So, I’m applying to law school for the fall. I’m fairly confident of getting in- my LSAT scores are pretty good, and it’s a low-tier school. Still, I’d rather have a good essay than a bad one, so I submit it to you, Dopers, for your solemn judgment. Also, nit-picking.
My fiancee read it and says I write like a British person, which is apparently a problem. However, my high school and college instructors never seemed to mind my writing style, so I’m a bit confused. Anyway, here’s the topic:
And here’s my essay (it runs to exactly two pages in 12-point font, which is the upper limit):
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High school did not prepare me well for college. In some part, that was due simply to circumstance; I spent the majority of my scholastic career attending top private schools in the UK, where “slacking” was simply not an option. With instructors and tutors always watching over one’s shoulder, no assignment was ever failed because the work was not done. A grade depended on the student’s ability to apprehend and apply the material, rather than on time management skills. In that system, I became what was known as a “high flyer”- a student cemented into the upper academic streams, and being prepared for Oxford or Cambridge.
I emigrated to the US with my family in 1996, shortly before my 14th birthday. Here, I found a rude awakening. In public schools, with nobody looking over my shoulder, I was suddenly free to ignore my homework if I wished, and mostly I so wished. My academic achievement was replaced by social achievement; tired of being “the smart kid”, I instead took pains to become “the popular kid”. Instead of applying my time to earn high grades, I used it to make new friends. I volunteered as a tutor after school hours just to meet new people. I did just enough in class to stay in school, and graduated with a 3.0 grade point average based mostly on test scores. Worst of all, I hadn’t found anything that seemed like a career path. Instead of selecting a university based on the programs it offered, I selected the one “everyone else” was going to – *** – and hoped I could choose a major once I got there.
By the time I entered college, I had forgotten how to study. Perhaps more importantly, I had forgotten why I needed to. In college, I did exactly what I’d done in high school- just enough. It didn’t help that I had nothing to work towards, with no career path in mind and no major either. I enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences, in the hope that I could pursue a degree related to medicine if nothing better presented itself. In my own words, I figured that if “I [couldn’t] be happy, I [would] make my parents happy.” My grades reflected my lack of drive and direction, and I barely avoided academic probation.
On the other hand, I was more productive overall during college than during high school. I joined a fraternity, and realized that in many such organizations perhaps five per cent do fifty per cent of the work. Having found a challenge at last, I threw myself into it, holding as many as five positions within the fraternity simultaneously and fourteen overall between my initiation and graduation. I did everything possible to be among the five per cent. I took the lead role in organizing our own events, philanthropic works, and community service projects, and made sure that our contributions to events organized by the Greek community and the college as a whole were equal or superior to those of much larger groups.
It was not until my junior year that I had the first hint of a possible future. A class I took simply to fill a hole in my schedule – Philosophy of Law – introduced me to questions I found fascinating. Although I was a good student of mathematics and the hard sciences when younger, they never held much interest. Questions with only one answer seemed too limiting. In the law, however, questions could be answered in a dozen ways, and the process of reaching an answer was often more important than the answer reached.
I began signing up for more classes related to the law. I had a inkling that International Law might be my calling. The answers to the questions it posed were even more varied than the ones available in more traditional specializations, and of course were not always- or even normally- adjudicated within the court system.
Interested at last, I began paying a little more attention to my work. My grades began to climb, although not to the extent I hoped; I had to learn how to be a student all over again, after more than seven years of just “cruising”, and this learning process was not complete when I graduated.
I planned to enter law school directly out of college, but for a few reasons that did not happen. A reversal of the family fortunes meant I would have to work my way through school, and suddenly I was looking at taking on significant debt to go back to school. There was also a very real possibility that I might have to support my mother if her financial problems intensified. Knowing that I would have to pay for school myself, I wondered what would happen if I finished law school and decided that the law wasn’t the career for me. To be trapped in a career seemed to me a worse fate than having no career at all.
In the end, paralyzed by my own indecision, I would up working in retail and wondering what to do next. Fate solved the problem for me. A close friend decided to move to Washington, D.C., and asked if I wanted to take over her job at a law firm. Retail management, I already knew, was not where I wanted to be, and I took a significant pay cut to become a legal assistant at the newly formed law firm of ****, in the workers’ compensation department. At time of writing, I will have been in that position for over two years, although the firm now calls me a paralegal and all along my duties have been more in that vein. I have been able to watch and experience the practice of workers’ compensation law, and general liability. I have also been able to involve myself somewhat in criminal defense practice, through a former associate of the firm who left to set up her own practice.
The last two years have been more useful than my last eight years of school. These years have given me something I could not find on my own- a career path. They have given me the knowledge that the law suits both my interest and my abilities. Although I feel a special affinity for workers’ compensation law, melding as it does my old interest in medicine and my new passion for law, I am open to the possibility of practicing in a wide range of fields. I have taken great pride in learning as much as possible, both via personal study and the help of others. The attorneys with whom I work on a daily basis know of my ambition and support it, and take it upon themselves to help me learn.
My hope is that the above narrative will explain why I will enrich the **** College of Law. Having taken so long to reach a decision regarding my future, I can be certain I have made the correct one. After over two years of learning “on the job”, I believe I can learn in the classroom again. I have always known I am capable of high academic achievement when my mind is fully applied. **** University College of Law will give me a reason to do so, and I would very much appreciate that opportunity if granted.*
On the one hand, I quite like it. On the other, I’m not quite sure how it ended up as a narrative and I’m afraid it’s totally inappropriate. So… help? In case anyone is wondering, it’s nearly all true.
I rewrote my law school application essay several times.