Adcom reaction to PS

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TheGloaming

TheGloaming

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  1. Medical Student
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What percent of the time do you think an Adcom thinks __________________ after reading a personal statement?

1. Wow. That was fantastic. This definitely increases his/her chance at an interview offer.

2. Okay. That's fine. Continuing on with the application.

3. Hmmm. This isn't what we like to see. This will probably hurt an interview chance.
 
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thegloaming said:
what percent of the time do you think an adcom thinks __________________ after reading a personal statement?

1. Wow. That was fantastic. This definitely increases his/her chance at an interview offer.

2. Okay. Thanks fine. Continuing on with the application.

3. Hmmm. This isn't what we like to see. This will probably hurt an interview chance.
Click to expand...

1. <<1%

2. 95%

3. 5%
 
Pons Asinorum said:
1. <<1%

2. 95%

3. 5%
Click to expand...

The cynical part of me that thinks it's easy to screw up a personal statement would readjust the distribution between 2 and 3, but I agree with 1. It's difficult to make an absolutely outstanding PS, but if you're not careful, it could put you out of the running.
 
mauberley said:
The cynical part of me that thinks it's easy to screw up a personal statement would readjust the distribution between 2 and 3, but I agree with 1. It's difficult to make an absolutely outstanding PS, but if you're not careful, it could put you out of the running.
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The problem is that if you try too hard to make a #1, you run the distinct risk of writing a #3 instead. Very, very few undergraduate science majors have the capability as writers to get a #1. But in trying and failing, you bypass #2 and head straight for danger.
 
Pons Asinorum said:
The problem is that if you try too hard to make a #1, you run the distinct risk of writing a #3 instead. Very, very few undergraduate science majors have the capability as writers to get a #1. But in trying and failing, you bypass #2 and head straight for danger.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Wise words. 👍
 
I'd actually say it's

1. 5-10%
2. 80-90%
3. 5-10%
 
There are more lousy statements out there than you peeps think. I would say the #3's are more in the 15 - 20% range.

A PS can go way wrong on content, grammar, relevance, and even if none of those are bad, it can still be extremely LAME or homogeneous to every other statement.

4 x 3 x 2 ways to screw things up. Miss one and you're in that nebulous #2 category. I wouldn't find it hard to believe that up to a quarter of submitted PS's are pretty stanky, given that fewer than 50% of applicants are accepted anywhere.
 
medzealot said:
There are more lousy statements out there than you peeps think. I would say the #3's are more in the 15 - 20% range.

A PS can go way wrong on content, grammar, relevance, and even if none of those are bad, it can still be extremely LAME or homogeneous to every other statement.

4 x 3 x 2 ways to screw things up. Miss one and you're in that nebulous #2 category. I wouldn't find it hard to believe that up to a quarter of submitted PS's are pretty stanky, given that fewer than 50% of applicants are accepted anywhere.
Click to expand...
word. once some of you have read some others' PSs, you'll see
 
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Pons Asinorum said:
I won't argue. The only number I'm wedded to is my prediction for #1.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can't really intuit the adcoms' reactions, but in my opinion (which I humbly present as the truth) there are practically no exceptional personal statements.

I sure haven't written one yet. I'm happy when my drafts fit the bill for #2.
 
I'd agree with pretty much everyone here: very very few #1, mostly #2, and a good bit of #3. I'd be curious to see what the adcom members on SDN would say. (Quick, someone summon LizzyM with the LizzyM call!)
 
Much like your LORs (which for the most part shows you found 3 or 4 other human beings that liked you enough to write you a letter), I get the feeling that in 90% of the cases, the PS does nothing more than to show the adcom you can write a 1.5 page statement about yourself without coming across like a complete *****.

The other 10% will be like mentioned earlier, amazingly mind-blowing and awesome, or so hilariously terrible it gets photocopied and put up by the water cooler.
 
I think most PS are bland and the same, with no impact or difference made.

Some of them have things like "and although I have never shadowed or volunteered, I know medicine is for me due to my organic chemistry class, in which I got a B+." There are only red flags....I thiink a good, original PS is very far and inbetween
 
raltima07 said:
"and although I have never shadowed or volunteered, I know medicine is for me due to my organic chemistry class, in which I got a B+."
Click to expand...

That was funny. Let's derail this thread into things that shouldn't be in anyone's PS but definitely is in the PS of SDN users. To paraphrase LEUNIT (not his PS just a joke he made)

"And even though I had taken the MCAT 5 times already, I never gave up until I got a 26 because I knew I would get in then because the MCAT isn't everything."
 
I imagine that the Adcomms who are reading all these personal statements and essays feel about the same way that I do after writing so many.....Good Grief, another essay to read?

For that reason, I think those essays and PSs in category 1 probably become fewer and farther between as the cycle progresses - just because you've heard so many "unique" life stories by that point.

By the middle of the cycle someone must have to have a pretty decent PS to even raise an eyebrow.
 
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ColeOnTheRoll said:
Here's the response from Michigan's admissions director:

@UMichMedAdmiss
My answers to this question: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=798616 1) 2% 2)95% 3)3%
Click to expand...
Haha, nice. I didn't know they respond to stuff in the general section as well.

Pons Asinorum said:
The problem is that if you try too hard to make a #1, you run the distinct risk of writing a #3 instead. Very, very few undergraduate science majors have the capability as writers to get a #1. But in trying and failing, you bypass #2 and head straight for danger.
Click to expand...
I think the issue is more like, what percent of applicants are truly unique. To get #1 you need to have a very interesting story and be a good writer. I agree that for someone who isn't too unique (or even for someone that is) trying too hard can destroy the personal statement.
 
My interviewer at one school said she really liked my PS; said it was very unique. But I've yet to hear from that school, so lot of good that did. 🙁
 
I used to take applications in groups of 30 so in thinking about them in that way:

1 or 2 out of 30 are excellent so I guess that's 3-6%

3-5 out of 30 are terrible so I guess that's roughtly 10-15%

That leaves 23-26 (75-85%) out of 30 in the average pile.
 
LizzyM said:
I used to take applications in groups of 30 so in thinking about them in that way:

1 or 2 out of 30 are excellent so I guess that's 3-6%

3-5 out of 30 are terrible so I guess that's roughtly 10-15%

That leaves 23-26 (75-85%) out of 30 in the average pile.
Click to expand...

LizzyM, what makes a PS excellent as compared to average? I would guess that average would be just a boring read, but excellent would be something that got my attention and kept me reading. Is that right? Also, what would make one terrible? Does this automatically kill your application chances?
 
I think we often times assume that people who apply to medical school are at least decent writers. I had to scale back this assumption after reading the ps of a few of my friends.
 
ejay286 said:
I think we often times assume that people who apply to medical school are at least decent writers. I had to scale back this assumption after reading the ps of a few of my friends.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that is definitely not a safe assumption. Generally speaking, I'd consider SDN members to be above average med school applicants, and I got some truly awful personal statements when I was editing a couple years ago. I mean, they were mind-numbingly bad. You'll figure out just how bad med students and doctors are at writing things when you have to read their notes. It's pretty atrocious sometimes.
 
ejay286 said:
I think we often times assume that people who apply to medical school are at least decent writers. I had to scale back this assumption after reading the ps of a few of my friends.
Click to expand...

I assume they are awful writers. That assumption gets reinforced when I read papers written by others IN medical school.

There is an art to telling a story. Some people have it, but most don't. Out of those groups there are many who will never proofread or get outside opinions from multiple people. That separates out a lot of people. The truly excellent personal statements are usually edited and refined several times.

The one thing I was ALWAYS complimented on during interviews was my personal statement. I'm not that great of a writer, as one can tell by the scattered grammatical errors and typos. I simply wrote everything I wanted to say without thinking about length. I then edited and condensed it down to 1 page (from 2.5). It was edited by 2 grad student. One was creative writing and the other was some random English lit graduate student. It took a while, but I do feel like it paid off in the end.
 
Keep in mind that you are writing for medical students, physician faculty members and non-physician faculty members including those in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, public health.

A bad essay might be poorly written with multiple grammatical and spelling errors, or (much harder to pick up with spell-check) use of fancy vocabulary builder words that just don't fit or flow. Another spell-check problem is homonyms (there/their hear/here, even cord/chord), The content of a bad essay may be so cliched that the reader gets a feeling of deja vu -- have I already read this essay three times this season? Common themes... inspired by grandparent's death (or grandpa wouldn't have died if he had known to take better care of himself), I admire my pediatrician (or ortho surgeon) and want to be like him, Mountains Beyond Mountains inspires me to be the next Paul Farmer, as an infant I grabbed my daddy's stethoscope and never let go. A special kind of cliche is the "screenplay" style essay that usually starts with lights and sirens and then becomes a dialogue between the applicant and a doctor or sick person, or an interior monologue.

Now some essays based on one of these cliches can be just average while some go over the edge to truly bad.

An excellent essay is usually well structured, well told and draws one in. While not pre-med in any way, I thought that the style of writing in The Glass Castle reminded me of an excellent PS. (Also a good book in terms of the triumph of the human spirit over the tragedy of alcoholism and mental illness and the strength of familial love and forgiveness.)
 
LizzyM said:
Keep in mind that you are writing for medical students, physician faculty members and non-physician faculty members including those in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, public health.

A bad essay might be poorly written with multiple grammatical and spelling errors, or (much harder to pick up with spell-check) use of fancy vocabulary builder words that just don't fit or flow. Another spell-check problem is homonyms (there/their hear/here, even cord/chord), The content of a bad essay may be so cliched that the reader gets a feeling of deja vu -- have I already read this essay three times this season? Common themes... inspired by grandparent's death (or grandpa wouldn't have died if he had known to take better care of himself), I admire my pediatrician (or ortho surgeon) and want to be like him, Mountains Beyond Mountains inspires me to be the next Paul Farmer, as an infant I grabbed my daddy's stethoscope and never let go. A special kind of cliche is the "screenplay" style essay that usually starts with lights and sirens and then becomes a dialogue between the applicant and a doctor or sick person, or an interior monologue.

Now some essays based on one of these cliches can be just average while some go over the edge to truly bad.

An excellent essay is usually well structured, well told and draws one in. While not pre-med in any way, I thought that the style of writing in The Glass Castle reminded me of an excellent PS. (Also a good book in terms of the triumph of the human spirit over the tragedy of alcoholism and mental illness and the strength of familial love and forgiveness.)
Click to expand...

Sounds cliche. 😛.

In all reality I think that presentation matters more then content, and should give an insight into your personality. My PS was a lot like me. It wasn't terribly unique (somehow writing about being a white upper-middle class Jewish kid doesn't bring in the diversity scholarships), but descriptive, to the point, and honest, and I received several positive comments on it.
 
LizzyM said:
Keep in mind that you are writing for medical students, physician faculty members and non-physician faculty members including those in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, public health.

A bad essay might be poorly written with multiple grammatical and spelling errors, or (much harder to pick up with spell-check) use of fancy vocabulary builder words that just don't fit or flow. Another spell-check problem is homonyms (there/their hear/here, even cord/chord), The content of a bad essay may be so cliched that the reader gets a feeling of deja vu -- have I already read this essay three times this season? Common themes... inspired by grandparent's death (or grandpa wouldn't have died if he had known to take better care of himself), I admire my pediatrician (or ortho surgeon) and want to be like him, Mountains Beyond Mountains inspires me to be the next Paul Farmer, as an infant I grabbed my daddy's stethoscope and never let go. A special kind of cliche is the "screenplay" style essay that usually starts with lights and sirens and then becomes a dialogue between the applicant and a doctor or sick person, or an interior monologue.

Now some essays based on one of these cliches can be just average while some go over the edge to truly bad.

An excellent essay is usually well structured, well told and draws one in. While not pre-med in any way, I thought that the style of writing in The Glass Castle reminded me of an excellent PS. (Also a good book in terms of the triumph of the human spirit over the tragedy of alcoholism and mental illness and the strength of familial love and forgiveness.)
Click to expand...

Sorry for the thread revival, but I thought there was some good info here, especially LizzyM's contribution.

Anyway, this part made me a bit nervous. My PS is basically describes my journey towards the goal of medicine. It starts broad (biology class yay!) and then goes through, essentially, my decision making process. It ends with an anecdote from my one of my clinical experiences that represents my interest in medicine. I wrote this part very much like how lizzym describes the "screenplay" style.

I guess my question is: do adcoms get incredibly turned off when they read anything like that? For me, it's only one part of the whole, not the main theme, but this post made me a bit hesitant about including it even though I felt like it was the strongest part of my PS.
 
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alerk323 said:
Sorry for the thread revival, but I thought there was some good info here, especially LizzyM's contribution.

Anyway, this part made me a bit nervous. My PS is basically describes my journey towards the goal of medicine. It starts broad (biology class yay!) and then goes through, essentially, my decision making process. It ends with an anecdote from my one of my clinical experiences that represents my interest in medicine. I wrote this part very much like how lizzym describes the "screenplay" style.

I guess my question is: do adcoms get incredibly turned off when they read anything like that? For me, it's only one part of the whole, not the main theme, but this post made me a bit hesitant about including it even though I felt like it was the strongest part of my PS.
Click to expand...

From talking with a doctor who sat on an adcom while he was in med school, the "lights and sirens/screenplay" can go either way for you. While he said the vast majority of the time they were horrible, the most memorable essay he read started off with something very much like "The plane was plummeting towards the ground and the flight attendant was sitting on the ceiling screaming". His opinion was it was great to have a catchy opening line, as long as you had the writing chops to back it up. Of course, this falls into the "very easy to slide the other direction into category three" 😉
 
DOCBERT said:
That line has my attention, too. Did the applicant actually survive a plane crash?! 😱
Click to expand...
He said it basically went on to say that the pilot pulled it out, made him think about his life, decision to be doctor, etc etc etc. Overall he said the rest of the PS was pretty formulatic, but the opener got him an interview, at least at his school.
 
Another good book to base one's PS on is A Million Little Pieces

LizzyM said:
Keep in mind that you are writing for medical students, physician faculty members and non-physician faculty members including those in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, public health.

A bad essay might be poorly written with multiple grammatical and spelling errors, or (much harder to pick up with spell-check) use of fancy vocabulary builder words that just don't fit or flow. Another spell-check problem is homonyms (there/their hear/here, even cord/chord), The content of a bad essay may be so cliched that the reader gets a feeling of deja vu -- have I already read this essay three times this season? Common themes... inspired by grandparent's death (or grandpa wouldn't have died if he had known to take better care of himself), I admire my pediatrician (or ortho surgeon) and want to be like him, Mountains Beyond Mountains inspires me to be the next Paul Farmer, as an infant I grabbed my daddy's stethoscope and never let go. A special kind of cliche is the "screenplay" style essay that usually starts with lights and sirens and then becomes a dialogue between the applicant and a doctor or sick person, or an interior monologue.

Now some essays based on one of these cliches can be just average while some go over the edge to truly bad.

An excellent essay is usually well structured, well told and draws one in. While not pre-med in any way, I thought that the style of writing in The Glass Castle reminded me of an excellent PS. (Also a good book in terms of the triumph of the human spirit over the tragedy of alcoholism and mental illness and the strength of familial love and forgiveness.)
Click to expand...
 
drizzt3117 said:
Another good book to base one's PS on is A Million Little Pieces
Click to expand...

I've not read that. What I liked about Jeanette Walls' writing style was the straight forward narrative with no self-pity. Not so much for the over -the-top horrible experiences but for the clear and engaging storytelling. It is assigned reading these days for HS students who are studying autobiographical writing.
 
LizzyM said:
An excellent essay is usually well structured, well told and draws one in. While not pre-med in any way, I thought that the style of writing in The Glass Castle reminded me of an excellent PS. (Also a good book in terms of the triumph of the human spirit over the tragedy of alcoholism and mental illness and the strength of familial love and forgiveness.)
Click to expand...

Off Topic but My Book club loves that book. Have you read Half Broke Horses? It's just as good.
 
LizzyM said:
I've not read that. What I liked about Jeanette Walls' writing style was the straight forward narrative with no self-pity. Not so much for the over -the-top horrible experiences but for the clear and engaging storytelling. It is assigned reading these days for HS students who are studying autobiographical writing.
Click to expand...

Dang that should have been required 15 years ago. Maybe I could have written better.
 
NightGod said:
He said it basically went on to say that the pilot pulled it out, made him think about his life, decision to be doctor, etc etc etc. Overall he said the rest of the PS was pretty formulatic, but the opener got him an interview, at least at his school.
Click to expand...

"The plane was plummeting towards the ground and the flight attendant was sitting on the ceiling screaming. This is how I would feel if you denied me an interview. Do you want to live with that guilt? I think not. Do the right thing."

Boom, guaranteeing interview. Guilt> sympathetic
 
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