AMCAS statements

fredherman said:

On my personal statement I wrote about what influenced me to pursuing an application to medical school. There is also a section that asks about your experiences. The three most influencial are what I wrote about in my personal statement so it sounds very similar if not identical. Any thoughts about this? Keep the same or re-word it? Or, pick three other unrelated as the most significant. I don't want it to seem that I just cut and paste from my personal statement.

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It's not helpful to pick the same three experiences and write the same thing about them. If you want to keep everything the way it is, then you should pick some different EC's (extracurriculars) to list as most meaningful. You need to minimize the repetitive nature of your app.

Additionally, your personal statement (PS) should not be listing your EC's. You know that, right? I talked about specific things that happened during my EC's on my PS, but I didn't describe each experience as a whole.

This will probably require a major revision of your PS, but my opinion is that you should move the "what I learned from each EC" in your PS to the "most meaningful" text box, and then use more specific examples from your ECs in your PS.

For example, if you volunteered at a hospital, you could talk about a patient (be sure to maintain HIPAA confidentiality, of course) in your PS, addressing how your interaction with the patient motivated you to study medicine. In your "most meaningful" box about hospital volunteering, you could write more about the transformative, "big picture" experience of volunteering rather than the specific patient.

sector9 said:

For example, if you volunteered at a hospital, you could talk about a patient (be sure to maintain HIPAA confidentiality, of course)

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I understand we have to maintain HIPAA, but how will the med schools know that i did?

ex) say the patients real name was Mike; but then i used the synonym John. how would they know i'm using a fake name? should i just assume that they know im capable of understanding confidentiality?

gunj122 said:

I understand we have to maintain HIPAA, but how will the med schools know that i did?

ex) say the patients real name was Mike; but then i used the synonym John. how would they know i'm using a fake name? should i just assume that they know im capable of understanding confidentiality?

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You can put the patient's initials, or even a single letter if you like