Advice on which direction to take with my PS?

[emg8613]

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Hi all,

So I've been debating on a few different ideas for my personal statement and wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts on which direction I should go with it.

1) By far the most unique thing about my application is my undergraduate degrees, I am double majoring in Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering which is pretty atypical for med school applicants (especially the ME side). I am certainly not one to say that anything I did in undergrad is more difficult than someone with a biology or pre-med degree but I do think that it could give me a unique perspective on medicine in certain situations, which I thought could be useful to set my PS apart from the crowd.

2) I have a solid amount of experience in clinical settings so I figured I would talk about how I moved forward in terms of patient contact as I went through school, e.g. from volunteering, to being an EMT, etc. My only concern with this route is that my draft seems to be coming off as too "cliche", as in the whole "didn't know I wanted to be a doctor growing up, when applying to college, went through these experiences, blah blah blah" story we have all seen a thousand times.

I am currently trying to work both of these into my essay but am struggling to make it flow and starting to think I might have to just pick one and stick with it. Has anyone written a similar PS or had any experience with this sort of thing? Any thoughts would be appreciated!

 

[hmockingbird]

The flow could just be your story throughout college? Like talk about how you started out (I assume) with the engineering double-major, had some clinical experiences (give a vignette or two), and then how you ended up figuring out how to combine your two passions (like, "I enjoyed biochemical and mechanical engineering, and although I have changed my career goals, I believe my degree will be relevant to my future practice because blah blah" type of thing).

My PS was sort-of similar. I wanted to address the fact that I was a non-science major (English). I talked about how I was one of those kids who always wanted to be a doctor, but that I was also passionate about writing and teaching. I talked about how medicine involves writing and a lot of teaching, and how my degree would help me relate to patients. This part was about a third of it, though. Most of it was vignettes from my own hospital experiences and shadowing that supported why I wanted to be a doctor/confirmed my decision to go into medicine. I think I was just a little paranoid that all of my interviewers would ask me "Why not English grad school?" (because EVERYONE at college asked me that) so I felt like I had to address that preemptively! LOL I think one interviewer did end up asking. But hope it maybe helps you?

 

[DokterMom]

Your story isn't unique. It's a good story, just like many others. So forget about being unique and just focus on telling your story well, illustrating how your experiences show that you will be able to become a good doctor. I say "forget about being unique" to relieve you of that implied burden, to reveal the opportunity that provides.

Most personal statements really aren't memorable, and the ones that are [memorable] are usually memorable for being either really awful or somehow grossly inappropriate. So stop shooting for an A+ (high risk of inappropriateness) and shoot for B+ content with a cohesive message and pleasant tone. They might be bored (after 1,000 essays, who wouldn't be?!), but leave them 'blandly happy' bored, with a "yeah, that's good" reaction.

 

[phunky]

If you managed to weave those two ideas together, I think you'd have an excellent personal statement topic. I had a somewhat similar dilemma, and I ended up taking about my version of (1) while placing it in the context of my clinical experiences. I think it turned out nicely.

 

[emg8613]

Thanks for the advice all! I ended up melding both of those ideas and I think it turned out nicely, I'm in the process of having people proof read it and give me some feedback so hopefully I'll be done and ready to submit it by next week! If anyone else reading this is thinking about doing a similar thing with their PS I would suggest you go for it, just talking about my story through undergrad and how it led me towards medicine flowed really well and made it pretty easy to write.

 

[Jojokarade]

Look like you have it down. Like everyone else, my advice would be to just tell your story. Don't get too fancy with it. I have read a lot of personal statements where students get "artsy" and 9/10 are just terrible. Your personal statement will show why medicine, and all your ECs will contribute and show that you actually do want medicine.