How long did it take you to write your personal statement?

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Spades455

Spades455

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In terms of hours, or weeks? How many revisions did you go through?
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Well, I applied twice. The first time I wrote it and had 3 people revise it. I revised it twice after having more people edit it. The process was about a month. I didn't get in last cycle.

I hired a professional PS editing service this year and submitted 3 revisions to them. It took me about 2 weeks total. Got in. I highly recommend getting it professionally edited by an organization who specializes in pre-med PS's. Do NOT get it written for you. That's a good way to have your app thrown out.
 
Rik1111 said:
Well, I applied twice. The first time I wrote it and had 3 people revise it. I revised it twice after having more people edit it. The process was about a month. I didn't get in last cycle.

I hired a professional PS editing service this year and submitted 3 revisions to them. It took me about 2 weeks total. Got in. I highly recommend getting it professionally edited by an organization who specializes in pre-med PS's. Do NOT get it written for you. That's a good way to have your app thrown out.
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That sounds like a waste of money.
 
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2 weeks before I was ready to give it to editors. Since the word count is so constraining, you'll spend a lot of time whittling away and condensing your points. Honestly by the time I was ready to submit I had the thing half memorized and I felt that there wasn't a single superfluous sentence that I could omit without compromising the whole thing.
 
Plan to write it over a few days (took me two weeks, but I particularly hate writing personal essays), then give reviewers a shot with it for a week, then edit, then another round of reviews, then final polish. Give yourself over a month- depending how busy your reviewers are they may take a few days to get back to you. Get many opinions from the smartest people you know.
 
BlueLabel said:
That sounds like a waste of money.
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It made the difference for me.

I used my school's editing service the previous year. They're not going to tell you when you need to drastically change something. They're just going to tell you how to make it flow better, correct grammar, etc.
 
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I went through about 7 revisions... Mainly, I was revising one paragraph at a time, which is why it took about 7.
 
PreMedOrDead said:
Yeah... at least at any school I've been to they have plenty of resources to get it edited. But whatever floats your boat.
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And when SDN has PS readers for each cycle who happen to be very helpful (and brutal).
 
I think about 5 weeks was how long I took from blank page to completely finished. I had I think 4 docs read it, and one of those people read it 3 times (my boss). I was lucky to be working with a lot of physicians, some of which had adcom experience. One thing I noticed is that physicians have pretty different suggestions that non-physicians (like your PhD lab PI), and having physicians read it made a lot of difference for me.
 
About two hours. I wrote half of it over an hour, put it to bed for a couple days, then came back and finished it. I put it away for a week, then re-read and edited it. Then I had a few people look at it and put in their edits, and then came up with a final version. From start to finish, it took me about two weeks. It wasn't super labor-intensive, I just broke it up into smaller pieces.
 
It took me months to think about what to write, then a couple weeks to write it. I went to my school's career services to have them look it over, but they weren't terribly helpful. I got better feedback from some friends that were also applying. I regret letting my english major friend read it, because of course he wanted me to add a lot of fluff to it and I didn't have that kind of space. I'm sure admissions prefer it to be well-written and to the point, not a novel.
 
Rik1111 said:
It made the difference for me.

I used my school's editing service the previous year. They're not going to tell you when you need to drastically change something. They're just going to tell you how to make it flow better, correct grammar, etc.
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This is not universally true. I'm sorry you had a bad experience. But just as not all people can rely on their school or those around them for good, constructive advice, I think it's important to note that many professional services will not be worth the investment and provide a service no better than what you could get for free from people you associate with. Additionally, I imagine your PS was not the *only* thing you changed when you reapplied -- if it wasn't, you have no way of knowing whether that was the defining difference, and given the amount of money some of the private services charge, it can be a ridiculous waste for many.

Rule of thumb -- if everybody you give your essay to says it's good and can only use a few small changes, you're not getting sufficient feedback. Give it to more people until someone rips it apart. Obviously there are exceptions, but if you weren't winning writing awards and getting put on a pedestal for your essays in college, you aren't the exception. And I would also say that too many people give the PS to sciece profs, b/c they want someone to endorse their motivation to go into medicine. However, those people aren't typically great writers, and the essay that's impressive for a PhD program is quite different than the MD PS.

There are some pretty awesome writers available on SDN to give PS feedback for free, especially if you write it in an off-peak season.
 
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I chipped away at my personal statement over months. I had to turn in a draft to my prehealth advisor in like March, and then met with her to discuss changes. I also solicited a lot of advice. Because I had already graduated, I didn't take advantage of any writing center / career services - but those tools seem really invaluable. I think that the importance of humility in this process cannot be overstated. There will undoubtedly be areas in which your personal statement needs improvement. Take constructive criticism from others. Leave plenty of time to write your personal statement (months). That way, if you need to go back to the drawing board or make major revisions, you have the time to do so.
 
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about 5 weeks. Had my school's dean of pre-med advising look at it, my advisor/physiology professor, as well as a family friend. Went through over a dozen revisions. It was "torn apart" by the first person who read it, my school's dean of pre-med advising. After the rewrite, incremental revisions followed.

I was confident in my ability to write the PS, I feel that I am a pretty good writer and my test scores have vindicated me in that judgement, but I'm really glad I went through all those revisions and solicited all that feedback. It was invaluable. Like @Jabbed said, by the end of the process I didn't feel like there was a single superfluous sentence.
 
I was ready to give it to editors. Since the word count is so constraining
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To be honest…..probably about 6 months if you count just putting ideas on paper. After getting a legitimate draft together, probably about three months and ten drafts. I was working and going to school at the same time.
 
It took me about 6 months too.

I wrote one in January, set it aside for a month. Picked it up, was like, "What was I thinking?" and rewrote it. Set it aside again. Rewrote. Rinse and repeat. Around late April I finally had what I thought I wanted. Gave it to some friends and family to read and edit. Then, sought out a couple of readers online who were med students offering PS reading help free. Rewrote. Finalized, submitted, boom, done.
 
I've been "working" on mine since September and still don't have much.
I am really not sure how to phrase anything and make it a good representation of me.
 
This thread makes me nervous! I wrote mine in about an hour and I definitely didn't feel like I needed MORE room.
 
Started it sophomore year with just ideas and a very rough draft. Junior year perfected it to how well I could myself. Then asked a few relatively smart friends to edit it, it's usually good to find people who are a year or so ahead of you in the pre-med route, accepted students is preferable. They ripped it apart, which was a very good thing. Then when I got it looking good, went to the writing center at my college, they are PhD candidates in English usually, which had a great impact on the PS. Did writing center twice. Second time there really wasn't much more to be edited, which made me think it was pretty good. Then finally, I had two doctors read it, one used to be from med school admissions committee. After he gave me the thumbs up that it was really good. I was finally done... I would honestly say that whole slow process took me over two years, since I started so early with it. If I worked on it non-stop it would of been probably around 6 months. Spread it out if you can, it takes time to make it really good.
 
I tried writing it a few times and gave up after 20 minutes. Then I free wrote for like an hour, discussed it with my friend and bumped ideas off of her, and then wrote the real thing in 3 hours. I forwarded it to my advisor, my friend, a physician, my family, and took into account the notes I was given, and then submitted that. I was very satisfied with the end result, which is saying A LOT coming from me! It's important to note that writing is a hobby of mine and is something that comes very easy to me. The PS is probably much harder for others.
 
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Technically mine was 4 years in the making (I took two gap years) and I started writing in Sophomore year. It went through MANY drafts, and it definitely wasn't a constant process, but I did spend a lot of time on it, and the overall theme/subject never changed.

* Also, the more people who look at it the better. I think that is one reason why I was really able to fine-tune it and make it the best representation of "why I want to be a doctor"
 
To write? Probably 1 hour

To tweak, edit, and solicit revisions from knowledgeable people? Probably 1 month
 
I found that writing from scratch was better than revising for me. I probably wrote 6-8 complete PS's during the spring of last year. The last few iterations I was still writing in June. I didn't force the writing process but every once in a while I felt inspired and sat down and wrote something. Eventually, through the process of writing about the same story from a few angles and trying out writing about different events in my life, I came to an iteration that worked. Keep in mind that each time I rewrote it, I inevitably included elements/words/phrases/ideas that I thought worked well last time. Eventually I was happy with my statement and I sent it off to a bunch of people to look over.

What I liked about my approach was the fact that I actually didn't feel constrained by the word limit because I didn't get EVERYTHING out on paper and then try to cut. If I noticed that my writing was going to go way over, I started over and tried to approach my statement in a different way. Basically, if my statement was going to be 2x the length it ought to be, the way I present my ideas wasn't going to work and I needed to rethink my approach. I've been complemented on the flow and cohesiveness of my statement, both of which I think are a result of how I chose to write.

The worst part about my approach was that it took longer. I definitely submitted my application on July 1st and not in June because I was still working on my personal statement.
 
I started summer of sophomore year. I wrote the thing in about 3 days and it was pretty solid. I had it revised a lot. Professors/physicians/medical students at SURF for two years, AMA groups, pre med, list goes on. After two years I had something that I knew was solid gold.

Everyone that said "I picked it up, wrote something, forgot about it" is spot on. I didn't actviely work on it for two years. I wrote the first draft in 3 days in sophomore year. Forgot about it. Junior year worked on it for a few weeks in the fall. Forgot about it. In the spring. Forgot about it etc.
 
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