Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal Statement (no particular prompt)
I met Joe on my weekly visit to the AIDS ward of Cook County Hospital in inner city Chicago. His smeared technicolor makeup, shoulder-length hair caked with sweat, and painful facial contortions lent his visage a bizarre, almost frightening quality. I sat in his cramped room trying to initiate communication, while he emitted only wheezing guttural sounds. When he opened his mouth, I anxiously leaned forward to hear any impending word. Instead of speech, vomit spewed forth, running down his clothes and into his bed, splattering on my face and hands. Repulsed, I called for help and reached to find a towel. As I washed myself clean in the adjacent bathroom, glad to allow the nurse to assist him, the words struck me: Love your neighbor as yourself. A backward glance revealed Joe still laying helpless, gurgling in his own vomit; the nurse was occupied with other more urgent tasks. And who is my neighbor? Surely not him, surely not Joe, a transvestite infected with HIV, stained and dirty. Joe's eyes, full of tears, met mine. I spent the next half-hour at his side with a washcloth and wastebasket. How sobering that having heard over 2000 sermons and Sunday school lessons in my day, I needed a confrontation with someone in great distress who differed radically from myself in order to truly understand the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The experience forced me to realize that loving my neighbor requires transcending social and racial boundaries, crossing borders of class and lifestyle, to serve those my culture tells me to reject. As with the Samaritan who helped his sworn cultural enemy, the call to service impels me out of my immediate community to assist the Other in need. This counter-cultural re-orientation of values is awkward, difficult, and sometimes dangerous, but essential to the preservation of justice. I am alive today because of people who acted upon the truth of the Good Samaritan. My great-grandfather, Isaiah, narrowly escaped the Armenian Genocide of 1914. His family murdered and village destroyed by Turk militia, Isaiah embarked on a perilous journey out of Turkey, across the Middle-East, into Egypt, and ultimately to the United States where he found safety. Isaiah, whose story has profoundly affected my ethnic identity and passion for justice, would be merely an obscure, faceless victim of genocide, discarded and forgotten, were it not for the many strangers who made his survival possible. I think of the 'Good Turks,' as they're called in Armenian parlance, who rejected the treacherous orders of their government and helped Armenians escape from Turkey. I think also of Arab Muslims who were willing to shelter a penniless Christian from Armenia as he fled his homeland. In both cases, the generosity of the Other, whose assistance overcame cultural animosity and religious differences, enabled my present existence. The passion for international justice that drives my desire to study law may be traced back to both an intellectual understanding of the call to love my neighbor and an inner motivation to give to others what others gave to me-that is, life, safety, and freedom. Poet John Donne notes that 'no man is an island; any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind.' If I am to love my neighbor as myself, I should, like Donne, resonate with each tolling of the bell as if it were my own. The cries of those straining under the yoke of oppression compel me to spend my career pursuing justice for my many neighbors. Fervency is necessary, but not sufficient, for liberating the oppressed. Studying law represents the natural culmination of my past experiences and provides the training essential to my future ventures. I expect a rigorous law school education to deepen my love for the rule of law and to hone the skills necessary for expert legal advocacy, thereby giving hands and feet to the force that drives me.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Major: Personal statement
Until a few months ago when my family moved, a yellowed picture was taped to the side of the refrigerator. There were coupons stuck over and around it but some crayon scribbles and a signature still peeked through. This picture, drawn in first grade, showed a smiling figure wearing a blue and red cape. The caption read, 'When I grow up, I want to be ________.' Filled in the blank and with backward E's, I had carefully printed 'A SUPERHERO.' Some things have changed since first grade, and some have not: I no longer write with backward E's, but I still intend to save the world. I recognize that this goal cannot be achieved only with optimism and good intentions. Achievement will require comprehensive preparation, wide exposure, well-cultivated contacts, validated moral courage and strong communication and reasoning skills. I hope to improve and develop these abilities at ______ Law. I am interested in public international law, particularly dealing with war, peace, and human rights. My ambition is to be a leader committed to peace and willing to achieve cooperative solutions in international forum. I hope to prepare myself for a career in diplomacy and policymaking, and then help educate the next generation of leaders through teaching and research. [school name] Law offers this opportunity, with great name recognition and leading authorities in the field. I have much to contribute to the ______ Law community: enthusiasm, intellectual curiosity, and a humanistic academic background developed through the Boston College Honors Program. My research skills are well practiced from my current research fellowship position, from a senior thesis on South Africa's nuclear weapons program, and from an internship with the IISS, London. At IISS I helped the Senior Fellow for European Security track the progress of the Common European Security and Defense Policy in becoming a viable instrument, able to work with NATO and promote regional confidence. This was my second summer abroad: in June and July 1999 I studied language, history, society, and politics in Paris as a Presidential Scholar and in Strasbourg at the Council of Europe. I attended the first Council of Europe Summer University, designed to raise awareness of human rights and international law as well as to foster cultural exchange among students from over twenty different nations. I intend to pursue a public service career, and I recently completed the first step - a year as an Americorps VISTA volunteer. My placement was in the U.S. Operations Division of ACCION International, a prominent non-profit microlender with Associates throughout the Americas and Africa. I was responsible for special projects under the Senior Director of Operations, including the development and implementation of a loan-application tracking system, maintenance of network policy and procedure, and ongoing support and computer systems training for the ACCION Associate programs. Through this work, I learned a great deal about development and finance and improved my management and strategic planning abilities. I was also fortunate enough to witness job creation and hard-working small business owners rising from near poverty to middle income. Achieving superhero stature is a challenge, but I have been raised to believe challenges can be overcome and goals achieved through hard work, determination, and positive thinking. My mother always said, 'You WILL succeed' and by believing this, I have. For example, when I began work at ACCION I was asked to learn Microsoft Access programming. At first the task seemed daunting, but after asking many questions of on-line workgroups, experimenting by trial-and-error, and reading help files, I built an extensive impact- and portfolio-tracking database. Another example of positive thinking paying off was my experience with the BC Varsity Fencing Team. I 'walked-on' to the (Div I) team freshman year. With hard word and perseverance I excelled, developing proficiency for independent action within team goals and a 'clutch' ability for success under pressure. In four years, I advanced from a beginner to MVP 2001 and a competitor in the 2001 NCAA National Championships. I was elected captain twice by my teammates, in recognition of my leadership, dedication and work ethic. Thank you for your consideration of my application.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
General open-ended personal statement.
When an important football game is coming up, a team cant afford to proceed in ignorance of the competition. They have to know which plays will be used against them, as well as what strategies will most effectively lead them to victory. For this reason, teams and coaches spend hours studying footage of their opponents in action. I want to study the law for a similar reason. For me, though, it's not just a game - the stakes are nothing less than my right to marry, to adopt children, to become a foster parent, to serve my country in the armed forces, to teach in public schools, to enjoy freedom from discrimination in housing and employment, and to be physically intimate without being branded a felon. I am a gay American, and the contest I'm talking about is taking place not on the gridiron but in the courtroom. The opponents of gays and lesbians are adept at using the law against us: numerous anti-gay statutes are presently on the books, and scores of new anti-gay bills, referenda, and court verdicts make headlines each year. When I was still years from coming out, for example, I watched in scared silence as the residents of my own hometown, Cincinnati, voted to constitutionally enshrine their 'right' to discriminate against gays. They were spurred on largely by the efforts of legally savvy representatives of the far right, who inflamed their prejudices and raised alarms over the purported 'gay agenda.' This, I would tell them, is my gay agenda: to find a satisfying job in a discrimination-free workplace; to find a loving, committed partner, and get married; to start a family and be a nurturing parent; to be a moral person and a good citizen; to lead a meaningful and happy life - no more, no less. Strangely enough, this is precisely what most heterosexuals want. Yet, somehow, for trying to obtain exactly this, gays and lesbians are accused of 'flaunting' their sexuality, 'recruiting' children, and seeking 'special rights.' Rhetoric and illogic like this help bring about laws such as Cincinnati's aforementioned Issue 3, laws which threaten to prevent me from ever attaining my own American dream. But while my opponents are using the law to attack and persecute, my teammates - gays, lesbians, and supporters - are fighting fire with fire. In 1996, the Supreme Court's blow against discrimination in Romer v. Evans brought hope to at least one closeted Midwestern high school boy. In 1997, although I didn't know it then, pro-gay bills proposed in state legislatures outnumbered anti-gay bills for the first time. And I cheered in 2000 when civil unions became legal in Vermont. As I approach graduation and the 'real world' looms large ahead of me, I am both angered at the remaining legal roadblocks on the way to gay civil equality and thrilled to be coming of age as a gay man at this historic moment, when I might somehow make a difference. This is why I want to study the law. My opponents, whom I will have to face as soon as I enter the adult world, have used the law for decades to keep gays and lesbians from enjoying the opportunity and dignity that every American deserves; no doubt they will continue to run these same plays against us in years to come. But somewhere in that same playbook are the keys to our victory. I just want to be prepared on game day.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
General Personal Statement-Major essay of 500+ words
The sun glints through my window on a shining San Juan morning and I bask the burning embrace of my own sweet light, beaming over Puerto Rico. The sun does indeed strike differently here. I remember the golden Boston sun of my college years, which was almost ornamental, emanating hardly any heat and bathing the world below in a shimmering aura, an unreal, fantastical glow. It was not the vibrant light that filled my childhood memories, stark and striking, always invigorating. And the pale blue sky was always a whispering echo of the turquoise canopy that filled my dreams. And yet, today, I seek to leave again. Even as I enjoy the savory typical Christmas dishes and the balmy weather of the winter months, I know that these things are not enough to make me content. I left Puerto Rico in search of the extraordinary opportunities offered to me as a literature student at Harvard University. And now that I am back, I have started itching from wanderlust again-the prospect of the unknown, of the extraordinary, has always been alluring. 'No man is an island, entire of itself;' wrote John Donne, 'every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.' This was a lesson I learned early on. My taste for traveling and exploring was whetted and nourished primarily through reading as I was growing up. Some of my first memories involve reading fairy tales, myths, and Bible stories with my mother and three younger siblings, sitting at my father's side as he translated stories into Spanish, or being roused as he came home with a bag full of ten-cent books from the Salvation Army store. In subsequent years, I visited many lands and characters through my books;in discovering my passion for words, I lived a thousand lives across time and space. By the time I graduated from high school, my traveling experience transcended my books - I had already been across the U.S. and to several Latin American countries with my family. I quickly became involved as Press Director with Harvard Model Congress Europe (HMCE), a conference for high school students which models different government organizations of international relevance. I found it extremely rewarding to instill a sense of political and social awareness in the students through their coverage of the intricacies of U.S.-international relations as simulated by the program. This experience with HMCE also enabled meto travel to Paris and London. Furthermore, the spring semester of my junior year I moved to Spain to study art history and literature, learning from my coursework, but also from visiting museums, the opera, restaurants and shows, wandering around the country and joining in the fray of impromptu celebrating. And at the end of the semester, I bought myself a cheap ticket to Rome, taking as my entire capital some four hundred dollars for three weeks. My time away from the island has fundamentally changed the way I perceive my cultural identity vis-`-vis the United States and the Hispanic world. Puerto Ricans claim Hispanic heritage and Spanish as an integral part of our national identity. And yet, our links to the rest of the Hispanic community are weak, whereas our infrastructures, and our collective fate, are intrinsically bound to the U.S. I learned more about Latin America away from P.R. by interacting closely with Hispanics from different national backgrounds than I had in all my previous years as a student. This strengthened my sense of vocation for law since I realized that as Puerto Ricans we are disenfranchised, that normal democratic channels are not available to us because of our peculiar relationship with the U.S. There is still much room for a redefinition of the laws that gird Puerto Rico to the rest of the Union. Today, I am committed to a career in law, but my passion for reading and writing, for the challenging and the intellectually stimulating, for advocacy and politics, had initially marked me for work as a journalist. As a high-school journalist, I was fascinated to learn that language, far from being a mere vehicle of communication, can also serve as a tool for chronicling and shaping history, public opinion, and the policy-making process. In my pursuit of journalism, I was driven by a desire to effect real change in the community through those snappy, juicy little articles I wrote and edited. I thus sought to work for organizations dedicated to raising public awareness of and proposing solutions to the problems and issues which plague our society. Yet an internship at Newsweek Magazine and especially the election coverage I performed for the Associated Press convinced me that I was more interested in the crafting of public policy and law. As I face a change in career paths, away from journalism and towards a legal practice, my continued aim is to craft documents with immediate impact, using my talent as a writer to improve the quality of public life. My work with the press has given me a sense of how public consciousness and opinion can shape the law, and has allowed me to cultivate qualities such as originality, keenness, the ability to work under pressure, and a commitment to the truth. It has also trained my writing specifically for precision and style, and so that it can serve as a sharper and finer tool for public service. Furthermore, my curriculum in college - ranging in courses from literature, foreign cultures and languages, government and history to moral reasoning, economics, religion, and anthropology - has given me analytical prowess and solid research skills. I want to use these skills more directly by being involved in politics and policy-making through a legal career. In the words of a Puerto Rican folk song, my heart stayed by the sea in Old San Juan, by the placid Caribbean shores. For now there is time, I feel, time for a hundred visions and revisions, to explore and learn, before I need to settle down. Eventually, however, I would like to return to Puerto Rico, using my talent and my education to forge significant social change and to improve the cultural and economic landscape on the island by bettering the international networks between the island and the rest of the world.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal statement
When my father began his private pediatrics practice, computers hadn't made their way into the small business world and most patients were not covered by health insurance. Billing was so simple that the same person could office manage, bill, and answer phones - by hand. Ten years later that would be impossible. My father bought a computer network and some medical billing software, and my mother went to join him. When I was old enough, I began to work summers there. This work, which only manages to sneak its way onto one line of my resume, became an important educational experience for me. While I started out just doing some filing, I quickly learned all the positions in the office, especially in billing. I posted charges and generated insurance claims. I processed insurance payments and collected patient balances. I realized I had even begun to memorize procedure and diagnosis billing codes! The most important task in the billing department was tracking unpaid claims. Armed with a heavy report of pending claims I called insurance companies and spoke to representatives. I learned that systems are not necessarily systematic. They are not necessarily accurate, and they are not necessarily efficient. They need to be scrutinized. They require one's initiative to keep them working properly. One summer one insurance company began to pay out a required childhood vaccine under cost to the physicians and I had to draft a letter to the insurance commissioner to get a representative's attention at the insurance company to change the pay rate. Another bought a scanner system to facilitate their claims processing. Unfortunately the software misinterpreted dates of service. Whenever a date was a single digit, for example, in the month, the software would run the first digit of the date into the second digit of the month, and so on, adding a zero at the end to fill the required number of digits. Our claims were denied payments on the grounds that we were claiming fraudulent dates-the year 2010 had not occurred yet! Our solution to the problem hinged on cooperation: we hand-wrote the claims and they manually processed them until the software problem was fixed. The system, left unchecked, could result in deteriorating patient care. One company stipulated in a contractwhich my father refused to sign-that medical assistants must enter the rooms before the doctor and interview the patients. Once they have done so the physician may enter and must direct his inquiries only to the assistants, avoiding patient contact in the name of efficiency. Cases along this vein are more common. For a while, several insurance plans covered well care only for even ages after the first year, so that a vaccine would be covered for a four-year old but not a three-year old. This formula clashed severely with immunization protocols. The Hepatitis B vaccine, for example, must be administered in three doses over the course of a year and a half. Despite their well care coverage, patients were actually left only partially covered. No amount of negotiating could budget the insurance companies. Fortunately the state decided to require most of the vaccinations in question by law, so those companies were forced to change the plans. I know it is strange that working in a pediatricians office would fuel my passion for law, but it did. The lesson that became engrained on my heart, that systems could and must be constantly challenged, reconciled the tension I had perceived between wanting to take initiative and wanting to work in a system of rules. I learned, first-hand, some of the pitfalls of an impersonal system. I gained an appreciation for how important it is for more people to have health insurance, given the rising costs of health care. I put into practice many skills I will need to be a successful lawyer: concise argumentation, clear communication, and knowledge of the topic at hand. These experiences are not the only ones which have guided me towards law, but they are the ones which have tied the others together into an understanding of my own attitude towards law and the challenges I am ready to undertake.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal Statement
Personal Statement Cleaning my room is a gentle excavation. During summers at home, I rumble the dust and sift through the layers of my accumulating life. Recently, I read through what classmates had written in my high school yearbook. It was a strange and unsettling experience as these words spoke directly to a self that I had nearly forgotten. I felt as if I were one of those Russian nesting dolls that hold several smaller dolls inside; the thought of multiple past identities coexisting inside me was new and wonderful. The words 'Do what you do best' caught my eye. If there were a way to know what one did best and could then train this possibility to the fullest extent, how could life not be both fruitful and enjoyable? Instead of asking the daunting question of what I did best, I thought about what I liked to do and what I did often. Perhaps in time, the source of these questions will lead me towards what I do best. I have always been drawn toward writing: creative, analytical, expository and critical. I realized that whatever I was pursuing, the beginning and end result for me were often made possible through writing. Thinking back to meaningful academic experiences in college, I realize all of them began with a presentation of my self and my interests through the medium of writing. I believe the only thing we can write about well is what we know, for this is the only truthful and never-ending source we are given. Often I was in the situation of writing a proposal to an audience of strangers, whether it be a scholarship committee, participants at the symposium, or fellow researchers at a presentation, and the only thing I could tell them was who I was and what I knew. Many times, these experiences culminated in reflective writing as well, not only a testament to what I had done but more an examination of where I had been, what space I had occupied and what space I now occupied. Writing became a way to capture the changing of my spaces, both around me and inside me, for I had to take into account the spaces within myself which had been excavated, explored, or widened because of particular experiences. My interest in law school received a personal and directive boost this summer while working as an assistant for a professor at my home town laws school. In the spring, I found his website and was intrigued by his work in international criminal trials and Asian human rights. I wrote a letter to the professor expressing my interest in working with him over the summer and thus began my first dip into the legal education. I began by learning about the fundamental conceptions of international law and the beginnings of the United Nations by way of an introductory textbook, and supplemented by meetings with my professor. Every time I stepped into the law library for research, I looked up into the winding staircases and ceaseless rows of books and I was captured by an overwhelming sense that in here existed something bigger than me; it had a long history and yet it pressed its urgency onto the future, and onto me as a burgeoning student in the legal education. Soon I began my project on the difficulty of international human rights standardization in Asia from a cultural perspective. I complemented research with current developments in human rights violations by reading and editing articles related to this topic, written mostly by scholars working from Asia. I brought into formal research my own cultural values and these two bodies of knowledge supported and challenged each other. These few months were an inspirational stepping stone for my future; it reconfirmed my dream to one day become a law professor and I also found a way in which my personal interests and academic strengths engaged each other. Since I have lived in Asia for only the first year of my life, I cannot explain exactly what draws me there and what strings pull at me to learn more, but friends and my own family are always perplexed at my fascination. In the past few years, my interest in Asia has extended into an academic context. In the spring of 2002, I was awarded a travel scholarship from my undergraduate university to travel and explore the relationship between culture and religion's sacred space. In the fall of 2002, I began a writing project on Asian-American attitudes toward their native language and I had the opportunity to present my work at a geo-linguistics conference. This past summer, however, was the turning point; in my study of Asian human rights, I realized the significant legal implication of cultural studies and as a Asian-American, the impact was deeply personal. I struggled with questions such as: What are the cultural origins for domestic legal policies on human rights in Asia? How can international policies regarding human rights be both effective and culturally sensitive? The overlap of culture and law offers a rich body of knowledge and I am eager to begin my scholarly pursuits in this area. The prospect of being a law student and with time, becoming knowledgeable in the area, is exciting to me because it combines what I enjoy and what I consider to be my strongest points: initiative, writing, and reflection. I would like to go into a discipline in which applications of what I have read, been taught, accumulated and experienced through the years are given concrete structure. For me, law represents the process in which philosophy is given solid construction; thoughts are grounded in reason; and writing becomes a powerful record of principles that guide and protect a society. I see law and writing as ways in which space is defined and thereby protected; both define boundaries and fill in necessary and often unrealized gaps. In the occupation I will later pursue, I would like to have the mind of a lawyer and the techniques of a writer. With these tools I believe I can become closer to the person who can fully realize self-potential; I believe I will be able to live out the words of advice 'Do what you do best' and thereby contribute positively to the society in which I live.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal statement
At thirteen - with baggy jeans and a voice that refused to change - I had my first trumpet lesson. My playing was strong, but my interest was lacking. Towards the end of that first lesson, my teacher changed the way I thought about music. I had played through De Gouy's 'Bolero' for him, proud to have hit every note. 'Nice,' he said, 'But I've heard it before. Next week, I want you to play it your way.' With that, he added my name to the score: 'Edited by S.' And I began to make music. From then until I was nineteen, music became my primary focus. Nowhere else did I feel as though I were creating meaning rather than merely receiving it. I excelled on my instrument, eventually playing at both Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Soon after I arrived at college, and I began to create meaning without an instrument in hand. My first opportunity was a class on ethical theory. Instead of merely reading texts, we explored their limits. I even wrote a paper on the failure of Homeric maxims under Kant's categorical imperative. 'Homeric maxims' are, naturally, rules for living according to Homer J. Simpson - my interest in Ancient Greek came later. While my work at that time might have been less than groundbreaking, I was enraptured by the chance to develop my own perspective. My interests in philosophy and music collided when I reflected, as a sophomore, on the question of peer-to-peer file-sharing. I had been using file-sharing applications for years, but with mounting litigation against such services and increased attention on the criminality of copyright infringement, I decided to put my philosophical tools to work on the ethics of file-sharing. But the initial search was aporetic: I needed to explore the underlying copyright theory. The research that followed culminated in an article entitled '[Title omitted]' which was published in the [Title omitted] Law Review. For the first time, my philosophical voice enjoyed a public performance. Though I did not thank my trumpet teacher, my article feels a bit like Lockean property theory, 'Edited by S.' I still love music, but what is even more exciting about making music in the scholarly realm is that my voice could change the way people live their lives. I do not expect that out of my article, of course. At this point, I would be thrilled if just a few people were to read the article. But being heard has inspired me to work harder: I hope to make more noise soon. My goal is to help shape the way society understands, regulates, and recognizes intellectual property in a digital world. I have developed a strong background already by working with Professor [Name] at Temple Law School, attending iLaw at the Berkman Center, and publishing an article on copyright. I can find no better place to continue my studies than at Harvard Law School for three reasons. First, I greatly admire Professor Fisher's work, particularly the alternative compensation system he advances in Promises to Keep. Second, my experience at iLaw was an amazing one, and I would love to contribute in any way possible to the Berkman Center's cutting edge research. Finally, Professor Zittrain's current research on the potentially grim future of the internet has been the primary inspiration for my current project, 'Running Headlong to Our Chains: The End of the Cyberstate of Nature.' At twenty-one, my jeans are not as baggy as they once were, and my voice has settled down. But my interest in creating meaning has not subsided. I make music every day, by rethinking property rights in intellectual products, by reinterpreting Kant, and, of course, by playing even that old 'Bolero' my own way. As a student of philosophy interested in music and law, shaping media policy is the perfect way to fuse my passions into a symphony of creativity. The laws of yesterday are not fit for the technologies of tomorrow. My goal is not to change the world, but to help resolve this discord. Perhaps one day, a small part of the way the world understands and regulates intellectual property in cyberspace will be 'Edited by S.'
