Hi Everybody.
First of all thank you guys so much for helping me out!!! I really appreciate it!
I will provide specific directions from the school itself, on what this statement should contain. Please check for ANY typos, grammar mistakes, or ambiguity. Because this statement is for law School I cannot afford to have any unclear writing! if you think there is a way to make it any clearer please help! Also, I am about a page over the limit, so if there are any parts you think that are unnecessary for revealing whether I am a good applicant or not than please tell me. Basically law schools are looking to see if I have skills such as writing, thinking analytically, researching, etc, all factors that make a good law student. Please Edit ASAP, im in a bit of a time crunch! Thank you!!
ACTUAL ESSAY:
Kneeling on the cold tile, I put my ear against his chest and listen desperately for a heartbeat. I start CPR. My attempts are in vain; he dies in my arms.
After the death of my father, I chose to attend XXX University (XXX), a large public university situated 45 minutes from my home, so I could help my family both financially and emotionally. Tackling these new responsibilities I often found myself wedged in the back seat of my car changing quickly for a meeting or an event. My change in attire coordinated with the roles I assumed as student, mortgage broker, mother to my siblings, and leader of various student organizations. I attended parent teacher conferences for my younger sister in between classes, and swapped sneakers for heels as I rushed to closings at my mortgage company. His passing had a profound effect on my life; it forced me to take on professional challenges at an early age, and develop an acute awareness of our limited time to make an impact on our world. The results of these experiences have inspired and cultivated my interest in International human rights and public policy making.
Double majoring in Political Science and Interdisciplinary studies, I gravitated towards classes related to the Middle East because of my Pakistani ethnicity. While my coursework provided me with the conceptual framework to understand the processes that structure government and the state, it was tangible experiences such as supporting our struggling family, participating in Model UN, and studying Arabic abroad, which inspired and my desire to study international human rights law, with a focus on the Middle East. While volunteering as a teacher for Sudanese refugees in Egypt, my students' struggles with discrimination by the Egyptian government made my desire to correct these human rights violations deeply personal. Witnessing the Egyptian government manipulate legislation to stall benefits for refugees showed me the critical role that law and policy play in affording people basic human rights. Their suffering resonated with me because of my own struggle with economic hardship. My success today is a direct result of the social benefits I received such as public education; benefits they were being denied. I realize it requires deeply ethical and compassionate human beings to formulate and correct policy in a positive manner. My own struggles have provided me with the empathy necessary to do so. Additionally, the skills and lessons I uncovered throughout my professional experiences as a business analyst and a mortgage broker have prepared me for the rigors of law school and a future in policy making.
Becoming a licensed mortgage broker at eighteen not only taught me how to connect with clients on a personal level and become accountable for my own success at a young age, it also taught me important ethical lessons. I witnessed some of our competitors ignoring standard underwriting practices meant to protect the lender and writing mortgages for people who should not have qualified. As a result, practices like these contributed to our nation's recent economic turmoil. I have come to see firsthand how perverse economic and legal incentives initiated by the government can wreak havoc on the lives of everyday people, if not handled ethically. In the future, I hope to be a part of the legal teams which will craft responses to these types of ethical breaches and human rights abuses.
I know succeeding in law school and policy making requires more than just desire. It also requires practical skills; many of which I learned and refined working as a business analyst at XXX. For example, my assignment working with a busy Florida law firm specializing in HOA collections tested my ability problem solve, research, and lead a large team. The success of the project depended on my ability to communicate my theoretical concepts effectively to our team of software engineers and designers. I promised the partners at the firm custom software that would automate their processes and cut their operating expenses by fifty percent. And it did. The software was so successful, XXX decided to build a company around the technology, selling the software to law firms across the United States. Like a policy maker, each project I take on comes with its own set of complex problems to which I must seek new and innovative solutions. My experience improving efficiency for XXX clients is an essential skill that I can utilize to one day formulate efficient public policy.
I possess the drive, skills, analytical ability, and compassion to succeed in law school and policy making. Now, I want to acquire the legal training which will allow me to have the greatest impact on the creation and implementation of human rights policy. XXX Law School is the perfect institution to prepare me for a future in policy making. The Islamic Legal studies program at XXX provides an excellent arena which combines my interest in the Middle East along with my desire to study the law. I hope to proudly don a maroon sweatshirt and take on my next role; a XXX Law School student.
Oh, this is great. Every bit of it is interesting and important, so it's too bad that you must cut some of it. I could find no paragraph to cut, so what you'll have to do is go through the essay and trim away some unnecessary sentences. I could not find any that didn't seem important, which shows that you sure don't waste any words!
I fondly remember my first failed attempt at cooking .
...taught by Martha Stewart on TV.
...with the insight and knowledge needed to contribute to and foster healthy classroom discussion on important issues,...
Learning how to generate my own business and connect with clients has taught me how to become...
In the process, I learned the significance of each and every word in a legal document.
...responses to these types of such ethical breaches and human rights abuses.
This essay is so good that I hesitate to make any suggestions.
As I look at this sentence, Becoming a licensed mortgage broker --it makes me thing this sentence should be preceded by a paragraph topic sentence that helps to reinforce the idea you want to make linger in the reader's mind. Establish the topic of the paragraph in a way that supports the main message of the essay.
The ending is a little cheesy. :-) I think if you ask yourself this question you will be able to revise the expression of the main idea at the beginning and end of the essay: "What is a sentence that captures the main message of the essay? Try to write a sentence like that at the end of the essay. Let the last sentence of the essay be one that captures the message of the whole essay in a single sentence.
That is not what essayists should always do, obviously, but it is something I think would be nice here.
