Alumnus completes prestigious pre-regulation application at Harvard | FIU Information
Just a few months after graduating from FIU, Daniel Simon ’22 packed his luggage and headed for Harvard to total a major-notch system that will prepare him for his upcoming: regulation university.
Simon was picked as a single of only 20 students in the state to be part of the Training and Recruitment Initiative for Admission to Top Law Faculties (TRIALS) legislation prep plan — a partnership in between Harvard Regulation University, New York College Faculty of Regulation and the nonprofit Edge Screening Foundation.
The prestigious summer season plan caters to pupils with limited financial resources and whose backgrounds are underrepresented at the country’s top rated regulation colleges. Students get thorough LSAT tutoring acquire exercise LSATs in simulated testing ailments attend lectures by distinguished lawyers and students, as very well as faculty from Harvard and NYU and forge connections with friends and instructors.
“It is a daily life-altering knowledge,” Simon suggests. “This program [has given] me assistance to conquer struggle and applications to seize opportunities. Meeting some exceptional persons, I uncovered liberty in authenticity and a enthusiasm for defying the odds and making a long term to uplift other folks.”
A handful of many years back, law school did not even appear like a possibility to Simon. He arrived in the United States from Cuba as a teen. A violin participant, he labored numerous gigs to aid his mom — who worked a few work — make ends satisfy. Simon also labored tough at faculty, taking dual enrollment courses and logging hours on hrs of research. He was approved into many universities like FIU, NYU, the University of California-Berkley, the University of Miami, University of Florida and Florida State College. He chose FIU.
As a tunes effectiveness important, he dove into his artwork as a violin participant. In his very first semester, he also took an FIU Honors University course on the foundations of law. It improved his existence. He linked the articles with his experiences as a musician — observing how good friends unknowingly signed their copyrights away for the songs they created. He observed his calling.
“The class taught me how a great deal fantastic you can do with a lawful degree,” he states. “I have this knowledge of the arts as a musician, the vulnerability to transform the soul into a melody. And there is so a great deal that is unknown to artists about safeguarding it [their music and talent], about navigating rough waters in the lawful entire world. So, I determined to change that. I decided to pursue the authorized occupation.”
He extra political science as an additional significant to his scientific studies. He joined the Panther Mock Demo crew at FIU, which is a university student group housed in the Honors Faculty that competes at tournaments operate by the American Mock Trial Affiliation. He also became a college student assistant for Kristen Corpion, who at the time was an teacher at the Honors College and taught the legal introductory study course that impacted his vocation.
Ultimately, Corpion supplied him an internship at her exercise, CORPlaw, which afterwards turned into a position give. Considering that 2020, Simon has worked as a authorized clerk at her organization. In his position, he drafts paperwork, conducts research and attends conferences with purchasers beneath the supervision of legal counsel. He is also collaborating in the FIU Regulation Path Journey software, which allows college students prepare to enter regulation school.
“What sets Daniel aside is his unwillingness to give up,” Corpion suggests. “He’s the sort of particular person that constantly issues them selves and raises the bar, with no excuses. He has 100% accountability.”
His earning a spot in the TRIALS system, she provides, speaks volumes to his expertise and motivation – and will assist established him up for even a lot more extraordinary achievements.
“The variety of scholar that receives into TRIALS is phenomenal,” adds Corpion, an alumnus of the TRIALS software herself. “The program is wonderful. It provides you that improve to get you into just one of all those T-14 [top fourteen] legislation universities. You get tutoring, you get to community with admissions departments and alumni. I am assured that whatsoever doorways Daniel wishes to open up, he will bust them down one way or the other, but a plan like this gives him more assistance in undertaking so.”
Simon done the in-man or woman portion of the TRIALS application at Harvard and done virtual sessions right until the drop. He hopes to attend law college at a major university – probably Harvard. In the prolonged term, he options to keep on both building new music and pursuing legislation.
In fact, all over his time at FIU, he never ever stop songs. He was the concertmaster (the initially chair violinist, a situation of management) of the FIU Symphony Orchestra. He figured out from musicians and educators Misha Vitenson, of FIU’s Artist-in-Residence Ensemble Amernet String Quartet, and Javier Jose Mendoza, conductor of the FIU Symphony Orchestra.
Simon taught violin, piano and audio concept to young children each and every semester. Just after graduating in the spring of 2022, he joined a team of students on tour in Bolivia as a result of FIU’s Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Faculty of Music & Executing Arts to conduct at the International Festival of American Renaissance and Baroque Music “Misiones de Chiquitos”.
He suggests the mentorship of Corpion and his FIU loved ones has been crucial to his achievement.
“The benefit of FIU lies within its community and faculty,” Simon states. “You can find an underlying mission of hope, know-how and chance that binds us all alongside one another. The points I’ve accomplished are in a single way or another relevant to the assist, tips and direction that I obtained from FIU and the Honors School.”
Just one of his plans is to give back in the identical way he acquired: to return to FIU and assist the up coming generation of Panthers be effective, as well.