Awareness on Personal Statements

[NtrlSelection]

For all those students who are looking for someone to proofread their personal statement, i suggest you go to your academic advising counslers. Every school has one. Don't send your personal statement to people who just got accepted to pharmacy school. Their profile is different from yours, and just because he/she got accepted doesn't mean their personal statement was good. Seek professional advice, from people who have experience and maturity. I can garantee you most people here just want to get ideas from other personal statements by saying that they have gotten accepted to pharmacy school. Number one, they are not professionals, just yet. Number two, your personal statement is private, and you should trust people you see in person and people who have experience such as academic advising. Number three, we have all faced different circumstances that drove us into the pharmacy field, so these people will try to correct your personal statement by adding some of the things they wrote on their personal statements. Academic advising will not do that, they will help you improve what you already have. So do not be fooled by this pharmacy forum, just like aol, and other websites, they too can have phony people in it. Good luck to all.......

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Hels2007]

While I very much disagree that people would lie about being accepted to get their hands on someone else's personal statement, I agree that it is a good idea to engage academic advising. The reason is that I have seen many times in my life, students' approach to such questions is very different from an experienced adult/especially someone with admissions committee experience. I caught myself thinking the student way more than once, I still do occasionally, though I catch myself in time now - students approach the question directly, head-on, instead of reading into it and seeing what it really asks. I had my honors program advisor, who sat on many an admissions committee in her life, review my personal statement - and she threw out the version I had, saying I didn't even answer the right question, didn't read into the question. I had to rewrite it four or five times under her guidance to get it right. And years later, preparing a presentation that was my chance for my dream job, I asked two professors and my own parents (who have nothing to do with healthcare, but who have decades of experience in real world) for their input. They gave me ideas I would never have come up with on my own, and that allowed me to do a perfect presentation and get the position over some 30 over people, many of them with MBAs and a lot more industry experience. A student may not have this kind of insight (if some do, I sincerely envy them in a nice way, I have been consciously working on it for years and I still slip). It's still a good idea to ask them for their input, but also ask seasoned advisers.

I think some of the personal statement reviewers on the boards actually do have experience in academic advising/admissions committees, so it's possible to do even here.