Seneca said that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” I feel unimaginably lucky to have been accepted to Harvard Law School, and I agree that preparation and — perhaps more importantly — opportunity put me in this position.
I worked hard to get into Harvard, but everyone that applies does. We are all prepared, all qualified, all able to excel if given the opportunity to attend. So what makes me different?
I find it much easier to evaluate why something didn’t work out than to evaluate why it did. I probably need to work on that. But when you’re one of over eight thousand applicants, and less than eight hundred are accepted, it’s easy to accept your odds. Maybe my LSAT score is too low, my work experience not substantive enough, my story not compelling. Maybe they already accepted one too many applicants from the tristate area! I am rational to a fault, and understood that law school admissions isn’t always personal.
My Harvard interview invitation gaslit my rationality. As I explained in a previous post about my application cycle, it completely caught me off guard and spurred my realization that I was operating within a limiting belief system.
After receiving the call that I was accepted, and in the months since then, I’ve thought long and hard about how I got so lucky. There are hard factors (things like my LSAT score and grades, which I’ll share) and soft factors (my personal statement and letters of recommendation, among others) to account for my acceptance, and I believe my “softs” did the heavy lifting. My rational, realistic self never could’ve predicted that.