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September 28, 2022

How to Get Into Georgetown Law [Episode 489]

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Dreaming of a spot at Georgetown Law? Here’s all you need to know [Show Summary]

It’s hard to get a law education any closer to the heartbeat of policy and legal action than at Washington D.C.’s Georgetown Law School, labeled by the Washington Post as “the country’s most popular law school.” Andrew Cornblatt, the Dean of Admissions explains exactly what it takes to get accepted to this top-ranked and highly competitive program .

Interview with Andrew Cornblatt, Dean of Admissions at Georgetown Law [Show Notes]

Thanks for joining me for the 489th episode of Admissions Straight Talk . Are you applying to law school this cycle? Are you planning ahead to apply to law school next year or perhaps later? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted’s Law School Admissions Quiz can give you a quick reality check. Just go to accepted.com/law-quiz , complete the quiz, and you’ll not only get an assessment but also tips on how to improve your chances of acceptance. Plus it’s all free. 

For today’s interview, I’m delighted to have Andrew Cornblatt, Metta and Keith Krach Dean of Admissions and Associate Vice President of Graduate Admissions and Enrollment at Georgetown Law . A graduate of Harvard University and Boston College School of Law, Dean Cornblatt has been a member of the Georgetown community since 1980. He became Dean of Admissions at Georgetown Law in 1991 and served as Dean of Admissions at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, now the McCourt School of Public Policy from 2002 to 2016. It’s hard to find someone with more experience in admissions.

Can you give an overview of the more distinctive elements of the Georgetown Law School JD program? [2:36]

I think the two things that are most unique about Georgetown are its size and its location. Georgetown Law is a large law school. I think it’s among the largest in the United States, with 575 entering students. Even though it’s a big law school, we work very hard to make it a big law school with a small law school feel. These are small classes and the campus is beautiful. It’s like a small college with lots of different buildings. We pay particular attention to individual students and their needs. We have big programs, but we have individual people who deserve individual attention and that’s what we focus on. 

As far as location goes, we’re right at the heart of Washington D.C. in the center of law in the USA. This is where everything gets made, interpreted, enforced, and implemented. That all happens within a 10-block radius of where I’m sitting right now in my office. When you have that as a resource, and that’s available to you, it enhances the electricity of what you’re studying. It’s hands-on stuff, but it allows Georgetown to be at the crossroads of theory and practice.

When I went to law school all those years ago, and when people go to law school now, so much of it is about the theory of law and what happened way back then and cases from the 1800s. All of that’s important. I’m not saying it isn’t. But this generation of law students is hands-on. They watch it happen on video. They stay attuned to every development every 10th of a second through social media and all of the alerts they get. This is a place that’s right at the center of all of that. That’s part of our course structure too. The plus side of being at a big law school is you have that many more courses from which to choose. But if you want to know where the heart is beating, it’s right outside my window. I think that’s what excites students when they come here.

What are some of the programs that are unique to Georgetown Law because of its location? [5:39]

Let me give you two, even though there are probably 200. 

So first, all law schools have clinical programs. It’s a sort of supervised practice where you represent clients. All the clinics are different. Georgetown has the most in the country. This is an expensive education, but we are committed to doing this. You will take your first-year classes, then during the second or third year, mostly in the third year, you’ll be a member of a clinic, which will be for course credit. You could be representing juveniles, tenants, immigrants, or anyone else. You could be prosecuting cases. There are a million different things. Anybody listening here can find all of those on the web. But being in Washington allows you to have that type of commitment as well as the resources, judges, and access to courts that are nearby. 

Second, which is completely unique to Georgetown, is our Supreme Court Institute. The Supreme Court Institute is a program that was started maybe 20 years ago where all the Supreme Court cases going before the court are practiced here at Georgetown. When I started, we were at 85%, but now I think we’re at 99%. 

I’ll give you a current example. As many of your listeners know, there’s a very important Supreme Court case, mixing the University of North Carolina and Harvard about the use of affirmative action. That case is about to be argued in front of the Supreme Court at the end of October or early November. In the middle of October, I have a rare ticket to this. I will be going down in our replica of the Supreme Court, right here on campus, and there will be a limited number of us that we will sit in as the attorneys for one side. You can only do one side. They sort of try their case. Then we’ll have judges, we’ll play the role of justices. It’s very informative. You get to hear this stuff and how they get questioned. A Supreme Court Institute isn’t going to happen somewhere else. It’s going to happen in D.C. That’s sort of a DC-ish kind of thing. Add to that job and internship opportunities and that’s where D.C. really kicks in as part of the law student’s experience.

Can you touch on what Curriculum A and Curriculum B are, which are offered to first-year students? [8:41]

In almost every law school, during the first year, you take what the school tells you to take. It’s not that different from what I took when I was a first-year student. At Georgetown, you have a choice of whether you want to be in Curriculum A or Curriculum B. We have five sections of roughly 90 to 100 students per section. Four of the sections are Curriculum A and one of the sections is Curriculum B. This is shorthand for all of this, but the main difference is Curriculum B gets at more of the why and not only the what. If you are in Curriculum A, you’re going to be studying cases and learning through the case method. You do that with Curriculum B as well, but you’ll also be learning what was going on in the country at that time. It’s a more “liberal artsy,” if you will, approach to this. It’s geared toward students who learn best this way and really want to know the context. 

You’ll get some of that in Curriculum A. You’ll get some of that at every law school. But it’s where the emphasis is. Curriculum B is designed for more students. In curriculum B, we combine classes. It’s more sort of horizontal learning rather than just vertical, encompassing other disciplines. It’s interdisciplinary. It’s not dramatically different. No, one’s getting out of the first year of law school at Georgetown without learning the basics. But if you do Curriculum B, you’ll get more context that way. 

Are the Bar passage rates the same for Curriculum A and B? [10:53]

Yes. And the employment rate is the same as well as success in the second and third year. It wouldn’t last as long as it’s lasted if that weren’t the case.

What was Georgetown’s experience this past cycle following the stratospheric surge of the 2020-2021 cycle, which brought a 41% increase in applications? What do you anticipate for the upcoming cycle? [11:47]

The 2020-2021 cycle was exhausting. It was like this rocket ship we all got on, and all of a sudden we’re going way up and we’re not coming down and then all of a sudden we landed and realized we were up 41%. This past year, we were down 19%. So over the two years, that put us up about 13%. 

There’s some gravity here. If you think back on the entering class of 2021, we had a presidential race, and we had all sorts of legal matters. The attention on law was so dramatic and vivid and all-encompassing. I have to say, for the most part in a positive way, that lawyers and judges were supplying the guardrails to all of this. Add that to COVID, and people wanted to look toward the future. I think that’s what caused this. The quality of our applicants went way up and stayed up, which is terrific. 

Looking at the upcoming cycle, the short answer is I don’t know. Before the surge, we were 10,000 applicants at Georgetown. During the surge, we were at 14,100. Last year, we were 11,300. If I had to bet this year, we’ll be about 10,500. I think it’ll drop a little. I don’t know that for sure, but I think it will. I’m excited to see what happens next. I think it’s still going to be very difficult to get into places. I can only speak for Georgetown, but it won’t be at the 14,000 level. I’m almost sure. I don’t think anyone will ever see that again.

Georgetown accepts the LSAT, the GRE or the GMAT. Approximately what percentage of applicants are applying with the different tests? [14:53]

Roughly 92% are applying with the LSAT. I would say roughly 7% are applying with the GRE. And 1% are applying with the GMAT. It’s still very much tilted towards the LSAT, which is fine. I tell applicants all the time to decide which one shows them off the best , take some sample tests, and see how it feels. If they do well, that’s the one they should take. We were one of the first schools that were allowed to use the GRE, and at the moment, it felt like an earthquake, but now it’s just a little tremor. Everyone sort of settled down and realized we can live with this. 

Are most of the students who are taking the GRE or the GMAT applying to dual degree programs? [15:57]

I wouldn’t say most, I would say a lot. Certainly more than the LSAT. With introducing the GMAT and GRE, we were anxious to get more non-traditional applicants or older applicants. Those applicants for whom the LSAT was sort of Mount Everest to climb , but they really would like to do law. It’s worked out well for us.

Are you finding that these tools are equally predictive of success in law school? [16:38]

Yes, for sure.

If the ABA were to decide not to require a test, which they’re obviously considering at this point, would you like to see Georgetown retain a test requirement, issue waivers, or perhaps go entirely test-optional? [16:44]

I think the ABA will allow us to do it. I think it’ll go school by school. I don’t know for sure because I need to talk to the Dean and alums and all the other stakeholders in this. If I had to bet today, I would bet we would be test-optional. I think we will be working on finding the right language to say, “Look, if you are somebody for whom the LSAT can show us what it is that you’re able to do, by all means, supply your LSAT. If you are someone who feels as though this does not show you as well, or you don’t have the tools or resources to be able to prepare as well as you’d like, but you have other things to show, then it will be optional.” 

We’re working through this right now. This is a tough one. People have very different views on this. This is the first time there’s been any crack in the foundation of the ABA, ever. I think this comes on the heels of undergrads being test-optional in some schools. 

In the end, I think the ABA is going to say each school can decide what they want to do. I’m not saying Georgetown is automatically going to be test-optional. I don’t know that. But right now, if I had to lean one way, that’s the way I’d lean.

How can one write a diversity statement if one comes from a well-represented group in the applicant pool? [19:25]

Well, first of all, no one has to do it. It’s not required. We encourage people to share with us what they want to. It’s part of the overall mindset we have, and that is we want to know everything about you. I don’t want to just know your GPA and your LSAT. I want to know everything about you. Diversity comes in all different shapes and sizes. Of course, there’s ethnicity, and we want to know about that for sure if the applicant wants to write about that. But there are other aspects about applicants that make them different. People aren’t cookie-cutter anymore. That just doesn’t exist. What is it about you that’s a little different that you want to talk about? It may be that you covered that in your personal statement. It may be that a recommender is going to cover it and that you really don’t have much to say. 

No one, and I can’t say this clearly enough, no one is penalized for not submitting a diversity statement. It never counts against anybody. You’re right, a lot of people have gone through life, and there’s just nothing of that variety to share with us in that respect. Great. That’s fine. We’ll look at all the other aspects of it. The idea of encouraging this is to encourage the uniqueness of the individual. What is there about you? That’s what we want to know. 

Do you have a recommendation for how long the diversity statement should be or do you like to just leave it open? [22:42]

Both. I like to leave it open. And my recommendation would be no more than two pages, but generally, one page could do it. Most diversity statements are one page, but again, it’s so tied with the other parts of the application that you are submitting. It’s hard to give one standard answer to that. But I would say, in general, no more than two pages. 

I just had one of these info sessions yesterday, and what I say to students is, “You can submit whatever you want. You’re paying a lot of money to apply. Do it any way you want. But my suggestion is to send us the gold. Send us the really important stuff.”

I’m sure there are lots of other aspects about you, but when somebody is reading 11,000, it can come across as just a little bit lazy when your application is basically everything about you and I have to sort out what I want out of it. Part of the sorting out is on the applicants. If it’s not so important, you run the risk of diluting what will be the most important piece. That’s the last thing you want to do.

Do you like to know why students want to go to Georgetown or why they want to go into law? [24:33]

Those are two different questions.

Let’s do the Georgetown thing first. Plenty of schools ask why their school specifically. We do not ask it because if we did, everybody would answer it because we asked it. I say this to applicants all the time, but if an applicant would like to share with us why they chose Georgetown and why it’s the place they want to go, that wouldn’t be the worst idea. It’s not required. But when I’m reading a file, if some applicant is making a convincing case and has thought about this and thought about the connection to Georgetown, will that have a little bit of a plus? You bet. But you don’t have to do it. It’s not required. But if you do, and it’s well thought out, it wouldn’t be the worst idea.

On why law, our essay is wide open. You can write about whatever you want. Generally, 80% of these essays get to that. The whole thing may not be about that, but they get to that. I think that’s a nice idea and something I’d want to know. But I’d rather not say it’s a must. If there’s something we need applicants to let us know, we ask. If we didn’t ask, we don’t need to know. It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like to know, but it just means we don’t need to know.

For the personal statement, the thing’s got to be about you. The subject’s wide open. If you want to talk about your grandfather or your son or a trip or an internship or the marching band or the lead you had in the musical, it’s all great if that’s important to you. Bring it on. But I better be learning about you. Not learning about your grandfather, not learning about Mount Kilimanjaro and not learning about the tuba section. None of those things are applying to law school. You are. So what I say to people all the time is when you’re done with your first draft, give it to somebody who knows you well, have them read it, and ask them this question: “If you’d never met me before, do you know me a little better now?” If the answer to that is yes, you’re good. If the answer is no, then you’re not so good. Go back and do it again.

Read sample successful law school application essays >>

Is full-time work experience nice to have or really important to the admissions committee at Georgetown? [27:31]

Nice to have. It depends on what you’re doing. It happens, but what I really don’t want to happen is somebody taking a job or internship they really don’t want because they think it’ll help them get into law school. This may be the parent in me, but you need to do what you are happiest doing. Do I think that law students are more successful if they’ve been out in the world for one, two, or three years? Yeah, I do. But that doesn’t go for all law students. All things being equal, if you want to take some time off, do it. If you’re ready to go to law school, then don’t do it.

I would strongly urge, if you’re in between, to take some time off. A year is fine, but we want students who want to be here. We want students who are ready for law school. It’s not a requirement, for goodness sake, but we find that if you’ve taken a little bit of time off – you’ve paid rent, you’ve been out in the world, you’ve thought about this – that’s the better way to do it.

It’s not the only way to do it for everybody. We have plenty of successful, lovely, highly-qualified applicants who come straight out of college, but that’s been a big change. When I began all those years ago, I would say 25% of our entering class had taken a year or more off and 75% was coming right out of college. In 2022, those numbers are almost exactly reversed. Almost exactly 25% are right out of college and 75% are out in the work world.

Would you prefer applicants who had some exposure to law either by working in a law office or a legal clinic? [30:05]

Yes. For some people, sure. I know this is wordplay, but again, I would differentiate between preferring. Sure, all things being equal, it’s better to have exposure than not, but that’s a very different statement than saying it will cost you or hurt you if you don’t have it. I don’t feel that way at all. If you’re a student and you’re 21 or 22 and you’re going to get a chance to travel the world, that ain’t coming around every year. Is that a great experience to do? Sure. There are ways of talking about this. There are ways of making you more ready for school. It depends on the individual. But for that answer, go travel the world. For the person who maybe has two equally exciting opportunities come up and one is in law, then the tie goes to law. But I would not force that into my life if something else were more appealing at this stage. Go do that and when you’re ready, come apply, and we’ll be happy to take a look at you.

You could just ask for a test score and GPA, if that was the only thing you were considering, but clearly, Georgetown Law considers other factors. What are you hoping to see in other elements of the application? [31:37]

It’s not what I’m hoping to see, it’s who I’m hoping to see. I know I keep coming back to this, but I do because it’s so true, and it’s me getting to know you. Part of getting to know you is how you will fit into this community . Are you ready for this? Do you really want to do this? Have you thought about this? All of that plays into this. I’ve done this enough so that when I read all of these aspects to every applicant, I get a sense of things. Somebody asked me the other day if we use algorithms. I said, “The only algorithms I use are my fingertips.” I swear to goodness, that’s it. There are no formulas in this. As you said, if all I cared about was GPA and LSAT, I could take six months off. I’m not even sure you’d need a person to do that, you have machines that can do that.

It’s not so much what I’m looking to see as I’m trying to get an x-ray of you. Who you are, what makes you tick, and how are you going to fit in here. There’s one other element to our process that Georgetown does and that is the interview. Interviews matter to us. It’s all part of the same theme you’ve heard me talk about ad nauseam here. We have a traditional alumni interview program where we have alums in Providence, Buffalo, San Diego, and Santa Fe.

It used to be in person if you lived in that area, but with Zoom, now everybody lives in the same area. We’ve sifted through the alums and an alum gets to meet our applicants. A lot of law schools do that. Almost all undergraduate schools do that. 

What we do is the person who wants to know most about you is me. The one you’re talking to right now, me. So at Georgetown, over the last eight years or so, we have grown and grown to where I’m meeting groups of students. I meet applicants in groups. We do group interviews and by we, I mean me. I’ll meet six or seven people at a time on Zoom and spend an hour with them. I’m not going to say any more than that, but we spend an hour with them.

We’ve built it up now so that last year I met almost 4,000 applicants, myself on screens like this. It is enormously helpful to me. It helps with the x-ray. I can really get to know you. It’s wonderful. Because of Zoom, I’ve been able to travel the world and not leave my office. It’s been grand. I’m talking to people in 50 states. Now, we should be clear on this. Not everybody I interview gets in. But I will tell you that last year I met 90% of the entering class myself in sessions like this.

Are Georgetown interviews by invitation only? [35:19]

Yes. We’ll find you.

But you don’t have to interview to be admitted? [35:23]

That’s correct. People get in without being interviewed but there’s a certain process that goes through when I read a file that first time, and I say to myself, “I’d like to meet her. I’d like to meet him.” When we do, we invite them to interview. I’m doing this for three or four hours a day for five months straight. This stuff matters. Nobody in their right mind does this unless it has an impact on the admissions process.

Who are you? Let me get to know you. Will you collaborate? Can you work together? That’s why I love doing groups. Individuals are interesting, but the group stuff enables me to watch people work together. It’s something I just have a sense of now since I’ve done so many of these. It’s a fun part of the process. Our first one starts next week. 

How do you view applications from students who have had an academic infraction or perhaps even a criminal record? [36:37]

It all depends on the individual situation. If it’s academic misconduct or an honor code violation, that’s a tough one. But for plenty of people, that happened 10 years ago. There are three legs to this stool: what was the violation, how do you talk about it, and how does your school talk about it? I’m not talking about you getting caught smoking dope on campus or parking where you shouldn’t have parked. Who cares?

But there are some more serious situations, and if that’s you, you’ve got to go talk to somebody at your undergraduate institution who will vouch for you and will give context and say that it’s not who you are anymore. Don’t think we won’t pick up on it. We pick up on everything. I want to hear what you have to say about it. I want to hear what somebody from your school has to say about it. 

The same thing goes for criminal violations. Obviously, there are different degrees of this, and it’s not a good thing to have a record for goodness sake, but there are different aspects to this. It’s on the applicant to supply that context, obviously in the way that’s most favorable to the applicant, but that’s on her or him. That’s not on me.

I don’t want to hear excuses. Again, maybe that’s the parent in me. Where are you now? What steps have you taken? I want to hear from somebody besides you who can talk about this and can put it in context. It doesn’t wash it away. It’s part of who you are and what you’ve done, but there are a million parts of who you are and what you’ve done. This is one of them. It’s big, but if you can explain it away, it’s not an automatic, anything.

Does Georgetown Law consider update letters from applicants who have something significant to tell you after they submit their application before hearing back from you or from wait-listed applicants? [38:59]

Yes and yes, capital letters, exclamation points. You bet. Life changes. Stay in touch with us. I’ve got a terrific staff here and they’ll add it to your application. I’ll come back again and review it. Especially on the waitlist.

What is a common mistake you see applicants making during the application process? [39:37]

Not working hard enough at it. By that, I mean an essay that feels very cookie-cutter with no particular sense. I’ve taken this exam lots of times. I know the answers to this. If someone is not energetic in how they apply or they applied late or their essay is a little messy or it’s really long, I can tell in a heartbeat. That’s, I think, the biggest mistake. 

Another common one, but not as fatal as the first one, is keeping arm’s length in the application process. No matter how many times I say it, I want to get to know you well. People are wired differently and you don’t have to tell me every aspect of your life if you’re not comfortable. But to keep me at arm’s length, just for this particular Admissions Dean, doesn’t work so well with me.

What I say to people all the time is the two key words that every applicant should try to be at Georgetown specifically are open and authentic. Be open and be authentic. If you’re those two things, that puts you and will put me in the right frame of mind. I’m trying to get to know you. If you won’t let me get to know you and you want to keep at arm’s length, I’m not saying you won’t get in, but I’m a little less likely to say this is someone we really want at Georgetown. Remember, every applicant about whom we say what I just said, “This is somebody we really want at Georgetown,” will get in. Full stop. That’s it. You get in.

I can’t take everybody I really want at Georgetown, but the ones who give it the extra effort, they were fabulous at the interview, their essay was wonderful, they come across as someone we would love having here, they’re going to get in. But you, the applicants, have to make that case. Have at it, I’m open. Numbers aren’t going to automatically qualify you or disqualify you. 

I say to students all the time the way to think of this is that your GPA and LSAT, assuming you take the LSAT, set the height of the bar you have to jump over. I read all the other stuff about you, and depending on how high that bar is, that’s how good the other stuff has to be.

If you look at it that way, that’s exactly how we do it. Applicants should always remember that everybody gets to jump over the bar. There are no cutoffs. Everybody gets a shot. It’s harder if the bar’s higher up but everybody gets a shot and everybody has to jump. You don’t just get to walk around and not have to get up and over the bar. You need to persuade us too. We have too many great applicants at this law school for you just to rely on your numbers.

What would you have liked me to ask you? [43:13]

You did really well. You asked just about everything I would want you to ask me. 

I think the last thing I would share is what hurts an applicant. I’d give you two words for that: laziness and arrogance. Don’t be either of those two things. You can study law somewhere else. I got too many applicants who are wonderful and fabulous and who are sitting on a waitlist or who couldn’t quite make it in five years ago they could have, but it’s different now. If you think you’re going to waltz right in, there’s no waltzing at this law school. Maybe you can waltz when you get in and celebrate with the waltz, but you’re not waltzing in. Don’t act like you are. So it’s that arrogance part. Laziness too. Those are the two things I’d stay away from. That’s what can hurt you.

Where can listeners learn more about Georgetown Law? [44:51]

[email protected]

The one thing we didn’t cover, just one quick thing, is when to apply. That’s an element of this, and it plays a role in everything. We have rolling admissions. Most law schools do. It’s different than undergrad. Here at Georgetown, it’s rolling. That means the sooner you apply, the better your chances. People apply, applications get completed, maybe I interview or whatever, and we admit people. I’ll start admitting people in the middle of October. 

Think of it as a party. Cornblatt’s throwing a party and those Cornblatt parties are so great, you’d love to come. So if you ask for your invitation and the room is emptier, you are more likely to get a “yes” than as the room gets fuller and fuller and fuller. The first knock on the door to come to my party is October and November. The second knock on my door when it gets so hard is February. 

While the recommended deadline may be March 1, I would recommend for all students, if they can, let it be Thanksgiving. Plenty of people apply in January, December, and February. If you’re listening to this and if you’re ready to go, don’t wait around. Seats get filled up.

The last thing I would say is there are two different ways to apply to Georgetown Law School, early decision and regular decision. Regular decision is the typical way to apply and is 85% of our pool. 

But there are 10% to 15% for whom Georgetown is their first choice. If Dean Andy sends an email that begins with that delicious word, congratulations, they are in. I can hear them shrieking with joy from my house here in D.C. If that’s what you want, this is where you want to apply early decision. Does it help your chances? A little bit. 

I’m sure you’ve had this question a million times, but let me just speak for Georgetown. Early decision admits and regular decision admits are treated exactly the same way for financial aid. My honesty is on the line. I promise you, it won’t matter in terms of the financial aid award you get, whether you’re early or regular. I just wanted to add those two things.

To those of you who are listening to this, I look forward to reading your applications and hopefully welcoming you to law school 12 months from now. Who knows? Thanks so much for having me, Linda.

Related links:

• Georgetown Law Admissions
• Are You Ready for Law School? (Accepted’s Law School Admissions Quiz)
• 5 Fatal Flaws to Avoid in Your Law School Application Essays
• Accepted’s Law School Admissions Services

Related shows:

• ​​How to Get Into Duke Law
• How to Get Into UVA Law
• How to Get into USC Gould School of Law
• UCLA Law School: How to Get Accepted

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Recent Questions about Georgetown Law

The Question and Answer section for Georgetown Law is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Georgetown University 2023-24 Essay Prompt Guide

Regular Decision Deadline: Jan 10

You Have: 

Georgetown 2023-24 Application Essay Question Explanations

The Requirements: 1 essay of 250 words; 1 half-page essay; 2 page-long essays

Supplemental Essay Type(s):  Activity , Why, Diversity

Prompt 1: Please elaborate on any special talents or skills you would like to highlight. (250 words)

This prompt may come first on the list, but we think you should save it for last! For the other essays on the Georgetown application, we ask you to dig deep and share personal stories that showcase talents and interests. Don’t dry the well by listing all of your (many!) skills and talents too soon. Every essay should reveal something new to admissions. So once you finish polishing your other pieces, ask yourself: what’s missing? Is there some critical puzzle piece that will help connect your other three essays? Or have you been dying to get something off your chest that didn’t fit anywhere else? This essay could be the perfect outlet for you to showcase your more personal skills, interests, and quirks. If the rest of your essays showcase your drive to work in international relations, perhaps your answer to this prompt could showcase a lighter side: your love of experimental cooking (and impressive knife skills!). Or maybe explain how learning a new language helped you learn how to whistle! While you should aim to showcase genuine skills that you have put effort into cultivating, you can also have a little bit of fun. This prompt is the most open-ended one on the application, so show admissions something they won’t find anywhere else on your application.

Prompt 2: Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved. (approximately 1/2 page, single-spaced) 

Next up is a fun twist on the classic activity essay, which asks you to expand on an extracurricular endeavor that you care about. For starters, we’d give you basically the same advice the prompt does: focus on one of the activities “in which you have been most involved.” Although we usually urge students to write about items that haven’t appeared elsewhere on their application, the activity essay is an exception since it specifically asks you to address an item on your resume. So, pick something with meat! When have you had the opportunity to take on a leadership role? How has four years of debate club shaped the way you communicate? Was it difficult coaching pee wee soccer as a freshman, and what motivated you to stick with it?

Prompt 3: As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief personal or creative essay which you feel best describes you and reflects on your own background, identity, skills, and talents. (approximately 1 page, single-spaced)

Though it seems straightforward, this may be one of the hardest prompts! (What do you mean, tell you about myself in my own words?) Don’t fret. You can treat this essay just like the Common App’s prompt #1 , which asks students to write about a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. (Even better: if you’ve already written an essay in response to the Common App’s first prompt, you can recycle that essay here since Georgetown has its own application platform!)

If you’re approaching this essay from scratch, take some time to brainstorm. What about your background, talents, or identity might be worth highlighting for an admissions officer? Don’t worry about cramming every aspect of the wonder that is you into one essay; they will naturally reveal themselves along the way as you write. Whether you want to write about a facet of your identity that few people know about or a passion you’ve been dabbling in (and telling everyone about) for years, you can’t go wrong with authentic reflection and an engaging hook!

Georgetown University School-Specific Prompts.

(each school-specific prompt should not exceed 1 page, single-spaced), georgetown college of arts and sciences: a liberal arts education from the college of arts & sciences involves encounters with new concepts and modes of inquiry. describe something (a class, a book, an event, etc.) that changed your thinking. (applicants to the sciences, mathematics, public policy or languages are encouraged to include examples related to that field.).

Admissions wants to learn about a time when your mind was changed. If you’re an active reader or information seeker, you probably have a few ideas already. But if nothing comes to mind immediately, don’t panic; instead, think about the times in your life when you’ve had an “Aha!” moment that forced you to drastically re-examine one of your beliefs or understandings. Admissions wants to know that you are open to new ideas and can reflect in order to see things from a different perspective. As you tell your story, include sensory details to bring your experience to life, whether you’re sitting in the back of a classroom, head in your hands, trying to wrap your brain around the truth-bomb your teacher just dropped; or curled up in a blanket by the fireplace with your nose in a gripping book. If you’re deciding between “Aha!” moments to write about, pick the one most closely related to your intended field of study. Applicants who can articulate their thoughts and feelings while showcasing malleability and a willingness to thoughtfully consider new ideas will likely stand out as valuable additions to the Georgetown community. 

School of Health: Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care at Georgetown University. Please specifically address your intended major (Global Health, Health Care Management & Policy, or Human Science).

If we know anything about applying to medical programs, it is this: everyone wants to help people; everyone wants to make the world a better place; everyone wants to make a meaningful contribution. Few fields lend themselves to service-oriented clichés and platitudes as readily as medicine does, so to safely navigate the minefield of hackneyed generalizations, start with something personal! What’s one eye-opening experience that made you believe healthcare could be your calling? Perhaps it was a single moment, like accidental eye contact with a concerned mother at the ER. Or maybe it was something more long-term, such as navigating your school in a wheelchair after knee surgery and realizing you want to improve patient outcomes through researching physical therapies. Whatever the case, use your personal story as the backdrop for your argument. What did you learn? What problems do you hope to tackle? What change do you hope to help create? As we said, it’s not enough to just want these things; your job is to show admissions why medicine interests you personally. Once you’ve accomplished that, be sure to address the role Georgetown will play in your plan for the future. In other words, why do you want to study healthcare at Georgetown in particular? Do they have a research lab that’s at the forefront of innovation? A wise applicant will do some research so they can infuse their response with specific details that demonstrate meticulousness and drive.

School of Nursing: Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying your intended major, Nursing.

Well, this is about as straightforward as prompts get! Our advice is much the same as it is for students applying to the School of Health (see above). Set yourself apart from other applicants by not only discussing the factors that led you to pursuing a career in nursing, but by also connecting those experiences to your larger goals for the future. If there are elements of a Georgetown education that will support your particular interest or connect to your past experiences in some way, you should dig into that in your response, while also revealing new information to admissions about your character, motivations, and aspirations.

Walsh School of Foreign Service: The Walsh School of Foreign Service was founded more than a century ago to prepare generations of leaders to solve global problems. What is motivating you to dedicate your undergraduate studies to a future in service to the world?

The Walsh School of Foreign Service wants to know what fuels your fire. What is driving you to dedicate your undergraduate studies (and maybe even your life!) to a path of service? Maybe you are incredibly passionate about combating climate change before it’s too late. What do you hope to achieve and how? Perhaps you’re following in the footsteps of a trailblazer you look up to—how do you hope to continue fighting the good fight in their honor? If you’re feeling stuck, ask yourself: what kind of mark would you like to leave on the world? How do you think you can positively contribute to a cause that is important to you? If you had the power to make a lasting impact in any area at all, what would it be? While building the personal connection is key, you’ll also want to leave yourself some space to spell out at least a few steps you might take to address your global issue of choice.

McDonough School of Business: The McDonough School of Business is a national and global leader in providing graduates with essential ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives. Please discuss your motivations for studying business at Georgetown.

If you think we’ve never seen an essay with the line, “I love money,” you would be wrong. Spoiler: this does not make a great first impression. Studying business is about so much more than dollars and cents, and the prompt offers a few other aspects of business you’ll learn about in this program including “ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives.” In order to get some perspective, we’d recommend doing your homework. Like any classic why essay, the best answers are personal and specific, so go beyond your general interest in business and try to figure out specifically why Georgetown could be the right fit for you. Is it the location? The professors? The travel opportunities? Allow yourself to follow every lead and fall down every rabbit hole as you root through the program website. Your essay should paint a picture of the kind of student you will be at Georgetown, from the classes you’ll take to the activities you’ll pursue. How will this education prepare you for your dream career?

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Georgetown Law

Investigative internship application, who should apply.

For anyone contemplating a career in law, criminal justice, or investigative reporting, this internship is an excellent opportunity for hands-on learning and experience. Interns have an opportunity to learn about the law by being involved in all aspects of its practice. Also, interns are surrounded by law students, post-graduate fellows, and clinic professors who are willing to speak candidly about life as a law student and lawyer. The clinics are committed to ensuring that investigative interns receive an educational and rewarding experience. As a result, interns leave with a fuller understanding of the legal system and specifically of the criminal legal process. They also can make informed decisions about whether this work is appropriate for them and have a source for recommendations and job advice when they leave.

This internship, however, is not right for everyone. First, our clinics are litigation clinics with all the tight deadlines and long hours involved in trial work. Interns will certainly have time for interests outside the office, but those who mind working odd and sometimes long hours will not enjoy the pace of this work. Second, some people find criminal law too emotional and criminal defense incompatible with their values. The clinics represent poor individuals charged with a variety of criminal offenses, and some are uncomfortable with the defense role in the adversary process. Third, the crux of this internship is investigative field work. Interns need to travel throughout the city to accomplish their investigations. Those areas will often include places that are reputed to be “tough.” If a potential applicant is very uncomfortable with the notion of working in urban communities, this may not be the right internship. However, some trepidation about working in unfamiliar communities is to be expected. Therefore, we provide intensive training and interns investigate in pairs.

So why should you apply?

The best interns usually want to learn about the law by actually working in it. By the end of this internship, every intern should have an opinion about our adversarial system of justice that is well-grounded in fact and experience. This position is also a chance to perform an important public service. The indigent clients who come through the clinics have no funds to pay for investigators, yet cases are often won or lost on the strength of our investigation. If you believe that the quality of legal representation should not be determined by the income of the accused, you have a place in this program.

Our interns play a vital role in the defense team and are treated as professionals with real responsibility. Interns are exposed to a wide range of criminal cases and make a significant contribution to improving the way that justice is administered. This is also a small program, so the investigations supervisor, attorneys, and clinic professors are able to devote individualized attention to investigative interns. As a teaching clinic, we emphasize the importance of developing an understanding of clients’ experiences, the relationship between the defense role and the legal system, and the ways that current trends in the law affect the criminal legal system.

In conclusion, if you are interested in a deep, substantive experience in the field of criminal law, we invite you to apply. The experience you will receive, the skills you will develop, and the professional growth you will gain guarantee that this will be a rewarding experience.

Selection Process

Minimum qualifications:.

The internship is open to students at accredited four-year colleges, college graduates, or graduate students. With respect to undergraduate students, juniors and seniors are preferred, but first-year students and sophomores are sometimes accepted. Participants from a variety of academic majors are generally accepted, and all majors are eligible. Previous exposure to or experience in the fields of law, criminal justice, or public service is helpful but is not required.

Applicants should be able to demonstrate that they can devote a sufficient amount of time to this internship. (See time requirements for explanation.) The program needs interns who can make their investigative responsibilities a significant priority. Interns must also be able to demonstrate strong communication skills in the application process. The ability to easily communicate with persons of differing backgrounds, values, and cultures, and to document work in written form that is appropriate for use in court, is crucial to investigative work.

Other Supplemental Application Materials:

Some applicants choose to submit additional materials with their applications. Applicants are welcome to submit additional materials. Some examples include:

• publications, such as articles written for a paper
• writing samples (other than essays)
• projects/proposals developed for a previous job
• descriptions/copies of awards that have been won

Regardless of the additional materials submitted, all normal requirements of the application still apply. For instance, a separate writing sample cannot be substituted for responses to the essays.

Process of Selecting Interns

Each applicant will be evaluated based upon the quality of the application, the strength of input from references, and the overall quality of past work and academic performance. Applicants who feel that they are lacking in a specific area should not be discouraged from applying – the strength of applicants is assessed by looking at qualifications collectively. No prerequisite course work or prior related experience is necessary, but some understanding of the criminal justice system is helpful.

The Investigations Supervisor will only conduct video interviews with applicants who have been selected to move forward in the process, so a video interview is not guaranteed, and applicants should submit everything they wish to be considered either with the application or in a supplemental email. Letters of recommendation and IIP recommendation forms are not required but are sometimes helpful. If an applicant wishes to submit such letters, they may be included in the application packet or emailed separately. For full consideration, any additional materials should be submitted by the application deadline.

Online Application Form

Complete and Submit the Investigative Internship Application.

• Online Application

Home — Essay Samples — Geography & Travel — Travel and Tourism Industry — The History of Moscow City

The History of Moscow City

• Categories: Russia Travel and Tourism Industry

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Published: Feb 12, 2019

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Optional Essays and Addenda

Optional essays.

If a law school gives you the opportunity to submit additional essays, you should take it, so long as you genuinely believe you have something important to say. Consider these essays an opportunity to demonstrate your writing skills and particular interest in a school.

The two most common optional essays are “Why X Law School?” and a “Diversity Statement.”

Why X Law School?

You should write the “Why ‘X’ Law School?” essay if given the option. Prepare for it by researching that law school’s particular focus or ethos. More specifically, research classes you would like to take, professors with whom you would like to work, and clinics in which you would like to be involved. If you cannot write this essay after carefully researching the school, reconsider your decision to apply!

The key is to match some aspect of your identity with what you like about the school. For example, you might say that because of your X (experience, skill), you’re especially excited to contribute to the school’s Y or be involved in or learn from Z. Even an essay that’s ostensibly about the law school is also an opportunity for you to highlight your strengths.

Diversity Statement

The Diversity Statement asks applicants what diversity they would contribute to an incoming class. In the context of this essay, diversity is not limited to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, etc. Diversity is any personal characteristic or experience that gives you a unique perspective.

Once you identify what makes you distinct from other applicants, you must articulate how your perspective will enrich the law school. Like the personal statement, the Diversity Statement is not merely a description of who you are; it’s an argument for why the law school should admit you.

Writing an addendum is your opportunity to address an element of your application that could raise genuine concern, such as an atypically poor-performing semester or an incident of misconduct. If you write an addendum, it should be factual and brief. Describe the concerning issue, explain how you resolved it, then tell the reader how the lessons you learned will make you a successful law-school student.

Do not write an addendum if doing so will unnecessarily highlight a minor flaw. For example, if you missed an entire semester of final exams due to illness, you should explain the situation in a short essay. But if feeling nervous before a final exam resulted in your only “B” in college, that doesn’t merit its own essay.

Special Issue , Uncategorized

How soviet legacies shape russia’s response to the pandemic: ethical consequences of a culture of non-disclosure.

Nataliya Shok & Nadezhda Beliakova

[This is an advance copy of an article that will appear in print in September 2020 as part of the KIEJ’s special double issue on Ethics, Pandemics, and COVID-19.]

ABSTRACT. The COVID-19 pandemic required strong state responsibility for the health of its citizens and the effective allocation of healthcare resources. In Russia, extreme circumstances reveal hidden Soviet patterns of public health. This article illuminates how Russia has implemented some changes within its health insurance structures but also has maintained the paternalistic style of state governing within public health practices. The authors examine key neo-Soviet trends in Russian society revealed during the pandemic: the ethics of silence, a culture of non-disclosure, and doublethinking. Additionally, we argue that both modern Russian medicine and healthcare demonstrate gaps in implementing robust bioethical frameworks compared with the United States. Using a robust analysis of healthcare and state practice during the COVID-19 pandemic within the framework of global bioethics, this article aims to respond to Russian history and culture in order to advance the development of bioethics.

INTRODUCTION

The global COVID-19 pandemic has quickly and radically changed the world. The healthcare system in Russia, as in other countries, is under incredible pressure, and Russian society likewise is tested by “social distancing” practices. The unceasing adaptation and mobilization of resources has become part of our everyday lives. The struggle against the epidemic continues to emphasize the priority of global social health. Accordingly, we must address questions recently raised by The Hastings Center in “What Values Should Guide Us?”. What will be the new ethical norm after the pandemic? What compromises will be in place between civil liberties and public health? Will such biomedical ethical themes concerning the priority of the patient’s interests, the principal of minimizing harm, the disclosure of medical errors, and balance of equality and justice receive new recognition? Should we equally weigh the basic ethical principles, and are they universal? The global context of the pandemic allowed us to see that the practice of applying bioethical principles varies greatly, and the development of these principles depends on the history and culture of each respective country.

The differences in fundamental ethical commitments and historical forces that shape cultures result in different priorities, goals, and understandings of appropriate restrictions on behavior. These gaps can be difficult to bridge in the context of international guideline development, and they pose special concerns where lack of coordination threatens public health or undermines the ability to pursue collaborative research to advance health interests. One of the greatest barriers to developing globally shared guidelines is a lack of understanding and appreciation of local history and culture. In reviewing global responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, we understand the importance of dialogue and information exchange between countries in extreme circumstances. Responses can drastically differ between countries, as evidenced in both European Union countries (Hirsch 2020) and China (Lei and Qiu 2020), even though the scientific conclusions and state measures may share some overlap. Russia is no exception. The struggle against the pandemic exposed the deep rift between the global bioethical discourse and Russia’s response to the pandemic. In the development of public health guidelines, we cannot simply replicate the experiences and responses of foreign countries.

Russia imposed “the regime of self-isolation,” which limited citizens’ mobility rights, as the main pandemic countermeasure (Stanovaya 2020a; 2020b); however, there is no such applicable legal term in Russian law. The Russian President called this “a days off regime,” meaning a vacation from work obligations. He did not declare a state of emergency or impose quarantine restrictions. Instead, the bulk of the responsibility for anti-pandemic countermeasures was placed on the regional governments. In our opinion, such decisions and shifting of responsibility can be ethically justified only if the measures are proportional to the severity of the epidemic, taken with no violation of individual freedom and rights, and transparent to the public. These requirements were not met: the state refused to offer financial aid to businesses or to the vulnerable population. Instead of supporting its citizens, the state imposed a series of administrative measures (i.e. penalties) that were aimed at punishing the healthy population for going out of their homes without a special digital code during the non-imposed quarantine. For those who were diagnosed with COVID-19 and their families, they were forced to use a social monitoring app that required sending selfies five times per day, even at night. These penalties increased social anxiety and mistrust.

While many have studied the collapse of the Soviet Union, few realize that Soviet policy and practice in healthcare is alive and has significant implications in Russia. Although the democratic state assumed the monopoly in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, it quickly returned to the patterns of Soviet policy in implementing public health strategies. In the mid-1990s The New York Times used the term ‘neo-soviet style of state governing’ to describe a pattern of returning to the Soviet Kremlin medical treatment practice and assumptions for responsibility within state leadership (Stanley 1995). The budget of this health bureaucracy, then and now, is secret. The current pandemic has brought about the return of several negative trends from the Soviet past such as ethics of silence, double thinking, state paternalism, and a culture of non-disclosure.

We will begin by sharing the meaning of these four key features of the Soviet legacy that influence medicine and healthcare. We then will highlight the implications of these commitments for medicine and bioethics within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We consider the history of Russian medicine and explore Soviet commandeering within health systems. We argue that by identifying pathways that respond to our history and culture, we can advance the development of bioethics in Russia by using robust analyses of healthcare and state practice during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ethics of Silence, or Why Does Russia Not have Bioethics?

It is well-known that bioethics—as a research field—originated as part of the academic and social discourse in the United States. Although there are some research groups, independent researchers, and journalists working to study and implement bioethics in Russia, the country has not seen widespread academic development or widespread public discourse. Why does Russia lack organizations similar to the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, The Hastings Center, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, etc.? The answer is quite complicated (Stepanova 2019).

Until the late 1980s, bioethics was not represented in the Soviet academic discourse. This was, in many ways, due to the fact that it was a product of American academic culture (Callahan 1993). As the medical sociologists Fox and Swazey stated in their mid-1980s study, we should not suppose “that bioethics is a sufficiently neutral and universalistic term for it to be applied to medical morality in China or, for that matter, to medical ethical concern in whatever society or form it may now occur” (1984, 336–37). This perspective was critical of Professor Engelhardt’s material, published after the delegation of the US Kennedy Institute of Ethics returned from China (Engelhardt 1980). Sociologists described Professor Engelhardt’s approach as “cultural myopia”; according to them, Professor Engelhardt did not adequately appreciate the deep Western and American cultural influences on bioethics. These sociologists argued that he inappropriately considered bioethics as neutral and universal (Fox and Swazey 1984, 337). Sociologists emphasized that the term ‘bioethics’ was a neologism, which appeared primarily in American culture. In other cultures, its philosophical bases can be perceived as “acultural or transcultural,” which “can significantly limit its application in practice, allowing for the use of other terms” (337–38). In many ways, this is true for both Soviet and post-Soviet Russian development of medical ethics.

Perspectives within bioethical Soviet studies in the fields of Communist morality, medical ethics, and deontology differed radically from those that emerged within the United States (De George 1969; Tsaregorodtsev 1966; Petrovsky 1988). These differences are deeply intertwined within history and culture; differences are especially evident when we examine the issue of freedom. Soviet philosophy largely encompasses a determinist doctrine, which means that a person’s choice is an illusion, as it was determined by the interests of society (De George 1969, 35-38). Another important difference concerning Soviet ethics was noted by the Professor Graham in his Nature essay. He noted numerous attempts by Soviet philosophers to transfer the solution of complex problems to a future society, which would presumably be more just (Graham 1991). He agreed that this position allowed for neutrality in the struggle of conflicting concepts, but such abstracts proved to be of no use for those who were bound to make decisions in current society. In other words, this ethical model was not applicable. The problem was made more complex by a rather special understanding of the basic ethical categories. For example, freedom was not individual, but collective, which in turn complicated the perception of such categories as responsibility, wellbeing, duty, and consciousness—which were directly dependent on the understanding of freedom (De George 1969). Thus, the individual value of a human being was bound to the needs of society, and morality was an instrument of social control that guaranteed social stability. In the public discourse there was an “embryological perspective” of a person and the inner life of a human being, which were seen as “underdeveloped” and in the need of being “raised.”

The desire of the enlightened government to educate the “ignorant” people has deep historic roots, starting from the reign of Peter the Great. At that time, numerous disciplinary and oppressive campaigns were conducted under the guise of “enlightenment.” In the Soviet period, society was evaluated on an evolutionary scale, spanning from the primitive to the communist forms, which meant that there was no need to give a detailed analysis of its contemporary state. The ideas of constructing a new society, educating the new human being for the common socialist happiness, manifested its limitations as early as the 1950s, since this ideology could boast a purely humanitarian ideal for the future, but only offer limited guidance on how this would allow contemporary problems to be solved.

Relatedly, developments concerning a culture of silence share this intertwined history. The ethics of silence was shaped by the expansion of the “classified” zones and non-disclosure demands. In the Soviet Union, the term “state secret” received a maximally-broad interpretation, especially the context of the non-stop mobilization campaigns, carried out under pretense of war. Safeguarding “state secrets and showing discretion was the duty of every Soviet citizen” (Zelenov 2012, 147). Record keeping in Soviet institutions was also aimed at secrecy; indeed, entire departments were kept secret. In more open institutions, so-called “first departments” monitored the storage of state secrets.

The non-disclosure culture was enforced through institutions, whose employees internalized the non-disclosure norms, as well as through censorship and the state’s monopoly on mass media. As a result, Mikhailova describes the following:

Silence as a form of social protest behavior revealed its duplicity: under certain circumstances it allowed the individual to counter society’s oppressive machines, and to defend if not one’s life, then at least one’s honor. On the other hand, it provided the opportunity to sustain the fragile peace (even a questionable one), which was still preferable to the ‘good old fight,’ yet at the same time this very tendency aided the spread of lies, the formation of a pseudo-reality and the deepening of the anthropological crisis. (2011)

The “ethics of silence” and “non-disclosure culture” mechanisms, shaped in the Soviet Union, were supplemented by the phenomenon of duplicitous thinking. Soviet sociologist Yuri Levada actively used George Orwell’s formulation ‘doublethink’ to describe this practice (Orwell 1961). Levada also noted the following about late-Soviet society:

The doublethink dictatorship became total and unlimited: it was cemented that one must separate the sphere of social norms (to act, speak and think as you ‘were supposed to’), and the sphere of what was tolerated, which was basically dubbed as the ‘private’ life…The ‘minor’ and ‘major’ truths were locked together, struggling against one another, yet supplementing each other. (2006, 266)

In Levada’s opinion, post-Soviet society cemented the behavioral qualities of the Soviet period. In 2000, he called the post-Soviet person “sly”:

The sly person—on every level and in every essence of his or her existence – not only tolerates deceit, but is ready to be deceived, moreover—he or she has a need for self-delusion for reasons of the same (including psychological) self-preservation, for the overcoming of one’s internal split, for the justification of one’s own deceit. (2000, 20)

With the absence of strict barriers that would separate the proper and improper behavior, the dominant situation for post-Soviet society was not playing by the rules, but rather—playing with the rules.

The ideology of the totalitarian state, which routinely uses policies to impose state pressure on all spheres of life, also transformed the understanding of a doctor’s duty and medical ethics. This influence denied the essence of the physician’s mission and transformed the mission into a form of social work aimed at the benefit of the state, not individual interest. The late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed the appearance of first Western studies dedicated to the peculiar traits of the Soviet and post-Soviet healthcare systems (Rowland, and Telyukov 1991; Chazov 1992; Barr and Field 1996; Field 1995), especially medical ethics (Veatch 1989; Ryan 1990; Barr 1996).

In Soviet medicine, “medical privacy” received peculiar interpretations. The main ethical goal of the doctor was to aid in the creation of the “major” truth of the state. The strict paternalist model, the medical structure centralized on a pan-Soviet scale, and its moral obligation to ensure society’s healthcare (and not the healthcare of the individual patient) completely changed the term “medical privacy” throughout society. Policymakers did not protect the patient’s rights to confidentiality but rather strengthened the non-disclosure culture of the medical corporation. This naturally did not allow for the formation of bioethical institutions, as it was understood from a Western perspective. Still, academics were also interested in investigating the “second economy on an unofficial barter system” of healthcare (Barr 1996). This was a major part of the public consensus—underground payments to the doctors in underfinanced conditions and the low quality of the publicly free healthcare. This phenomenon is hard to understand, if one only depends on the official Marxist dogmas and Communist morality of the Soviet professions, which were supposed to be driven by the primacy of duty. For doctors, the expectation and acceptance of payment from a patient in exchange for medical services was officially considered bourgeois and unethical (Barr 1996, 38). Yet this also can be easily understood as a manifestation of the “doublethink” and the non-disclosure ethics in medicine.

Strict centralized control, the disregard for the specifics of regional healthcare, the priority of quantity over quality, the overall lack of resources, and lack of financing could not stimulate the doctors to improve their work. At this time, the average doctor’s salary equaled about 70% of the non-agricultural worker’s paycheck. These factors only led to an increase in mortality, a low life expectancy, and the public mistrust of the healthcare system (Rowland and Telyukov 1991). Further, independent professional associations of health care workers could not exist under the Soviet state. The state could not and did not evaluate the professional work of doctors. Soviet doctors, as state employees, were subject to disciplinary orders and could not fully control the field of their professional expertise, which was a necessity for their work. The social standing of doctors in USSR exhibited a “paradoxical combination of corporate powerlessness and bureaucratic power” (Field 1989).

In the post-Soviet landscape, and especially in Russia, the government—until recently —kept the Soviet organizational model for mass healthcare. The government began to gradually transfer the system into the sphere of “services” yet retained the paternalistic watch of the state over the medical institutions. It’s important to remember that by the 1980s, Soviet medicine was falling behind the healthcare levels of the developed countries. Researchers see the main reasons for this in the overbearing centralized management system of healthcare, the low levels of professional education, and insufficient funding (3.4% of USSR GDP in 1989, in comparison with the 11.4% in the United States) (Rowland and Telyukov 1991). As Dr. Rowland notes, “in theory, Soviet healthcare is a model of regional medical aid, which is based on local clinics. In reality, this system falls apart due to lack of finance, the indolence of centralized control, and lack of innovation” (Rowland and Telyukov 1991). The doctor’s clinical practice was not autonomous; the patient did not have the right to choose where and from whom he or she will receive medical aid. This, obviously, meant that there were no objective motivations for improving the quality of medical aid, and numerous services would only be available for an additional, informal payment. As The New York Times stated, “Communism may be dead…but its disparities and inefficiencies remain,” and “health care had never been one of the Soviet Union’s great successes….[D]octors were always relatively badly treated in the Soviet Union” (Erlanger 1992). The situation would not change for several years.

After 1991, Russia started developing the private medical care sector, which was more flexible but also expensive for population-based health needs. The last healthcare reform in Russia, which took place during 2015-2017, was driven by the logic of “optimizing” costs and raising the “economic efficiency” of the system. In Russia, the main direction of reform concerns the reduction and merger of clinics, the partial privatization of insurance, and in some cases, privatization of the actual delivery of services. In contrast, in the United States, the most important part of healthcare reform lies in the field of insurance, not in the actual delivery of healthcare services (Filatova and Schultz 2016). Russian policy changes have led to the bureaucratization of the system, a decrease in number of hospitals and hospitals’ enlargement and specialization, with a marked and forced decrease in numbers of doctors and nurses (Nurik 2015). Nurik notes the following figures from between 2005 and 2013:

The number of health facilities in rural areas fell by 75 percent from 8,249 to 2,085. That number includes a 95 percent drop in the number of district hospitals, from 2,631 to only 124, and a 65 percent decline in the number of local health clinics, from 7,404 to 2,561. (2015)

In 2014, a broad public campaign against the collapse of the Russian healthcare system was launched by the Deystvie Union, the Russian Confederation of Labour, the Pirogov doctors’ movement, the “Together for Decent Medicine” protest group, and other civil society organizations. This did not yield the desired results. Instead, with Russia’s huge territories and disproportionate population spread, the reduction or merger of hospitals partially led to the rise in inequality of people’s access to healthcare.

On one side, as Kleinert and Horton state in their editorial, “the health system itself is marred by an insufficient skill level of its too many doctors who are still underpaid and demotivated” (2017). On another, the Russian Constitution guarantees the right to health and free medicine in state hospitals for every citizen. But the scope of guarantees is not defined by law. The budgets for medical care are scattered: they are partly paid by the federal budget and partly by regional budgets. A citizen does not know who pays, when they pay, or for what. The population does not participate in financing public health care. Health resources are disintegrated, and their allocation cannot be considered equitable. Availability of health care depends on one’s location within the country and social status. As Sheiman and Shishkin (2010) noticed, an important part of the reforms should be raising the level of legal education in the field of healthcare. It is necessary to create conditions to facilitate patients’ choice of medical organizations on the basis of accessible and transparent information and ratings of clinics. This information might also include the results of assessing the quality of medical care based on patient’s opinions. It is necessary to specify what it means for the state to guarantee free medical care, to strengthen regulation of paid medical services, to make a serious revision of medical education on all levels.

The consequences of this healthcare reform became clear in light of the pandemic, which shed light on the most vulnerable groups and re-activated the ethics of silence. Professor V. Vlasov calls this “the continued misuse of health care for political purposes” (Vlasov 2017). For many years, the government used healthcare programs to solve demographic problems (e.g., suppressing access to abortions, increasing funding for in-vitro fertilization). Healthcare was a tool, aimed at the increase of manpower, instead of being an instrument focused on aiding sick people (Vlassov 2017).

L. Roshal, the chief physician in the National Institute of Emergency Children’s Surgery, recently confirmed that Russian healthcare was not ready for emergencies like COVID-19. According to him, a meeting took place almost a year ago on the preparedness of Russian healthcare to offer aid in various emergency situations. It was hosted by the All-Russian People’s Front, a civil initiative, with the participation of representatives from the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Emergencies, the “Defense” Movement (Zaschita), the Ministry of Healthcare, the managers of the ambulance doctors’ union, and chief physicians of various clinics. The conclusion was extremely depressing: “We are not ready to provide aid to the country’s population.” Due to a combination of numerous state initiatives to “optimize” health are and decreases in total healthcare workers, Russia was primed to experience difficulties throughout a pandemic.

Moreover, this commentary also demonstrates another example of the non-disclosure culture: no one wants to bring healthcare reform failure to the public’s attention. The regime of “secrecy” (which demands silence) reemerged in Russian everyday life with the threat of COVID-19. Public discourse on responses to the pandemic focused on the high level of social mobilization and heroism, typical for the Soviet past and in tune with communist morality. Russians’ realities were penetrated by something that is directly connected with the ethics of silence and non-disclosure culture: “ The crash of Communism instilled hope that science would transform Soviet health care in the interests of humanity, but still, it serves mostly the ideology of the Russian State” (Vlasov 2017). The culture of non-disclosure persists in the neo-Soviet era.

Social Disparity and Culture of Non-Disclosure in COVID-19 Russia

The regime of “secrecy” came back into Russian reality with the threat of COVID-19, as part of the public discourse of mobilization that was a well-known part of Soviet morality accompanied with “the culture of non-disclosure.” According to the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, the measures taken by the Russian government were among the strictest in the world, according to the global scale of state countermeasures to the coronavirus (2020).

The Russian National COVID Response Team was created on January 29, 2020. On January 31, Russia closed its border with China. Following that measure, self-isolation regimes and electronic passes were introduced. The government took unprecedented measures, initially stating that its care for its citizens was the prerogative. At the first stage, Russian society responsibly accepted the social isolation guidelines in spite of their numerous drawbacks. Yet the federal government refused to impose nationwide quarantine measures or even impose them on the large metropolitan areas. Responsibility for such measures was instead routed to the regional governments. Additionally, the state refused to offer financial aid to businesses or to vulnerable groups of the population. In the aftermath, the state continued to pursue the disciplinary-oppressive course, which was represented as an “educational” measure aimed at “irresponsible” citizens. Instead of supporting its citizens, the state imposed a series of administrative measures that were aimed at punishing the population for violating the non-imposed quarantine measures and for the spread of unverified information. The state also created a special procedure for registering and selling medicine, while maintaining limitations in trade and businesses.

The legal system has imposed strict measures in response to COVID-19. One of the specific measures was the Russian Supreme Court’s decision that forbade the discussion and spread of any coronavirus information under threat of criminal charges. Article 207.1 (“Public dissemination of knowingly false information about circumstances posing a threat to the life and safety of citizens”) was introduced into the Criminal Code on April 1, 2020. It focuses on filtering coronavirus distribution data. Accordingly, information concerning the pandemic that does not originate from official state channels is presupposed to be aimed at political and social destabilization.

Digital passes, isolation, and fines have also been imposed in Moscow vigorously. Regional authorities try to follow the capital’s example as best as they can. All of this was accompanied by the strengthening of social inequality—state officials of all levels, members of security services, journalists, and jurists were exempt from the restriction measures. The elder generation of Russian citizens characterized this situation as the imposition of “martial law.” Society’s perception of this time-period as a “time of war” allows us to analyze these events from the point of view of the history of Russian collective mentality . This approach allows us to see the “content plane” that lies beyond the “expression plane” of the social mindset (Ariès 1981, XIII–XVII). With the original cooperation of the population (who agreed to social distance and limit their movement), the level of the state’s communication with vulnerable people facing economic instability deteriorated to its usual forms—fines, bans, threats, and pressure. Under the conditions of the epidemic, the mental predisposition of almost all state officials becomes quite clear: the Russian president calls for social isolation, and thus it is unacceptable to say anything against social control. Following this idea, President Vladimir Putin signed the new federal law No. 123 on April 24, 2020:

On conducting an experiment to establish special regulation in order to create the necessary conditions for the development and implementation of artificial intelligence technologies in the subject of the Russian Federation—the city of federal significance Moscow.

This law amended Article 6 and 10 of the Federal Law “On Personal Data.” As a result, Russian citizens are facing a new ethical challenge to their rights to privacy; this is partially why the state’s actions are aimed at further enforcement of isolation. Nevertheless, the measures taken by the authorities in their fight against the coronavirus vary from region to region, as does the level of the pandemic’s spread (Volkov 2020).

In order to properly evaluate perception of the imposed restrictions, we must understand which measures will be repealed once the quarantine ends and which will remain permanently. For now, we can only say that only a minor percentage of the Russian population considers the state’s anti-COVID measures extreme. Here, we should examine Russians’ attitude towards similar restrictions: the law allowing security services to monitor private correspondence, the blocking of several foreign websites (including some universities), and punishment for “extremist” social media posts. These previous initiatives were actually met with support by a bulk of the population; however, public opinion on the matter was dominated by representatives of older generations and residents of rural regions. Both groups tend to traditionally see the state as the institution responsible for the safety and morality of the people. Younger, more educated, and socially active Russians and residents of major cities, on the contrary, were highly unhappy with these laws. They had a better understanding of the restrictions’ essence and “extrapolated” on themselves the possible punishments.

These contemporary state measures reinforce isolation measures. The lack of bioethics and a professional community of specialists, capable of articulating society’s interests who seek to balance individual freedom with social interests, has led to the restoration of the “ethics of silence.” This is verified by public opinion surveys. For example, Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center notes that “over 60% of the population is neutral in their assessment of the President” (2020). Gudkov calls this the “base construction,” where this population concludes that “there is nothing we can do, so I will not say anything good or bad” (2020). In the post-Soviet period, Russian society went through a radical transformation and assumed a highly unstable structure. Post-Soviet Russia experienced several crises—e.g., 1998, 2000, 2014—with each one deepening the social and economic divide, creating new vulnerable groups in Russian society. Yet the problem of poverty, questions of inequality, or a search for solidarity did not become subjects of public discourse. Russian society exhibits a far greater level of income inequality than European and the majority of post-Socialist countries. The “middle class” is absent, as are the conditions that would allow for its formation, while the population is subject to a high mortality rate.

Meanwhile, individuals living in poverty were further marginalized. Poverty remained adamantly overlooked by Russian society. In 2014, sociologists marked the stigmatization of the poor; society would bestow them with highly negative characteristics (Mareeva and Tikhonova 2016). The concept of a two-level social inequality in modern Russia is applicable to healthcare access. Inequalities in health are not limited to inequalities in access to health services, however. The difference in the social status of patients creates different attitudes regarding health, reinforcing inequalities in maintaining the health of Russians. A high social status allows the patient to establish equal relations with the doctor and affects the degree of satisfaction they experience in contact with the doctor and treatment. Low social status limits the patient’s choice: they usually use the state medicine, not only because the low costs, but also because of prejudices in private medical services. The COVID-19 pandemic—aside from emphasizing the divide of the population of the large metropolitan areas with large and small towns and rural areas, intertwined with demographic factors such as age, education, and income—also brought into the open the crisis of public trust towards official medical institutions and doctors (the lack of transparency in medical statistics, malfunctioning tests, the cancellation of any medical treatment aside from COVID-19). The lack of professional associations and the political subjectivity of regional authorities leads to little legal accountability . With this in mind, it is noteworthy that the Moscow City Administration is actively promoting the values of transhumanism, that is, the improvement of a human being with digital technology and AI, through measures such as the “Smart City 2030” program and the new digital pass system testing that has been ongoing throughout the COVID-19 epidemic.

 In addition, there is a lack of accountability for the social, immunological, and psychological consequences for isolated people. Using their own clinical observations, several doctors have recently discussed the risks of prolonged isolation that directly challenge the currently imposed measures (Jalsevac 2020). However, information questioning the state’s responses will often be met with hostility on social media. The military mobilization of the health services allowed the state to go back to the comfortable and familiar forms of communication with society—a format of strength, stemming from paternalism and police control.

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