i went to the same medschool as kbrown, and i couldnt come up with 3 really interesting things to include. for my year at least, they wanted the 3 things for the dean's letter and they never said put them in your PS. only once did someone comment on those things, and nobody ever commented on my very generic PS.
the following is entirely my opinion, but is advice i've given to medstudents who are as lost with the whole PS thing as I was. many of the sample ones I came across on the internet were from two groups (a) they went through some life-changing traumatic incident and saw the heavenly lights shining down on the awesome ED doctor, or (b) they were former EMT/Paramedic/ED nurse and had eleventy-billion stories to talk about. I had nothing.
lol
The Personal Statement: Ill talk about this first because it is probably the most time consuming but least important part of the whole ERAS thing (my opinion of course). When I wrote my PS I went in with the attitude that this is a way for people who have done something awesome to shine and create small talk in the opening of most interviews. However, I am apparently really boring because the only cool stuff I could think of was about my brother flying the President or things my friends had done lol. So, I looked up the basic pieces of what a PD wants to see in a PS and found these (in various forms) on tons of websites.
a. Why are you interested in this specialty?
b. What are you looking for in a program?
c. What are your future goals in this field?
Which is very basic, and some of you are probably saying duhhhh right now, but until I saw it written down like that I was lost. So you can very quickly have 3 sections to write on and tie together with your experiences, witticisms, or whatever you want to use. On ERAS you can make as many PS as you want, and you get to choose which program gets what PS and what LORs. I ended up with 4 statements; 1 each for the 2 programs I rotated at, 1 general East Coast PS since that's where I applied to the most programs, and 1 general rest of the country PS and assigned them as needed to the places I applied.
My take home message is that as long as you spell and grammar check and dont raise any red flags with things you say, that this should not be a big stressor. I seriously doubt a PD has ever read a personal statement and been so floored they hung it on the refrigerator and promptly offered a position at their program. Keep it to 1 page, answer the 3 important questions, and spell check!
good luck
