My journey to Harvard Law School has been anything but linear. For starters, I didn’t even know I wanted to apply to law school until a few months before I sent in my application. Here’s how I made the decision to apply and how I ultimately got into Harvard Law.
How I Got Into Harvard Law School
All Signs Pointed Toward Success
Back in 2017, I entered Boston College as an Economics and Psychology double major with the belief that I was destined to work on Wall Street. I excelled and even ranked number one in my class of over 1,500 students. However, I was incredibly unhappy. I was pointing my arrow towards success, but I didn’t know where exactly I was aiming, why I was aiming, and most importantly, who the person pulling the arrow was.
Believing that my university was the problem rather than myself, I applied to transfer to some of the top business schools around the country. Thankfully (I can say this now), I was rejected from them all. While these rejections stung in the moment, I now see them as necessary.
For one of the first times in my life, I was forced to reflect — what did I actually enjoy doing?
Finding My Passion
Despite not being religious at all, I realized that my favorite class of my entire first year was the required core religion course that I was grudgingly forced to take. Taught by a young progressive feminist theologian, I was pushed to think about social justice, intersectionality, and rights. Simultaneously, I volunteered in the local Boston community with those most marginalized.
While I mindlessly churned out economics homework and joined an economic policy organization for the sake of being involved, it was the readings from this class and my service work with child victims of abuse that really ignited that fire inside of me. I didn’t know at the moment, but I had found my passion.
As a child of a broken family myself who grew up constantly encircled by custody battles and divorce lawyers, my interpretation of the legal field was anything but positive. I remember my dad had a favorite saying:
“What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?”
“A good start.”
It was reading Michele Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow ” that showed me that lawyers can be good. A whole field of civil rights law exists for the sole purpose of protecting people’s rights. This book in particular helped me turn my rejections into redirection and pushed me on the path I was truly meant to be on. Oddly enough, this was not business school, but rather law school.
It was never about not being good enough to get into a particular school. It was about not knowing what I was really passionate about in the first place.
As I entered my second year of university, I switched my major to sociology and took as many classes as I could pertaining to civil rights and racial injustice in the United States. I spent a summer abroad in South Africa to study activism and social justice. I also took a winter term service trip in Jamaica to understand the situations of the needy. As I witnessed the devastating effects of slavery, colonization, militarism, and imperialism firsthand, my passion transformed from civil rights to the larger field of human rights. I would apply to law school to be a human rights lawyer.
Right when I thought I finally had it all figured out, my dad unexpectedly passed away. A few months later, the Covid-19 pandemic rocked the world. My house was foreclosed, I could not afford the dorm food, and was dependent on ramen noodles. My family was more broken than ever and I was completely on my own, financially and emotionally.
Starting My LSAT Journey
It was during this time of extreme hardship that I decided to start self-studying for the LSAT. For three months, using free resources in addition to LSAC’s $99 LawHub access, I studied for at least three hours every single night. During these few hours, I shut out the problems of the outside world. I let my mind focus completely on solving silly little logic games and reading passages about black holes and platypuses.
I could not control what was going on in my life. However, I could control how many questions I got correct. And progress followed. For the first two months, I took a practice exam once a week. Then, for the last month, I took one once a day. Slowly, my score moved from the 150s, through the 160s, and consistently up to the 170s.
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Why I Chose Harvard Law School
Harvard Law was the only law school I applied to because it was the only law school at the time that offered a deferral program, where students apply and are accepted during their third year of university and take two to five gap years to do pretty much whatever they want before officially starting law school.
While I knew I wanted to pursue human rights law, I also knew I needed more experience to actually understand the people on the ground around the world facing these human rights violations. Gap years would give me the time to do this.
While studying for the LSAT, I worked with my university’s law school advisor on my personal statement. While I now knew what I wanted to pursue, I still needed to understand why I wanted to pursue it. Figuring this out involved a lot more tears and self-reflection into my childhood than I had anticipated.
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By the time I submitted my application to Harvard Law School, I was proud. This application process was not just about getting in. It was about digging deep and understanding who I really am and who I want to be. Finally, I was okay with the reality that if I did not get in, it did not mean I was not good enough. It just meant that I could excel more somewhere else or do something else.
So many students wonder what the secret formula is for how to get into Harvard Law School. Of course, you need a high LSAT score and a high GPA. But most of all, you need a passion. Figure out your passion, and the rest will follow.
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