What, Like It’s Hard? // Supplemental essays and other forms of torture

I have only just finally wrapped up my law school applications. It took weeks of tedious work and hours of what little free time I do have. Honestly, now that I am on the other side of it all, I simply don’t know how I did it for so long. I am barely balancing my classes and holding it together. Other than my responsibilities here at The Pitt News and a few other extracurriculars, I am, for the first time since my first year here, just a college student. I am not studying for the LSAT or preparing application materials.

What’s almost ironic is that I had my letters of recommendation secured by April. My final LSAT score came in early July. I completed the final draft of my personal statement all the way back in early September. How did it nearly take me until nearly November to complete all my applications when it looks like I basically had everything I needed?

Supplemental essays were the bane of my existence for weeks.

Shout out to Pitt’s pre-law adviser Alex Ball, my mom, my best friend and all the other people I had read and reread every last supplemental essay I submitted. I really couldn’t have done it without you. Did I need fresh eyes on dozens of essays I only marginally changed between each school? Yes. Yes, I did. Livia four weeks ago and Livia now both concur.

Supplemental essays are exactly what they sound like — they are supplemental documents to your law school application. For a lot of schools, these are completely optional essays meant for you to exhibit more of your personality and give more information to adcomm. For adcomm, supplementals are used to gauge how invested you really are in its institution. You know what they say about optional application materials — they’re not optional at all.

In my experience, the schools will give you a variety of prompts and encourage you to answer at least one, if not a handful of prompts in one to two-page essays. For a few schools, I wrote about my experience being a leader. For another school, I wrote about my 13 years on a soccer field. For one, Georgetown University’s infamous supplemental questions, I listed the 10 best songs I have ever performed on stage. A lot of schools will also give you the opportunity to write “why essays.” These essays are basically for you to list the reasons why you want to attend. They’re pretty typical for most applications to higher education — most of us wrote them when applying for our undergraduate institutions. I wrote around four different “why essays” across the 13 applications I sent out. I could have written more, but ultimately decided that there were other prompts I would rather answer.

For a few schools, there are mandatory essays outside of the personal statement. The one that comes to mind is Harvard Law School’s Statement of Perspective. Oftentimes, if an essay is going to be required, it is going to be the misleading “diversity statement.” 

The diversity statement may or may not be required of your application, but unless you are truly the stalest piece of white bread amongst loaves of Wonder Bread, writing one is highly encouraged. The moniker “diversity statement” doesn’t exactly do the prompts asked of you justice. This essay doesn’t require one to be an underrepresented minority or nontraditional applicant to write about how they are underrepresented in the legal profession and therefore deserve a spot at an institution. Rather, it’s more about how your lived experiences inform your perspective, how they will be foundational and how they will fuel your time at law school.

Everytime I would explain this to someone, they would roll their eyes. I felt like doing so too when I finally pressed submit on my very last application.

I wrote two different diversity statements. Honestly, which one I submitted and tweaked depended on the exact wording of the prompt I was being asked and the vibes of the day. For one, I wrote out the same story I told in my very first blog post, explaining how growing up in a rural and bigoted school shaped my definition of justice. For the second one, I wrote about growing up working in my family’s non-profit organizations and how service has shaped my life and career calling. I am a white, straight, cisgendered woman. 

Other than being a woman and therefore decently underrepresented in the legal profession, I knew I needed something more that would help me stand out. I don’t have very many decisions back yet, but I’d like to think I did a good job highlighting that I am a diverse candidate who brings a unique perspective into the law school environment. Honestly, that’s your ultimate goal with the diversity statement.

Trust me when I say these essays took weeks and months to complete. Even though many were recycled and tweaked depending on the wording of the essay prompt and the school I was applying to, these essays are what took up the bulk of my application process. Do not underestimate how long these take, especially if you are still working on your personal statement, taking the LSAT and trying to get your recommendation letters together.

If I could do it all over again, I would try harder to find the supplemental prompts well before applications open up in early September. That way, I could at least prepare drafts before applications open up and figure out which prompts overlap with each other so I am not scrambling to write 30+ different essays that all really say the same thing.

Most schools have lots of really fun prompts, so enjoy the process as much as you can — these essays aren’t just hurdles but a chance to introduce yourself to your future law school in the most authentic way possible. Before you know it, you’ll be all done and waiting ever so impatiently for decisions to roll in.