Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A collection of mediocre cover letters, November 3, 2001
By A Customer
If you're writing a personal statement for a law school in the top 14, stay away from this book. You can already write something more interesting than any of their sample essays.
The advice they give is fine, especially the general tips on how to organize your thoughts. But the book is 90% a collection of essays, and they are uniformly atrocious.
Almost all of the essays are variations on the theme of 'experience in my life that made me want to be a lawyer.' This is not the kind of essay the admissions committee at Harvard or Yale wants to hear. They want an interesting look at the kind of person you are, not a cheesy story about how working for a state senator made you realize the importance of community service. Essays are not the time to list your accomplishments. That's why Yale's application doesn't have you fill out any forms, but instead asks for a resume.
If you're looking for good essays to get your creative juices flowing, avoid this book like the plague.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Resource!, March 23, 2002
This book is an excellent resource. It includes tips for writing your essay as well as 40 sample essays.There is criticism from other reviewers that the 40 sample essays aren't that good. I liked some of them, but I will freely admit that many of them completely turned me off. But, we have to remember two things. First, these essays are not written by professional writers, but by law school applicants - a successful law school essay is not necessarily going to be a brilliant work of literature. Second, we don't have to like the essays or think they're very good, someone on the admissions board of a top school already read each of these essays and admitted the student. In other words, the essays target audience liked the essay and that is why it's a good essay. This book's first chapter is called "Assess Your Audience." My essay was mostly written before I bought this book. But it's always those last finishing touches that are the hardest and take the longest. I was at the point with my essay were I wasn't really satisfied with it, but I didn't know how to fix it. This book has many tips - many of which are elemental and basic and many I chose to ignore. The decision to reject the books tips made me more aware of the structure of my essay and confirmed how I wanted to present myself. I also found the essays very helpful. Your own essay can be too personal to analyze objectively. In reading the other essays, especially the weaker ones, I found aspects I didn't like and was then better able to review my own essay to see if I made the same mistakes. When I finished my essay and finished this book I was very happy with my essay. I even sent it to a professional graduate school essay editor for tips on what was still needed and it was sent back to me because the editor said it was ready to submit. When you're preparing to apply to law school, there is so much going on and so many things to keep straight I found that this book helped me feel there was order to one aspect of that process. That, in itself, is useful.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Blueprint for How to Write Your Essay, December 7, 2000
This book is an excellent guide for how to structure and write your personal statement. Some of the tips and writing exercises were a little too remedial to be helpful, but the authors really helped me understand what admissions officers are looking for. By following the guidelines in this book, I was able to make the final draft of my essay much better than the first version was. As this book points out, the key is to write your essay so that it not only grabs the attention of the reader like a commercial would, but also to make it memorable enough so that the admissions officer still remembers your essay after finishing reading a hundred other people's personal statements. This book helped me make the writing in my essay tighter, better organized, and more coherent.As for the forty sample essays, I was amazed at how dull and boring many of them were. But that actually boosted my confidence level, because I realized that my essay had a good chance of making a positive impression on an admissions officer. If you need help writing your essay, this book is excellent. It's much better than Boykin Curry's "Essays that Worked for Law Schools."
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