The essay that got me into NYU Law
Was an optional scholarship essay I submitted as a fluke
Four weeks after I submitted my law school application to NYU Law, my phone rang on silent. I feverishly skimmed the voicemail an hour later. I was admitted to NYU Law, one of the best law schools in the U.S..
Quickly after, they sent me a scholarship letter with 25K of aid a year, which I later negotiated up to 30K.
Yet, three months later, I was only admitted to one other Tier 1 school (Cornell), while all the other schools outright rejected, reserved, or waitlisted me. How, then, did I get into NYU Law (and with such substantial aid)?
What got me into NYU Law was a scholarship essay I submitted as a second thought.
As I reflect in another post, the core of my law school application middled. It obsessively defended why I should be a lawyer, answering the questions: “Why should I be a lawyer over another profession? Am I becoming a lawyer for the right reasons? Will I make taking on 100,000+ of debt worth it?”
But I was not applying to a real-world attorney job, I was applying to law school. The playing field reflected the attitudes and preferences of admissions officers. The questions I should have answered were: “What unique skills or background do you have, unrelated to the law? Are you someone interesting?”
The scholarship essay I submitted for NYU’s Law and Business scholarship presented a shiny new side unrelated to law: being an entrepreneur. Though directed at the Law and Business program leads, in a fortunate twist of circumstances, this scholarship essay was enclosed directly in my application for all admissions readers to see.
With a personal statement that did not stand out and an unimpressive diversity statement, read the scholarship essay that cinched my admission to a top 7 law school below.
A lifelong entrepreneur, I attended my first Sustainable Princeton meeting my freshmen fall ready to solve food insecurity. To my complete surprise, representatives voiced the need not for a cutting edge technology for food production nor a large-scale social revolution to change the way people view nutrition, but a refrigerated truck. The need was so simple that the innovator in me felt disappointed.
After I wrote a reflection in the Daily Princetonian about walking away from the ‘wow’ factor when serving others, I shelved the matter until one of the panelists challenged me to live by my words. “Will you help us look into a refrigerated truck?” she asked. Over the semester, I visited the facilities of food banks in the area and researched truck models to write a grant for a refrigerated truck. In April, we were awarded funds for a refrigerated mobile unit that could be hitched to the back of a truck. Even less glorious than what I had set out to achieve, this outcome reminded me to ground my vision in the needs of those I served. A mobile unit would do.
I began to qualify the kind of entrepreneur I wanted to be. When I started a social app startup, the Princeton Keller Center for Entrepreneurship connected me with the CEO of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate of social networking apps who advised that I “make people unhappy so they[‘d] come back to [my] app.” “Think about what ‘deadly sin’ you can exploit. Facebook feeds on people’s pride, Twitter on anger. That’s how you will make money,” he said. It became clear that value was not always measured with a dollar figure.
I sought to bridge social good and entrepreneurship in my weightlifting program, “Spot Me,” aimed at making weightlifting more accessible for women by pairing them with ‘buddies’ who acted as instructors and companions. This solution was not particularly innovative nor scalable. A human buddy cannot be multiplied the way apps can be downloaded, especially when buddies require a certain level of weightlifting experience. But a physical presence to guide them through exercises is what these women needed, and I did not want to move fast and break bones. My ‘entrepreneurial’ acumen surfaced as I programmed an automated reminder and feedback-gathering system, pitched the program at a 90-second pitch contest, or won a $9,550 grant to expand the program.
My goal is to shrink the gap between those who have the power to wield the law and those who do not. I want to democratize the know-how of everyday legal procedures for those vulnerable populations I care for, immigrants, contractors, and other disenfranchised laborers. I also want to open up access to legal support. I envision not only creating a network of accessible lawyers for my area of law and client population of interest, but training others to create such networks for their locales, areas of law, or client populations.
Completing a J.D. with the support of the Nordlicht Family Scholarship at NYU would not only enable me to jump straight into social good work without concerns for paying back student debt, it would prepare me to be a legal entrepreneur. Being involved in the Keller Center for Innovation at Princeton exposed me to the importance of having access to resources and people who hold not only instrumental knowledge but imaginative knowledge; by virtue of their position, they become role models. I hope to be connected with others that I can look up to.
Read my 2023 cycle recap reviewing all East Coast Tier 1 schools here.