[quote]kcushijima wrote:
…
Regarding diversity, it definitely helps. But not just with race and socio-economic background. Your undergrad major and life situation play a big role. So be sure to use your personal statement to illustrate what your scores do not tell about you. There are law students straight from undergrad and students who are in their 40’s who have had kids, divorces, and previous careers.
In my statement, I wrote about being a songwriter and I also brang up some life experiences. Then tied it in with why I want to go to law school. I also mentioned that I was able to get the company I worked for to pay for my LSAT prep course. The company had a continuing education program, and I was able to convince HR that an LSAT prep course should be considered as continuing education even though I would not receive school credit.
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On how helpful any non-racial type of diversity would be, here’s another perspective, from a commenter on a thread at volokh.com:
[i]When I applied to law school, I went in with extremely bad “numbers,” but a “really good story” to explain those numbers and (what I believed) showed that I would be an academic success story in law school. I contacted over a dozen schools and was assured that they looked beyond the numbers at the “whole person.” After a string of rejection letters, I was finally accepted by a school. I paid my own tuition out of my own pocket.
I finished my first year near the top of my class and was offered a large scholarship if I would stay.
During my second year, I approached the dean of admissions, reminded him of my “bad numbers” with a “really good story,” thanked him for taking my application seriously, and asked him a blunt question about the promises that I had received from law schools to look at the “whole person.”
His answer?
“It’s all bullshit. We admit people based on how they would affect our U.S. News rankings. Besides, if you had been admitted to a higher ranked school, you would have gone to the highest ranked school that admitted you, right?”
Conclusion: We can talk all we want about how much of a disservice US News does to law schools and law students. It doesn’t matter one bit unless the hiring managers and law schools team up to kill the rankings. And I doubt that will ever happen.
I’m currently very happy with my “big firm” job after having beaten enormous odds to get where I am now. If I had known how risky the gamble actually was, I might not have made the same decision.[/i]