We get a lot of questions about how to write the statements required by our various admission streams for admission to UVic Law. There is, of course, the Personal Statement that all JD and JD/JID applicants will write. Then the Indigenous Admission Stream and JD/JID Admission require that you write a statement of connection to community. The Black Admission Stream and the Inclusive Admission Stream require respectively the Black Admission Statement and the Inclusive Admission Statement. These can be daunting and overwhelming tasks. As I often say, we hesitate to put a lot of parameters on these statements that will hinder creativity and prevent applicants from telling their complete story in the best way possible. However, I will note a couple of general things.
These statements are all an effort to get to know who you are. No one is qualified to tell your truths, to talk about your worldview, and to tell your story except you. Applicants will frequently ask (or hire) others to review and edit their application materials. What commonly happens is that the well-meaning editor edits their words in a way that waters down the language or meaning or takes out specific thoughts, words, or phrases. We cannot emphasize enough that we do not want anyone to edit the way in which you tell your story. By all means, please do have a trusted friend or relative review your entire application, including all statements, for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word usage. However, we strongly believe that only the applicant themselves should tell their story.
If you need to write multiple statements or parts of statements, they should not be duplicative. Every year, we get a handful of applicants who submit the same document for both of their statements. We get many more who just cut and paste portions from one to the other and repeat themselves on Part B of their Personal Statement. Please note that the same people who read one statement will read the other. Any two statements that you are asked to write have very different purposes, and, yes, we did intend for you to write each of them independently. Look at the ways in which the instructions of each ask different questions and point you in different directions. Think of writing multiple statements as a complimentary exercise, not an overlapping set.
A few weeks ago, I gave some guidelines for the Inclusive Statement for those applying under the Inclusive Admission Stream (see here and here). This is a little bit easier to do for the Inclusive Admission Stream because that particular stream has very distinct requirements. However, this is tougher to do for the statement of connection to community or the Black Admission Statement. Because the definition of community can vary widely, and because no two experiences are alike, giving instructions on how to write a statement of connection (or lack thereof) may unintentionally leave some applicants feeling like they were not considered under those guidelines. Likewise, the experiences of our applicants under the Black Admission Stream are varied and unique. We hesitate to give instructions or guidelines that would put constraints on what applicants feel they can and should say. What we do ask for in all of your statements are sincerity and discussion of your own experiences in your own words.