Do personal statement tactics work on med schools apps

[JoyKim456]

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Things like having a killer and grasping first sentence or having an enthusiastic tone or high vocabulary. We were told to do this on college apps in high school. Any luck for med school apps?

 

[gyngyn]

Don't do it. Please.

 

[JoyKim456]

@gyngyn why not?

 

[Kalydeco]

@gyngyn why not?

If the best modifier you can find for "vocabulary" is "high," probably best to avoid whipping out the SAT words.

 

[gyngyn]

@gyngyn why not?

This is so trite that I often skip the first paragraph entirely to avoid the trauma of onomatopoeia.

 

[JoyKim456]

@gyngyn you are a physician right? And a professor? Are you just lying or did your daddy pay your way through the admissions process. I was expecting someone more mature

@Kalydeco sophisticated is another one..... I know. What I didn't know what that I would be judged so quickly on a website where I expected mature people to be

 

[Lamel]

It depends on what you mean by gripping. This is meant to be a professional essay so some things like that may work and some may not.

 

[Kalydeco]

Are you just lying or did your daddy pay your way through the admissions process. I was expecting someone more mature

You are as charming as you are self-aware

 

[noleknight16]

@gyngyn you are a physician right? And a professor? Are you just lying or did your daddy pay your way through the admissions process. I was expecting someone more mature

@Kalydeco sophisticated is another one..... I know. What I didn't know what that I would be judged so quickly on a website where I expected mature people to be

You should heed their warnings.

 

[DokterMom]

You want to sound like a 'real person' -- albeit one who is intelligent, compassionate and mature. Pulling out your SAT words can make you sound awkward and pretentious if you don't blend them seamlessly with your 'normal' words and use them perfectly. Even if you do use them perfectly, if there's another word that is simpler, more direct and equivalent in meaning, it is generally the better choice. Words that are unnecessarily long or obscure make you sound pretentious.

It's fine to have an interesting opening sentence. But the obvious use of tactics that are acceptable for high school students applying to college don't translate well at this higher level.

 

[JoyKim456]

@noleknight16 what warnings?

@DokterMom that's what I was looking for, thank you

 

[allantois]

This threads are getting more and more ridiculous

The OP is a troll, just look at his threads where he first reports a 34 on MCAT, then on the same day asks for an advice on how to study for it and 3 days later reports a 38 on MCAT.


Why is he still not banned???

 

[studentofsdn]

,

 

[Lamel]

@studentofsdn you best edit that post quickly.

 

[studentofsdn]

@studentofsdn you best edit that post quickly.

tru, forgot about rules on here.

 

[Lamel]

tru, forgot about rules on here.

Lol. It's not about the rules on here, you shouldn't be using slurs like that in real life either.

 

[studentofsdn]

Lol. It's not about the rules on here, you shouldn't be using slurs like that in real life either.

👍

 

[hoihaie]

you're not writing fiction. Leave the drama to TV scripts.

 

[Time Table]

If you're writing a soap opera then go for It. But on here, you're portraying why you want to be doctor, best to avoid sounding like you're writing a movie.

 

[nephron19]

@gyngyn you are a physician right? And a professor? Are you just lying or did your daddy pay your way through the admissions process. I was expecting someone more mature

@Kalydeco sophisticated is another one..... I know. What I didn't know what that I would be judged so quickly on a website where I expected mature people to be

Don't be a crabby patty. @gyngyn has given good advice from what I have seen on SDN. To get a feel for what successful ones look like, maybe ask your school's premed advisor/career office or ask for friends who have a applied and gotten into medical school.

 

[2Pints]

This threads are getting more and more ridiculous

The OP is a troll, just look at his threads where he first reports a 34 on MCAT, then on the same day asks for an advice on how to study for it and 3 days later reports a 38 on MCAT.


Why is he still not banned???

Can you explain troll? I keep seeing that thrown around and haven't been able to figure out what it means.

 

[Euxox]

Can you explain troll? I keep seeing that thrown around and haven't been able to figure out what it means.

Someone who posts on a forum with ridiculous questions or insults or generally unconstructive posts and then plays dumb when people try to call him or her out on it. In other words, someone who is acting like an idiot and/or jerk just to see how others react.

 

[sunflower18]

hmm. i definitely at least tried to make my essays sound eloquent, which sometimes involved using larger-than-average words. but that's my true voice -- it is not meant to sound pretentious or anything, and i don't think it came across that way, but that is simply my vocabulary and the way i best express my thoughts. i feel like i can describe my emotions better by using imagery and setting the tone with word choice. i'd like to think that i do that well, but who really knows, haha. i guess we'll see at the end of the cycle! i didn't even consider not writing my essays in this way, just because it wouldn't be my voice otherwise. hmm hmm. hopefully it'll all work out for me 🙂 interesting thread!

 

[xffan624]

hmm. i definitely at least tried to make my essays sound eloquent, which sometimes involved using larger-than-average words. but that's my true voice -- it is not meant to sound pretentious or anything, and i don't think it came across that way, but that is simply my vocabulary and the way i best express my thoughts. i feel like i can describe my emotions better by using imagery and setting the tone with word choice. i'd like to think that i do that well, but who really knows, haha. i guess we'll see at the end of the cycle! i didn't even consider not writing my essays in this way, just because it wouldn't be my voice otherwise. hmm hmm. hopefully it'll all work out for me 🙂 interesting thread!

Your statement that you normally use pretentious words in your speech would be more believable if you actually used capitalization in your posts and didn't sound like a 12 year old.

 

[sunflower18]

Your statement that you normally use pretentious words in your speech would be more believable if you actually used capitalization in your posts and didn't sound like a 12 year old.

Uhhh I feel like there was no need to make an inflammatory comment like that. You don't know me and know nothing about my writing style. I was contributing to this conversation by sharing my own experiences. If you'd like to judge me for absolutely no reason, that's fine by me. I don't feel insulted nor threatened by unprovoked attacks on the internet.


Posted using SDN Mobile

 

[xffan624]

Uhhh I feel like there was no need to make an inflammatory comment like that. You don't know me and know nothing about my writing style. I was contributing to this conversation by sharing my own experiences. If you'd like to judge me for absolutely no reason, that's fine by me. I don't feel insulted nor threatened by unprovoked attacks on the internet.

Sorry to be harsh but in the real world, people judge you based on how you write, not how you say you write.

 

[Goro]

Do you think maybe, just possibly maybe that at this point we've seen them all?

Don't rely on gimmicks.

Things like having a killer and grasping first sentence or having an enthusiastic tone or high vocabulary. We were told to do this on college apps in high school. Any luck for med school apps?

 

[NickNaylor]

Uhhh I feel like there was no need to make an inflammatory comment like that. You don't know me and know nothing about my writing style. I was contributing to this conversation by sharing my own experiences. If you'd like to judge me for absolutely no reason, that's fine by me. I don't feel insulted nor threatened by unprovoked attacks on the internet.

Posted using SDN Mobile

Legitimate or not, people judge you by how you write (myself included). How you relay whatever it is you're saying is important - not just what you say. Writing carelessly gives off the impression that you are careless. As an example, a mistake or two in a personal statement or on an application is forgivable, but an app littered with mistakes just tells me you either can't write or you didn't take the application seriously enough to proofread everything beforehand. The same principle is true on SDN, although things are obviously less formal here.

Whether you care or not is up to you (and you don't seem to), but if you want to be taken seriously then you might do well to write with proper syntax.

 

[sunflower18]

Legitimate or not, people judge you by how you write (myself included). How you relay whatever it is you're saying is important - not just what you say. Writing carelessly gives off the impression that you are careless. As an example, a mistake or two in a personal statement or on an application is forgivable, but an app littered with mistakes just tells me you either can't write or you didn't take the application seriously enough to proofread everything beforehand. The same principle is true on SDN, although things are obviously less formal here.

Whether you care or not is up to you (and you don't seem to), but if you want to be taken seriously then you might do well to write with proper syntax.

I actually do care how I am perceived. Thank you for sharing your opinion and reasoning with me.

To get this thread back on track, I agree with many other posters that gimmicks and onomatopoeia are not the way to go in your PS or secondary essays.

 

[FFH]

On my personal statement, I used a word "large" in my draft. One of the readers advised me to use "colossal" instead. I resisted for a little bit and caved in. Now I regretted it. I should have left it the way I wrote it.

 

[DokterMom]

On my personal statement, I used a word "large" in my draft. One of the readers advised me to use "colossal" instead. I resisted for a little bit and caved in. Now I regretted it. I should have left it the way I wrote it.

So was it large or colossal? Not the same...

 

[hoihaie]

On my personal statement, I used a word "large" in my draft. One of the readers advised me to use "colossal" instead. I resisted for a little bit and caved in. Now I regretted it. I should have left it the way I wrote it.

those have different connotations

 

[kthxbai]

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

--Stephen King

 

[FFH]

So was it large or colossal? Not the same...

those have different connotations

In my case, both fit. I just would have preferred the connotation associated with large. I hesitated because English was not my first language, I bend whenever native speakers insist on something.

 

[RTC19]

You want to sound like a 'real person' -- albeit one who is intelligent, compassionate and mature. Pulling out your SAT words can make you sound awkward and pretentious if you don't blend them seamlessly with your 'normal' words and use them perfectly. Even if you do use them perfectly, if there's another word that is simpler, more direct and equivalent in meaning, it is generally the better choice. Words that are unnecessarily long or obscure make you sound pretentious.

It's fine to have an interesting opening sentence. But the obvious use of tactics that are acceptable for high school students applying to college don't translate well at this higher level.

Yes! Yes! Yes! 🙂 Very well said, DokterMom.