Avoid These 5 Common Personal Statement Mistakes That Could Hurt Your Master of Laws Application

One of the key components of a master of laws (LL.M.) application is personal statement. Personal statement is as essay where you talk about your past, your present, and your plans for the future.

Personal statement is one of the most important documents in your application, because it's the document that you have most control over. It is also usually the only document where your voice comes through. Other documents, like your CV, letters of recommendation, and test scores obviously complete the package but personal statement gives the admissions committee an insight into who you are and what you stand for, your personal philosophy and values.

For many people, personal statement is one of the most difficult documents in the application. It certainly was for me. When I decided to apply for a master's, I already had an extensive experience of writing motivation letters for other types of programs like summer schools, internships, and exchange studies. These motivation letters, however, were much simpler. They required a coherent summary of professional development and the reasons as to why I was applying but nothing more than that. Personal statements for a master's, however, are usually more complex because they require you to articulate your long-term career goals, relate these goals to your professional background and the program you've chosen, and generally show a much higher level of self-awareness.

When I started working on my first master's applications, I was lost. I saved all examples of the essays I could find on the web, be it personal statements for college or MBA or PhD. I did not just read and study them - I devoured them. I saved the quotes and phrases I liked in a separate file. I practiced writing myself. I did multiple brainstorming sessions to surface memories from my past, insights about my present, and plans for my future. It took me a while to write a decent personal statement but in the end I think I succeeded. By the end of the application cycle, I had acceptances from the University of Cambridge, the Geneva Center for International Dispute Settlement (probably one of the best dispute resolution programs out there), the New York University School of Law, and Harvard Law School.

Since then, I've given feedback on tons of personal statements for my friends, friends' friends, and a larger circle people as an admissions mentor on Fiverr and the DYAD mentorship platform. I've noticed some patterns in personal statements that prevent people from succeeding, and would like to share them here to help you avoid them.

Let's dive in.

Mistake No 1: Restating Your CV

Personal statement is a place where you talk about things that the admissions committee will not be able to learn about you from the other parts of your application. These things may concern the reasons behind your choice of a particular program; your professional and personal path up to this point; the moments in your life that have been formative for you; your professional goals; how the degree you are getting will help you realize your plans for the future; and the like.

All those things are usually not evident from your CV or any other parts of your application. Accordingly, personal statement is the only place where you can make them known and heard to the admissions officers. If you just repeat your achievements and grades or whatever else is written in your CV, this information will not have any added value for them and will certainly not help your application. Worse, it will probably be seen as lazy: Repeating your CV will make the admissions committee conclude that you did not put enough effort into your personal statement and probably do not care enough about getting in. Personal statement is your opportunity to show that you know yourself: You know who you are, where you've been, where you're headed, and - most importantly - why you're headed where you're headed.

Mistake No 2: Centering the Personal Statement on Your Field of Study, Your Trauma, or Someone Else

Personal statement (or motivation letter, or statement of purpose) is about you and your journey. I know it's hard to write about yourself. It seems preposterous to devote the entire essay to yourself. But if you want to get admitted, you've got to do it.

Even though most people know that a personal essay needs to be about them, it doesn't always translate into their actual essays. Quite often, applicants inadvertently center the essay on their field of study, their trauma, or another person.

I certainly did this mistake myself. One of my first personal statements was essentially a treatise on the importance of law for the society. I felt obliged to explain my choice of law as a specialty to the admissions committee. I believed it was so much more important than my own persona that I spent my entire word count talking about the recent reform of Russian law and how important it was. As a result, I did not have enough space to explain to the admissions committee the motivation behind my application. No wonder I got a rejection.

Other times applicants get too caught up in a story of their personal trauma. They start and finish their personal statements talking about the trauma and nothing else, as if they were still that 10- or 12-year girl or boy in the grip of unfortunate circumstances. Try to avoid that. If you decide to talk about trauma in your personal statement, do it because it's important for your argument and don't make it the only thing you talk about. Instead, show how you overcame that trauma, how the trauma made you the person you are today, and how it connects to your application.

The same goes for centering someone else in your personal statement, whether it is a family member, a mentor, or someone else who inspired you or helped you along the way. If you write about someone who means a lot to you and who played an important role in your application, don't make the entire personal statement about this person. This person is not applying for a master's. You are. The admissions committee will be making a decision about you, and therefore will be interested in you. Write accordingly.

Mistake No 3: Using clichés

Avoid using clichés. According to Oxford Dictionary, a cliché is "a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought."

Examples of clichés in personal statements are:

"I am the culmination of my experiences"

"I have always wanted to become a lawyer/doctor/XYZ"

"From a young age I have felt passionate about/have been fascinated by..."

"My life has been a journey"

"As long as I can remember..."

"My love of astronomy began when I did X/Y/Z..."

"Ever since I was young"

These statements are clichés because they are too general. They apply virtually to everybody, and as a consequence don't really mean anything. They are so overused by applicants that they don't really say anything about you to the admissions committee.

Sometimes, though, it's not that easy to recognize a cliché as a cliché, especially if you are not a native English speaker. You simply can't know all the connotations in the language that is foreign to you. In that case, as a rule of thumb, try to avoid generalized statements that don't move your argument forward and don't communicate valuable information about you to the admissions committee.

Mistake No 4: Not Being Specific and Not Giving Evidence for Your Claims

The well-known writing mantra 'show, don't tell' applies to personal statements too. There is a great difference between telling and showing. In a personal statement, like in other kinds of writing, it's better to show than just tell. After you show, you may get to tell a little bit, but only after you show, not before and not instead.

Showing means providing evidence for the claims you make about yourself. It also means being specific and giving precise details about what happened and what it meant for you.

For instance, instead of just saying that you are hardworking, give an example and narrate how you won that regional or national competition. That will serve as the evidence of your claim that you are a hardworking person capable of meeting the academic demands of a master's program. Even if you don't say directly that you are hardworking, the admissions committee will think that, because they will see the evidence. Similarly, instead of just saying that you are a team player, tell about the time you were in charge of a group of five people and you led them to success. Give specific details. Again, even if you don't use the words 'team player', your readers will think them.

Generally, for each attribute that you claim to have in your personal statement, give your readers a reason to believe you, an evidence, a specific detail, and the readers will make the conclusions for themselves.

Mistake No 5: Not Proofreading

When you are done with your draft personal statement, proofread it thoroughly. Proofread multiple times. Print it out and proofread. As an author, you are bound to miss your own mistakes, so ask a friend to read it. Ask a colleague to read it. Take it very seriously.

The admissions committee has zero tolerance to mistakes and errors. If you submit a personal statement with typos, it will not be taken lightly. The admissions committee won't care about your reasons for not checking the essay for errors. Rather, they will assume that you could not be bothered to proofread your essay properly and maybe you just don't want badly enough to get in the program.

Proofread as if your life depended on it because in admissions it does. (c) A.V. Gordon

BONUS Mistake No. 6: Trying to Be Someone Else

One of the most pervasive misconceptions among applicants is that 'they,' meaning the admissions committee, look for certain types of people, and only those who conform to this ideal will get in.

The good news is that this is not true. You don't need to conform to any ideal. You don't need to belong to a particular 'type' of people. And you don't need to have a certain type of profile to get in. You also don't need to have won every possible award, taken part in every competition, learnt every existing musical instrument, and volunteered for every cause out there. People like this don't exist anyway, and they are not what the admissions committee is looking for. What they want is an insight into who you are - the true, real, authentic you, not an idealized version of you.

In a way, personal statement is an exercise in self-awareness and self-analysis, and this is what you need to show. It does not matter so much what profile you have; what matters is how well you know yourself and how you present it to the admissions committee.