Hi all,

I wish to do my Masters in Law in a good US university, in particular, I am looking at Harvard, Stanford and Columbia. I graduated at the top of my class, though with second upper honours (no one in my school that year graduated with a first class). I would be most thankful and grateful if anyone could shed light on the following:

(a) I am in a small minority (in terms of racial category). Just like many in the said minority in my country, I come from an improverished background and, as is common vis-a-vis people in my racial group, I had to work my way entirely through law school. In fact, only two people EVER from my racial group had ever entered any of these three universities. In this context, would it be appropriate to include a diversity statement for my application to bolster it? I know it is normal for JD applicants to do it (from the minority groups) but I was wondering whether it would similarly make sense given the situation I am in, notwithstanding the fact that it is an LLM (as opposed to JD) application. The competing consideration of course is that I don't want to flood the reader with too many essays, lest I be seen to flout the rule of sending in only what is strictly required.

(b) Though I graduated top of my class, my 2nd year results pale significantly in comparison with the other years - in one word, my results were horrid. There was a valid personal reason for this (something quite dastardly happened unfortunately) - but in that context, wondered whether it would be appropriate to also include an "addendum" to my application explaining the reasons, as how a JD applicant might. Once again, my fear is that if it isn't asked for, I might not want to send in an additional essay that may inadvertantly irk the assessor that is looking at my submission.

In short, I've been told that the above is quite common in a JD application, but was wondering whether they have any application in an LLM situation.

Would, as mentioned earlier, appreciate any comments or views =) Feel free to PM me if you have any private views to share. Thank you so much again!

Cheers,
Jen

I would say:
1. Probably no on the diversity addendum as ethnic background isn't even requested on most applications.
2. Maybe on the academic addendum if you have a unique situation which is inadequately explained by the application. If you do the addendum on your performance, you will only call attention to it. On the other hand, an explanation might be favorable depending on circumstances and the reason for what happened. Use common sense... does it help or hurt you to explain what happened (e.g., do you want to leave it to someone else's imagination to guess what happened)