Strengthening Your Law School Personal Statement: Flow & Word Choice
By Sydney Montgomery, Esq. | Founder & Law School Admissions Consultant
What makes good writing? How can you strengthen your writing so that your content doesn’t get lost because of your writing mechanics? Let’s talk about it!
Welcome to the first part of our new mini-series, Strengthening Your Writing Style in Your Essays! I was an English major at Princeton University, but I can tell you that when I first started I was worried that I wouldn’t have what it takes to write effectively. There were a lot of mechanics that I did not feel confident in, which is why I’m so passionate about helping students strengthen and feel confident in their writing.
Would you rather listen to this blog post? Listen to Strengthening Your Writing Style - Part 1 on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts!
You may be wondering - what does this have to do with law school admissions? A lot!
Admissions officers only spend about 15-20 minutes on your application materials. They’re trying to understand who you are, and you are trying to explain your impact, why you want to go to law school, all the reasons you’ll be a good fit, etc. All of that can get lost if they are stuck on the writing style.
When I receive a personal statement to edit or review and immediately am drawn in by the writing style, now I’m able to focus on the content. I’m 100% focused on who that person is, I’m feeling what they want me to feel, and I have a positive response.
Sometimes, if I get a personal statement that isn’t well-written, I find myself reading the sentence three or four times to try and figure out what they’re saying. I am not as focused on what you’re saying, because I’m struggling to understand it. At the end, my emotions are not the same about you as an applicant as I might be about an applicant that has a strong, well-written essay.
Something as silly as commas or emdashes shouldn’t be what makes admissions be on the fence about your application. And this is one factor that you can be in control of before pressing submit!
A lot of people ask me how they can stand out to admissions. Write a well-written essay. Have a beautiful narrative opening scene, use semicolons and em dashes appropriately, have flow in your writing. These are all of the things that will make admissions drawn in when they get to your essay, and that’s a great impression that you’re leaving with them.
So, let’s get into the main pieces of strong writing that we’re going over today: flow and word choice.
Flow
Flow is one of the most common things that we find ourselves correcting with students. The way that we like to teach flow is by thinking about a trip. You want your essay to feel like you’re going on a journey, and you want that journey to be smooth from Point A to Point B. You want to get that “wow, we’re here already” feeling rather than the “are we there yet” feeling when reading the essay.
Sometimes students submit essays that are very choppy. When sentences are short, disjointed, and don’t have transitions, that definitely feels like a long trip.
The first piece of advice I’m going to give is to read your essay out loud, preferably to somebody. When you read it to someone else, you start to realize when you have awkward sentences and they are losing attention.
Second, there are a few types of punctuation that can also help to make your sentences flow.
Semicolons (;) are great for combining two shorter sentences with similar themes. I see a lot of students make mistakes here by using a comma. If there are two independent clauses, they need to be separated by a semicolon rather than a comma.
For example: “Johnny and I walked to the store; the store was five miles from our house.” There are two independent clauses here. An easy way to tell is if these two ideas can be said as their own full sentences. Because they can, a semicolon should be used instead of a comma.
If you want to set something aside, rather than putting it in parentheses, consider using a comma (,) or and em dash (—).
As a reminder, an em dash is the longer of the two dashes. It looks more professional to use the em dash (—) than the shorter dash (-), which I often see people using in writing by mistake.
Cadence and Varied Rhythm
All of your sentences shouldn’t be short, but all of your sentences shouldn’t be long. You want to have that variety of sentences purposefully.
Your personal statement is a narrative piece of writing. Sometimes students write their personal statement like an academic essay or like a letter. You shouldn’t be telling admissions something, you should be creating a story for them to read about your life.
You want to be thinking about which points you’re going to emphasize in your writing. You may have a few flowier, imagery-focused sentences, and then you want to make a strong point afterward with a shorter sentence. Maybe you’re trying to find ways to connect to complex thoughts together. These are things you should be intentional about.
I want to emphasize again how important it is to read your essay out loud to someone else. You can feel how you would say the sentences and how they connect. Where are you pausing? What punctuation should be added to create that pause?
Your cadence and rhythm when you’re speaking should match what is on the paper. That gives your reader a proper impression of you.
Another exercise you could do is give your personal statement to someone else to read out loud. If you hear them speaking it back to you and it’s not how you intended for it to sound, look at your sentence structure and think about what you wanted it to sound like.
Word Choice and Diction
I hinted at this earlier, but you want to have an elevated tone when you’re writing. You’re not writing like you’re talking to your friend or texting someone. You’re writing for a very specific audience.
However, you don’t want to be too dense.
Often, I have students who think that because they’re writing to law school they should use every big word they’ve ever learned. They end up using 10 different words for something that should have taken three. Now, the admissions officer is reading the sentence two or three times to try and understand what your point was.
It’s also important to recognize that the audience you’re speaking to may not always know what you’re talking about. If you’re coming from a STEM background, you may be talking about things that you’re trying to do or study that the average person doesn’t understand. You can talk about those things, but you need to make sure it’s digestible for the average person.
You also want to make sure that it’s authentic to you. As you’re putting words in your personal statement, think about whether that’s a word you usually use. If not, don’t use it. You don’t need large or fancy language to get into law school; the language that you have is fine.
Your writing just needs to be clear, professional, and emotive.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of mechanics and rules that come with strong writing, but they are learning. It takes a little practice and memorization, but they are worth learning.
The main things I want you to walk away with this blog from are:
You’re going to read your personal statement out loud.
You’re going to give your personal statement to read out loud to you to make sure it sounds how you want it to sound.
You’re going to look at the difference between punctuations and what should be used with independent vs. dependent clauses.
You’re going to vary your sentences to include some shorter and some longer sentences.
You’re going to elevate your word choice from casual speak, but you’re going to bring it down from ivory tower language.
You’re going to make sure that there is an emotive presence in your writing.
The goal is for there to be movement in writing, which will make it a smooth trip from the beginning to the end.
Stay posted as we continue this series to talk more about how you can strengthen your writing for your admissions essays!
The team at S. Montgomery Admissions Consulting is here to support you through this law school application cycle! Whether it's through personalized one-on-one counseling, our Essay Editing Combo Plans, or just downloading our free Essential Guide to Applying to Law School, there is definitely something we can do for you to help make this process a little bit easier.
As always, feel free to reach out to us at hello@smontgomeryconsulting.com with any of your questions! You can also submit a question to be answered on our weekly Break Into Law School® Podcast, streaming wherever your favorite podcast service is.