Another "Can I talk about specialties in my PS?" Thread

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reports of my assimilation are greatly exaggerated
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Just wondering how immature it looks to adcoms to talk about a specific specialty that drove you to medicine. Mine was ID, and I talk about what aspects I shadowed brought me to want to be a clinician specifically.

Is it bad to talk about an IM specialty...? I feel I have read it goes both ways but depends on your wording and why it interests you. Should I just include a disclaimer somewhere that I know minds change in med skoo...?

Danke.

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Ive written about it, but ONLY in ones that asked. I do not see how it'd, really. No way to know. Adding info on primary care for specific schools mights be favorable..

Ill let someone else chime in.

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I think you would be OK if you talk about how it helped solidify wanting to be a physician. Just don't go on about how you really want to be a specific physician.
 
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I mentioned a specialty in my PS. It more along the lines, "I continued to further explore my interest in X, by" and then a lot of my experiences tied into that field.

It may have been a point held against me behind the closed doors of adcom committees, but I had a great cycle so it couldn't have hurt me too much
 
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I think you would be OK if you talk about how it helped solidify wanting to be a physician. Just don't go on about how you really want to be a specific physician.
That is what I do. Just didn't know if that was ok still!
 
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It is always ok to discuss specialties in a PS if you can show evidence/motivation as how it adds to your concise, coherent, and compelling story of "why medicine?"
You can even discuss enthusiastically a particular specialty as you major and sincere desire to enter medicine. However, the risk is, if doing so, you must always indicate the understanding while you hope to enter specialty X that 1) you will of course get much more indepth exposure to all aspects of medicine and 2) understand competitive nature of residencies and may have something else.

So the general advice usually is to talk about how the experiences you have in healthcare exposure in positive way and add to your story without making a specialty the primary motivator of being a doctor. It is a balancing act.
Thank you for the reassurance! I will carefully word it. :)
 
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