* * 2011-2012 Personal Statement Thread * *

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SBB2016 said:
I think it goes without saying that if you plagiarise a persons letter your a sh ithead and youll be caught. additionally, how would the whole forum with all of us reading for one another have any benefit if there weren't people willing to read essays??
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I wonder if it ever happened though. it would kind of suck because the PS is the only time you can be creative on your app. I'd like to think it isn't possible, but I am sure Adcoms have seen it before.
 
I have seen info that leads me to believe they run the letters through the plagiarism software that's available. The thing is, some things are general enough to be stolen, some are not... if someone stole any part of the content of my letter it would be pretty obvious... and they would have a hard time proving they did it... 😉
 
SBB2016 said:
I hope you're not starting just now for the app cycle this year...

At any rate, you want to show what your experiences are that support your claims to why you want to be a doctor... there are threads with examples and if you search for FamilyAerospace they have a good instruction set on writing one
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Haha no, I'm starting early. And thank you, I'll check that out.
 
Glad to hear it... some people think they'll whip one out in 10 minutes... and you can, it just doesn't usually result in an acceptance 😉
 
As with all other papers and essays I've written over the years, the thing I have the most trouble with are the intro and conclusion paragraphs. I am currently putting finishing touches on my PS and have no idea how to end it. I've heard that it's good to start off the PS with a hook, so that's what I've done, but I am lost as to how to finish it. Any suggestions?
 
Is there a list of PS helper like in Allo or we are sharing that list? I want to use my MD PS for DO also but having a hard time cutting it down to 4500.
 
When writing my personal statement, I refer to a book that I read. How am I to clarify the title in my PS as a book? You can not underline or italicize.

Thank you!
 
MilitaryMed said:
When writing my personal statement, I refer to a book that I read. How am I to clarify the title in my PS as a book? You can not underline or italicize.

Thank you!
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I would just quote it, or say something like...

In a book I read titled " "....
 
Hello all!

I am currently finishing up my personal statements for allopathic and osteopathic apps and am a little stuck. I wanted to put into my osteopathic essay that I have practiced massage and going to an osteopathic physician inspired me to continue and deepen this massage practice, but in order to save space I had to take out talking about research experience. What do you think about this? Do you think this will take away from my essay or help me? I have always wanted to be an osteopath and wanted to put that in the essay but I am afraid this takes away from the intelligence protrayed in my allopathic essay. What do you think are important factors for the osteopathic essays?
 
smoodle said:
Hello all!

I am currently finishing up my personal statements for allopathic and osteopathic apps and am a little stuck. I wanted to put into my osteopathic essay that I have practiced massage and going to an osteopathic physician inspired me to continue and deepen this massage practice, but in order to save space I had to take out talking about research experience. What do you think about this? Do you think this will take away from my essay or help me? I have always wanted to be an osteopath and wanted to put that in the essay but I am afraid this takes away from the intelligence protrayed in my allopathic essay. What do you think are important factors for the osteopathic essays?
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If your research is listed elsewhere in your app, drop it. Let your numbers speak to your intelligence, and your AACOMAS PS speak to why you want to be an osteopathic physician. I'd be careful about calling OMM a massage also.
 
Is it a good idea to talk about osteopathic medicine on your AACOMAS app and personal statement? Almost all secondaries will specifically ask me "why DO?" so why be repetitive?
 
sounds like you answered your own question; I did, though.
 
It probably is a good idea, but you don't have to. My PS was an abridged version of my AMCAS PS.
 
I tailored my ACCOMAS apps to DO schools. PS talking about osteo phil. Yes, some secondaries seemed repetitive with the why DO question, but to be honest, I'm not sure if someone actually sits down and reads your entire application front to back so it seemed okay. I got a few acceptances so take my advice for what you will
 
I did not mention osteopathic medicine in my AACOMAS PS.
 
Stick to answering the "why medicine" question on the primary and use the secondaries to tell a new story. The secondaries ask you "why DO" so you'll be repeating yourself and potentially boring whoever is going over your app.
 
I LIKE OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE BECAUSE IT'S HOLISTIC K.

THX.

I wonder how many times adcoms have to read "holistic." I feel for them.
 
kcin said:
I LIKE OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE BECAUSE IT'S HOLISTIC K.

THX.

I wonder how many times adcoms have to read "holistic." I feel for them.
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lol! 😀

hey, could some1 review my personal statement, and give some feedback, and/or proofread??

please pm me if u can...

oh and i can look over some PS's too for grammar and content.. though I am not highly experienced with personal statements, but I could give some general feedback.. =)

Thanks!
 
Hey guys!

First of all, I just found out that there is a new function on this forum that if you make a new thread, it will automatically look for similar threads for you.
That's pretty awesome!

But I still couldn't find a similar thread.

With that being said, I was just wondering if you guys know any source for AACOMAS sample personal statement essays.

There are tons of medical school essays out there but I couldn't any on Osteopathic schools specifically.

Please share if you know any!

Thank you!

🙂
 
I'm not aware of any source specifically for osteopathic medical school, but I used Barron's "Essays That Will Get You Into Medical School" and found it pretty helpful. It gives a ton of real essays from people who have been accepted into Universities accross the country. My only gripe about them was that the stats of those writing seemed to have been pretty high anyway and so they're essays were a bit brave to begin with. They do include some of the more "tamed" ones that I felt comfortable emulating. Check it out.

http://www.amazon.com/Essays-Medical-School-Into-Barrons/dp/0764120298
 
I'm filling out the application and there's no prompt for the D.O.? I figure something along the line of why you want to be a D.O. physician makes sense no?
 
i dont remember there being a "prompt" for anything on the MD app either...
 
So what exactly is the "official" prompt for DO application? I don't see anything on the application so I might as well write about the time I broke my leg on a climb to a mountain top, whereby Jesus appeared and cured me.
 
berrymuffin said:
So what exactly is the "official" prompt for DO application? I don't see anything on the application so I might as well write about the time I broke my leg on a climb to a mountain top, whereby Jesus appeared and cured me.
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That happened to you too?! Damn I wrote about that thinking my story was unique 😡
 
Yeah, makes sense. Some people even answered "why be a physician" and only wrote about "why DO" on the secondary propmts
 
personal statement is just that. mine was the same for my amcas and aacomas. then on the secondaries i tailored my essays to fit the school.
 
To clarify there IS a prompt for allopathic it is: ""Use the space provided to explain why you want to go to medical school"

I just used the same essay for both, DO is 800 char shorter, but I just wrote one that fit and used it twice. I'll address why DO in secondaries when they come.
 
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I addressed, albeit indirectly, "why DO" in the first paragraph of my PS. What would the DO secondary look like that would force redundancy on my part?
 
AACOMAS PS is 800 characters shorter! the agony of deleting words and sentences and characters was annoying, but I sent it and it's done and now we wait.
 
FuturePharm21 said:
AACOMAS PS is 800 characters shorter! the agony of deleting words and sentences and characters was annoying, but I sent it and it's done and now we wait.
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I had the same reaction. What?! Every character was so carefully planned that...ugh! lol
 
I KNOW it's so dumb because AACOMAS is like 10 x easier to complete vs AMCAS and their family history questions and 3 meaningful idea they started THIS year...great, just great.
 
I know a lot of you are saying that you wouldn't bother talking about "Why specifically DO?" in your personal statements, but I read the AACOMAS Instruction manual and this is what it says in the PS section:

Don’t forget to include the reasons that you want to study osteopathic medicine in your personal statement, and during your interview.


So, I asked my pre-med advisor and she recommended talking about it. I'm concerned now that many of you said don't do it, and she says I should. I have my personal statement edited almost to perfection and it's 4560 characters right now - it'd be a hassle to add in the osteo stuff if I have to cut it down as it is. I was thinking maybe I just mention it in a statement after my experience, like, "This confirmed my aspirations of becoming a primary care physician, and particularly, an osteopathic physician who looks at the patient as a whole. lrfijrtwr." What do accepted med school students/others think?
 
Tatyana said:
I know a lot of you are saying that you wouldn't bother talking about "Why specifically DO?" in your personal statements, but I read the AACOMAS Instruction manual and this is what it says in the PS section:

Don’t forget to include the reasons that you want to study osteopathic medicine in your personal statement, and during your interview.


So, I asked my pre-med advisor and she recommended talking about it. I'm concerned now that many of you said don't do it, and she says I should. I have my personal statement edited almost to perfection and it's 4560 characters right now - it'd be a hassle to add in the osteo stuff if I have to cut it down as it is. I was thinking maybe I just mention it in a statement after my experience, like, "This confirmed my aspirations of becoming a primary care physician, and particularly, an osteopathic physician who looks at the patient as a whole. lrfijrtwr." What do accepted med school students/others think?
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Wait so did you tailor your PS towards "Why D.O.?"

I'm trying to figure out what to do too..I have my AMCAS PS done, but now I'm looking at it, and I'm really dreading writing a whole new PS.
 
No, I didn't tailor it to "Why DO?" yet. I also don't want to rewrite the whole dang thing if I can (and will) talk about it in the secondaries. I'm unsure whether to do so after my pre-health advisor vs. the majority of people on this thread gave opposing answers. I wanna finish the app. soon, though. What do any of you accepted students/medical students think?
 
I called a couple of schools today. I don't know which schools you are interested in, but PCOM said that if you are applying to MD and DO programs, it is fine to use the same PS for both. But you have to be prepared to answer the "Why DO?" in the supplementary. If you're just applying DO, it's really up to you. And UMDNJ-SOM said to do a combination of both in the PS by maybe mentioning a specific instance that drew you towards DO, but mainly "Why Medicine?" since you'll be covering "Why DO?" later in the supp.
 
It feels like 25%-33% of my AACOMAS PS deals with basic science research, which I had plenty of having committed my senior year and a fifth year in the lab. What relevance is research in basic science for the DO program? I did mention it in my extracurricular but how about personal statement? I do believe my research experience helps prepare me for the first two years of DO. I'm not sure if having this experience is a plus, a non-issue, or possibly hurt my chances if I delve too much into it? What about research in the social sciences?
 
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Here's an article that I originally wrote on tips for writing the AMCAS Personal Statement, but which can apply to either the AMCAS or AACOMAS PS:

Tips for Writing Your Medical School Personal Statement

I've received nothing but positive feedback, so apparently the article has been pretty helpful to a lot of people. Hopefully it can help some of you who are applying to DO schools as well. Good luck!
 
soo, i copied my PS from MS Word and submitted.. it seemed fine.. though the character count for some reason jumped up a couple of characters in AACOMAS..otherwise though i couldn't figure out any errors.. i hope i didn't do anything wrong by copying it off word...?? 😳
 
Who gets to be a reader? Do you have to have an acceptance? I'd be happy to read and give feedback for someone if they'll do the same for me.
 
I'd love to read others Personal Statements, as well as have mine read.

I have a Master's in Education/Technical Writing, so I might be able to help a bit if you're having trouble.

Just PM me.
 
For anyone who is up for it, I would owe you a favor.
Here is some background info on me:

Education-------------------------------------

Non-traditional applicant (pushing 30 years now)

AA Spanish

Sociology major (BS May, 2012)

sGPA: 3.35 nsGPA: 3.43 Overall: 3.40

MCAT: 36M (PS=9, VR=9, BS=8)

EC's----------------------------------------------------------
Volunteer-Surgery waiting room (300+hrs)
Shadowing-50 hrs-Anesthesiologist, psychiatrist, interventional radiologist, ER physician, family practitioner, oncologist, pediatric ER physician, hospice in-home physician
Patient Care-Hospice (28 hrs, one family)
Research-
1) ER pain/maternity study (64 hrs)-Interview patients, conduct pain/med history surveys
2) Clinical pediatric research (232 hrs)-Enroll patients/family, retrieve/store samples, review med history, conduct surveys-Pediatric oncology, ER, cardiology, NICU, OB/GYN
Leadership-
1) Military Service (7+years)-combat veteran, foreign residence, NCO
2) Premed honor society (3.5 year total membership)-Officer position (1.5 yrs)
Hobbies-Marriage (7+yrs), physical exercise (+running w/dog), chess, billiards, sport shooting, foreign travel, etc...
3) Tutoring-Language tutor (24 hrs)
 
I've read several. Shoot it over to me via PM and I'll provide feedback.
 
It's been a while since I had a writing class so I have to ask; is it considered bad form to mention the process of writing your personal statement within your statement (phrased eloquently of course, not like "gee dis sure wuz hard!")? What about directly addressing the reader?
 
I suppose I'm a late bloomer this year! If anyone would be so obliged as to read my personal statement I would really appreciate it. Just send me a private message with an e-mail address or other method of delivery and I'll send it on.

I really need some good sound feedback and I'm great at taking criticism. I've had a tremendous amount of English courses and I feel my grammar is decent but it's content and appropriateness that's got me buffaloed at the moment.

It's kind of personal, as you'll see, and it's difficult to let a lot of colleagues read it. Having you guys and gals here is wonderful!

Thanks ahead of time!
 
I realize I'm a little late on this one, but would anyone be willing to critique my PS? I'm also open to whatever. I know I'm not the best writer so I'd really appreciate it if anyone could provide me some feedback! Thanks!
 
CopToEM said:
I suppose I'm a late bloomer this year! If anyone would be so obliged as to read my personal statement I would really appreciate it. Just send me a private message with an e-mail address or other method of delivery and I'll send it on.

I really need some good sound feedback and I'm great at taking criticism. I've had a tremendous amount of English courses and I feel my grammar is decent but it's content and appropriateness that's got me buffaloed at the moment.

It's kind of personal, as you'll see, and it's difficult to let a lot of colleagues read it. Having you guys and gals here is wonderful!

Thanks ahead of time!
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Sure, PM me with it and I'll be happy to get back with you.
 
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