Focusing on Research and Policy Interests in Personal Statement?

Started by Kitty5723
This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Get help with your application

Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.

Kitty5723

New Member
5+ Year Member
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
Hello,

I’m applying this coming year, and am curious for some specific advice. I am mostly applying for T20s, and have a strong research and policy focus. I envision a future as a physician scientist, guiding policy, particularly in public health. But I don’t want an MD/PhD as I already have two master’s degrees (including an MPH) and am interested in clinical/translational research. With all this being said, the typical personal statement I’ve read focuses heavily on the clinical aspect of becoming a doctor. While this is also pertinent for me, I am just as interested in non-clinical programs. Any advice on the ways to balance these in a PS, or should I keep it fully clinical focused?

4.0 GPA, 52X Mcat, very research heavy background, a couple of so-called “x-factors”
 
Why did you get two master's degrees following an objectively perfect undergraduate performance? Do you have as extensive experience in clinical medicine as you do in academia?

I'm not trying to be cute or nitpick, I'm just trying to gauge what your situation really is. It matters for your approach to secondaries and the way you explain your history.
 
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
Given more information, I think your profile is very strong if your EC profile is as strong as your academics. Though you may want to perform extensive research as a physician, I would avoid using "physician scientist" terminology since it tends to coincide with the MD-PhD pathway, which is not your preference. There might be unnecessary ambiguity as to why you are applying traditional MD.

So much of the process at this stage is revealing (strategically) what you want them to know. You do not have to be entirely earnest and expose all of your long-term life plans. It's not lying, per se, it is just finding focus and cadence that resonates with the people reading your application.

The advice I received and operationalized throughout my own cycle was essentially to sideline (not bury/hide) any motivations toward medicine that are not clinical, and find a way to say that those activities remain a continued interest at an abstract level, perhaps for later in your career, but your primary goal is to attend medical school and practice clinical medicine proper. You won't know whether the students and faculty reviewing your application are physician-scientists or work in policy, but where they all coalesce is in a desire for clinical practice, so align with that.

I know that's an unsatisfying answer (and probably untrue for you personally), and I share that perspective. However, medical schools are worried that students are coming in viewing medicine as a stepping stone to what they "really" want to do. I would say that is not an unreasonable takeaway given your profile: you say you want to be a doctor, but you also want to put research and policy at the forefront.

Do NOT say you are interested in non-clinical programs, at all. Magically remove that entire phrase from your brain, Dumbledore-style. I understand where you're coming from and what you probably mean, but it is going to be read critically.

I applied MD/JD and MD/MPP for similar reasons at some programs, and felt I was facing the same bias and general approach to my essays. Ultimately, you can only really have one job. Reviewers will be aware of that, too. The naive way to approach that is, essentially, "I'll be able to do it all; I'll see patients Monday and Tuesday, lobby Congress on Wednesday, and discover the next cure for cancer on Thursday and Friday. I'll have time to be a human being on the weekends." Obviously the more justifiable approach is much more complicated, but the more characters you spend explaining, the fewer you have to be straightforward about why medicine, which is central to medical school admissions. You'll see once you start drafting essays and see yourself held up against those character counts for real.

Make sure that "one job" for the sake of your application comes across patient-facing clinical physician, even if your private ambitions are wider. I think being more earnest about it will put you on the spot to explain the split in an intelligible way that is to some degree impossible for you to gauge from the outside.

It's very possible you will one day become the physician-scientist-policymaker you want to be (remember that I was kind to our eventual overlord). The goal here is not to suppress your ambition, it is to achieve focus within an application that is reviewed in some arbitrarily short amount of time.

Wishing you good luck and congratulations for getting to this point. You're going to do great out there.
 
Last edited: