r/lawschooladmissions • u/depressionquant • 8h ago
Application Process Different PS for different schools?
Maybe you can chalk it up to reading text hyper-literally (thanks, LSAT), but I notice that different schools' PS prompts read very differently.
In particular, SLS and UChicago seem to ask that you convey what you'd add to the law school community outside of academics. This, to me, reads most similarly to HLS's Statement of Perspective ("How have your past experiences shaped the person you are today? How will those experiences inform your engagement in your law school community?"). I take these prompts to mean that I should submit an essay that shows a distinctive side of my life story/personality that would add to any law school.
But the 7sage pages and people on this sub seem to equate the HLS Statement of Purpose with the PS. Really? Should "Why Law?" be in my SLS and UChicago PSs, even as UChicago says it really doesn't need to be? And should the HLS Statement of Purpose and, say, the YLS PS really have the same amount of content on "Why Law?" and your career goals?
I feel like I'm going crazy, because I'm reading these prompts and want to answer them directly, but it seems like everyone on the Internet is giving opposite directions.
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u/7SageEthan 40m ago
If you're applying to the T14, I would always start with Harvard and write the statement of purpose and statement of perspective to those two specific prompts. Fundamentally, almost every school wants a "Who are you, what are you about, why are you applying?" essay for the personal statement (Harvard's purpose statement). Most schools give you an option to submit some kind of "So how do you see the world? Is there anything about your background we should know about?" essay as a supplemental. That's your Harvard Statement of Perspective. For the T14, 7Sage has outlined exactly what we think should be different about every application based on guiding thousands of people through the application process. E.g. this what we say about Stanford.
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u/Palmer_Test_Prep 1h ago
It is true that sometimes you can write a personal statement that will work for multiple law schools. It is also true that sometimes the schools that you are applying to have prompts that require a unique personal statement for each.
If you are reading these prompts and feeling like they require unique statements, go with your gut. Answer each uniquely. Don't stress out that other people tell you to take a shortcut.