Lesson Seven: The Diversity Essay
What’s Your Perspective?
For many law programs, diversity has become more than just a buzzword—there has been a genuine interest in getting a broader range of voices both into the classroom and into the legal field. The diversity statement offers you a chance to explain how you would bring a different perspective to your class, but for such a seemingly simple question, it can prove deceptively difficult. Even if you think you have an obvious answer, how should you address it?
Being Diverse in Diverse Ways
The most important thing to address with diversity is this:
It’s not that you are diverse, it’s how diversity has impacted you.
Most frequently, you will hear “diversity” in terms of what it is like to be a minority in skin color, sexual orientation, or nationality in a given environment. And these are all perfectly valid things to talk about—but you need to go beyond just the fact that you were categorically diverse. Ask yourself:
· How was I affected, for better and for worse, for being diverse in this environment?
· How has this affected how I view the world?
· How have I changed as a result of going through this environment?
How Are You Diverse?
Diversity, however, does not have to be limited to just skin color, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. As long as you have some part of your identity that differs from those around you, you could write about it. You could discuss, for example:
· Joining the military while all your friends got private sector jobs
· Being from a public high school before going to a private college
· Living on a farm before moving to a city for college
· Being raised by a single parent or a relative
· Working multiple jobs, even in your teenage years, when your peers did not
Being diverse is not just in how you look or how you identify, it is in your perspective on the world and the experiences you have had. If you truly feel you have something that differentiates you from your peers, and you can write about how it has shaped you and your beliefs, it can make for a powerful essay, no matter what “something” may be.
Brainstorming for the Diversity Essay
With that all said, understanding the best guidelines and implementing them for yourself can prove quite challenging! So here are some brainstorming questions to help you generate the best topic yet:
· What are five experiences, traits, or features about you that make you either unique or in the minority of your social or professional circles?
· Of these five, which one has most shaped how you view and approach the world?
· What is an experience of the one you picked that shows the impact it has had on you?
Once you have that story, just as in the personal statement, you can use it to show your overarching message and then reflect upon it.
Diversity Essay Checklist
· Do: Look beyond the obvious answer. One of our favorite essays we worked on was where a student from Spain wrote about growing up in a public school while all his peers who went to the U.S. for college attended prestigious international high schools.
· Do: Look beyond the facts and to your feelings and experiences. It’s not just that the student above went to public school; it’s that he understood what most of Spain lived like and their difficulties. He didn’t just read about them in a textbook; he lived with them.
· Do: Be personal and look ahead. The student in this example discussed early fights he had with his parents about wanting to attend private school in his youth, fearing that he could fall behind. In the same essay, he talked about how this upbringing has now inspired him to focus more on lower socioeconomic clients and pro bono work. Don’t be afraid to get into some emotional moments—it will be what makes you stand out.
· Don’t: Turn your focus outside of you. It's easy if you feel you are not diverse to use someone else as an example of what you "could" have gone through. This will never work—focus on yourself.
· Don’t: Write what you think the admissions committee wants. We have said it before, but it is so common a mistake we need to say it again. What the admission committee wants is authenticity, and they can tell quickly if you went for what you thought sounded good versus what was genuine.
· Don’t: Write this essay just for the sake of writing it. While some schools will require a diversity statement, others will give you the option to do so. If you genuinely do not feel like you have anything personal or compelling to write about, the worst thing you can do is stretch the truth. Better to let everything else you have written stand for you than to add something that clearly does not fit and hurts your application.
Sample Essay
The following excerpts come from a Yale student who publicly posted her diversity statement online. In it, we will review parts that worked and parts that could have been better. It starts:
I was born before either of my parents were granted citizenship, but thanks to birthright citizenship I am able to have my piece of the American dream. My parents, refugees from Belarus, escaped religious persecution and came to America with nothing.
In the first two sentences, we establish this student is an immigrant, escaped a dangerous situation, and came to America impoverished. Although it would have been preferable to focus the essay on her, providing some context for his upbringing can work as long as it is done relatively quickly and as long as it relates to her life. It would not make sense, for example, if his parents came over with little to their name, but by the time he was born, he lived in relative affluence and had little connection to his parents’ national heritage.
Having the opportunity to speak to my grandparents and other older members of the Russian-American community has also given me a realistic view of the horrors of the Holocaust. Though the events occurred 70 years ago, we are not far removed. My grandparents successfully ran from the Nazis, but many other family members weren’t so lucky. Just two generations ago we faced the evils of Hitler, and since then the world has seen no shortage of atrocities. Complacency is unacceptable, and I am so humbled to be able to speak to my grandparents about their struggles in their native language.
For this part, we would have asked the student to focus on him being humbled. The first 80 or so words could have been shortened to something like, “Speaking to my grandparents, who survived the Holocaust while other family members did not, humbled me. Listening to them speak, I…” There are some parts here that do not need to be written for the sake of common knowledge; for example, “Though the events occurred 70 years ago, we are not far removed,” does not share anything personal, nor does it provide information a reader would not know. In short, while this is obviously the right topic, for it is personal and it is about diversity, the details are a bit too focused on external events and not on his own experience.
Contrasting America to the Soviet Union has given me an immense appreciation for our constitutional rights. For me, this respect has manifested itself in registering voters.
Here, the student discusses how his childhood—and, by extension, family’s history—has affected his viewpoint and actions. This is critical to mention because the same situation or experience of being diverse can affect people in different ways. Mentioning that he has become politically active through voter registration gives us a sense of what he values and that he will act on those values.
As a constitutional lawyer, I hope to safeguard the rights of media publications, artists, protesters, and all those who want to express their First Amendment rights.
Finally, by closing the essay with a paragraph about how he will use his perspective and beliefs in her career, he demonstrates he understands his past, present, and future well, and that he will utilize law school to maximize her values and beliefs derived from his diverse experience.
Once you’ve done both the personal and diversity statements, in most cases, you’ll just have one optional essay left—the addendum.
