If you are a law school applicant, you will need to prepare a compelling personal statement in support of your candidacy. The personal statement is a required component regardless of the school to which you are applying. The overarching objective is to write an authentic essay about a key event or experience in your life that displays the characteristics about you that will position you for success in law school and beyond.
You may also write a diversity statement as part of your law school application. Not all schools provide the option to write one, and some schools’ prompts are more specific than others.
Some schools allow for a diversity statement only if a candidate is an underrepresented minority. Other schools’ prompts are broader in nature and invite essays that relate to diversity of thought or experience.
[Avoid these common law school application cliches.]
Determine first if you have an appropriate topic for a diversity statement and then be sure that your statement aligns with the schools’ precise essay prompts.
While each of these essays should stand alone as a strong advocacy piece, when read together they should inform one another and work in concert to form a unified, consistent presentation. To avoid overlap, ask yourself questions like: Are they duplicative? Do they highlight different and important aspects of my character and life? Do they work together to paint a compelling picture of me?
In drafting these two essays to ensure they interrelate properly, consider the similarities and differences between the law school personal statement and diversity statement.
[Learn what not to do in a law school personal statement.]
Key Similarities
The prompts for both the personal statement and diversity statement call for powerful and compelling stories based on personal experience. The emphasis on “personal” is intentional, since you need to look at yourself and your life when writing these essays. Law schools want to read about you so they can decide whether to extend an offer to join their community.
I worked with a client last admissions cycle who submitted for review a beautifully written story about an acquaintance and teammate who had a challenging experience with substance abuse and a brush with the legal system, which made the client want to pursue a career in law. While the story was interesting, it did not work for a law school application because it was not about him. I encouraged him to start over.
The other key similarity between the personal statement and diversity statement is that both call for introspection and reflection. Once you find those persuasive and personal topics, steer clear of providing an investigative report or high-level overview of the experience you’re writing about. Instead, look at the topic from the inside out.
Share your thoughts and reflections about the topic, including what you learned about yourself or an issue and why this learning is important as you embark upon this next phase of your life. Your purpose is not only to tell a great story about you; you also want to make it clear why this story matters, both in terms of your candidacy and the value you will add to a law school community.
[Make sure to revise law school personal statements before applying.]
Key Differences
When striving to make these two essays cohesive, be mindful of the major differences between them. A diversity statement prompts you to tap into some aspect of your identity and expound upon the ways in which this self-identification will add value to the law school community.
In this way, the diversity statement may actually be the more personal of the two. However, the personal statement can be more professionally oriented.
For example, a recent client wrote a personal statement about her interest in children’s literature. She explored studying this area of interest in college and spearheading both the development of a new concentration within the English literature department as well as an independent research project related to multicultural adaptations of classic texts. She used her experiences to support her interests in both human rights and education law.
Her diversity statement, in contrast, related to her identity as both an African-American woman and a member of the LGBTQ community. In this essay, she wrote about what that identity means to her and the ways in which her perspective will enrich the dialogue in law school. Arguably, her diversity statement was far more personal in nature than her personal statement.
If you plan to submit a diversity statement as well as a personal statement, remember to write them in unity and avoid redundancy.
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Write Cohesive Law School Personal, Diversity Statements originally appeared on usnews.com
