult experiences to then give back both within our community and then to their own community going forward. Question two, do you have any insights to offer about referring to actual names of people in our impersonal statements? So for example, if we've mentioned our work with the public figure, is it better to anonymize them in the essay to avoid the appearance of quote unquote name dropping? Would that concern be tempered by a well-constructed essay that lays out the context for naming names? I'll start with this one. I think it's just all about authenticity. If you were the personal assistant to Barack Obama, naming him President Smith, footnote, name changed to anonymize my boss, is it going to work? It presumably will also see in your resume that you've worked for a notable figure. So again, it's all about authenticity. Don't stretch to name names, right? That would be name dropping. But if you have a story to tell, that includes a person who's significant and well-known, just name them. What do you think? Thumbs up. Nothing to add. Yeah, I remember reading a personal statement where the applicant wrote about the dinner party she witnessed growing up as the daughter of a judge and listed the names of other justices and prominent figures that came to the dinner table over her childhood. That to me came across as very name dropping. And that's different than what Christine said. Yeah, that's thumbs down. All right, so question three. Do students planning to apply straight through from college need to address more of the quote why law school? So I'm going to take this one because I was straight through. So I think maybe I'll try to reflect back on that. I actually think that do you need to include a strong why law school does not depend on whether you're coming straight through from college. I think it depends a little bit more on whether that's an open question from looking at your application as a whole. So some people who are coming straight through from college, it's very clear why they want to go to law school from their internships and their extracurriculars and their coursework. And some people who've been out of law school for a very long time, it's not clear at all because they have a very well-established career in a totally different field. Whether you should include that how much you should include that depend on whether that's an open question based on your application. What do you guys think? I agree. I think if it's self-evident, why the person wants to go to law school, then you don't need to do that. But there's people who are six years out of college where it's really self-evident and there's people who are straight through from college where it's really self-evident kind of depends on the totality of the application. It's hard to answer in a vacuum. All right, Matthew, we're going to give you the final word. Any parting advice for our listeners? Well, so you know, I think as you've learned during our time together, the personal statement plays an important part of the overall application. I mean, it's your chance to distinguish yourself from the rest of the applicant pool. And again, you have to remember that many schools don't offer and the interview is part of the process. And so your personal statement is your opportunity to share with the committee who you are and how you would contribute to their law school community. And more importantly, it puts the rest of your application into context. So take the time to submit a high quality written piece that has been thoroughly vetted, ruthlessly edited, as we mentioned, what we may contribute to your experiences and to your voice. And in doing so, I'm confident that you'll come up with an essay that won't press the committee so much that they will want you to be part of their law school and at least grant you an interview if they offer it. I also just want to take this time to thank both Kristi and Miriam for this invitation to join them on their podcast. This was a lot of fun. I think we covered a lot of material here and gave some solid advice. Thank you. Thank you. This has been super fun. We really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to navigating law school admissions with Miriam and Kristi. Do you have a question you'd like us to answer? Send them along to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. You can write your questions in the email itself or if you'd like to hear your voice on this podcast, attach your question as a voice recording. This podcast is produced by Ryan McAvoy from the Yale Broadcast Studio.