Is it common practice to use similar personal statements across schools?

[FriendlyMemeGuy493]

Is it recommended to reuse large portions of your personal statements for different schools? I feel like a lot of the content (why law, personal experiences etc.) wouldn’t vary based on the school and you could just add or remove sections specific to each school.

Is this ok or should you write completely different personal statements for different schools?

[Rashabon]

Yes it’s common. The schools don’t share your PS so not sure what having completely different PS will do for you other than waste time.

[FriendlyMemeGuy493]

7 minutes ago, Rashabon said:

Yes it’s common. The schools don’t share your PS so not sure what having completely different PS will do for you other than waste time.

Makes sense that’s what I was thinking just wanted to be safe, thanks!

[Piffle]

Probably 75% of each PS I sent to a given school was the same as the ones I sent to other schools. As you've correctly pointed out OP, your career goals, experiences, personal story, etc. is going to stay the same. And all that stuff is the bread and butter of what schools ask you to write about. So there's only so much room for variation.

The above poster is also correct in saying that any given school can't see your PS for another one. This is true even in Ontario, where you send everything to OLSAS. So theoretically, you could send the exact same PS everywhere and just swap the school names, and they'd be none the wiser.

In my experience, the only occasion to have a truly tailored response is when you're writing about "why do you want to attend School X?"

Edited October 6, 2021 by Piffle