Need your advice on a personal statement

[Vanguard23]

This is my preprofessional advisory committee personal statement, which can include the following:
" Issues addressed may include the following topics:
1) motivation for
medicine as a career,
2) areas of interest in medicine,
3) circumstances indicative of some
hardship or adversity,
4) socioeconomic background,
5) race and ethnicity identification,
6) first generation to attend or graduate from a university,
7) responsibility for the care of
others or the rearing of children,
8) experience of other cultures and the human condition."

one thing I am including is the fact that during Hurricane Rita, I stayed and worked at the hospital, which I intend to put as part of #3(with other bits).

My main question however is whether or not I should include the fact that my efforts right out of high school weren't my best, but I have definetly improved myself in ALL respects(academically, extra-curricularly, working, volunteering, etc). Now, I didn't do badly; I just didn't do as well as I could have(senioritis and all).
Thoughts?

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[geogil]

This is my preprofessional advisory committee personal statement, which can include the following:
" Issues addressed may include the following topics:
1) motivation for
medicine as a career,
2) areas of interest in medicine,
3) circumstances indicative of some
hardship or adversity,
4) socioeconomic background,
5) race and ethnicity identification,
6) first generation to attend or graduate from a university,
7) responsibility for the care of
others or the rearing of children,
8) experience of other cultures and the human condition."

one thing I am including is the fact that during Hurricane Rita, I stayed and worked at the hospital, which I intend to put as part of #3(with other bits).

My main question however is whether or not I should include the fact that my efforts right out of high school weren't my best, but I have definetly improved myself in ALL respects(academically, extra-curricularly, working, volunteering, etc). Now, I didn't do badly; I just didn't do as well as I could have(senioritis and all).
Thoughts?

keep away from the negative. The adcoms will have your grades and any improvements you made will be abundantly obvious. I assume your mention of senioritis doesn't mean your grades plummeted as a senior

My advice for writing a PS is to include as many narrative examples of your qualifications as you can. FOr me this took the form of telling abreviated versions of the events that pushed me towards medicine. Anecdotes are much more demonstrative than simply asserting your qualifications. You want to show the adcom your qualifications rather than just telling them. let them see your compassion by the events at Hospital X with Patient Z. etc..

 

[kypdurron5]

I agree about keeping the focus away from negatives, but there's nothing wrong with mentioning hardships in a positive light. I do find it kind of funny that 3-8 all relate to race, socio-economic status, and hardships. It makes sense to some degree since it IS a "personal" statement, but out of 8 topics only 2 directly relate to medicine. ::

3) circumstances indicative of some
hardship or adversity,
4) socioeconomic background,
5) race and ethnicity identification,
6) first generation to attend or graduate from a university,
7) responsibility for the care of
others or the rearing of children,
8) experience of other cultures and the human condition."

 

[Vanguard23]

Well, for responsibility of care for others, I put my heart patient father. The hardships *are* in a positive light, since it is over-coming adversity. But I'll stave away from the negatives and do my best to sell myself instead of explaining mediocre performance.
Btw, "senioritis" refers to high school senior and not college.

 

[chickenlittle84]

Unless there is something that really ties all of these aspects that you have listed together (like a strong thread that you can weave throughout the essay), I think you are trying to pack way too much in there. The way I think of it (and I am working on writing mine right now, so I don't really have experience) is to try and write something digestible and concrete that they can remember and refer to you by...packing in all of those experiences is just too much and the richness of each experience will get lost. Save some of it for the secondaries and focus on 1-3 experiences/sub-themes that are the most important. And, according to my pre-med advisor, do not focus on the bad at all. There are other ways to explain bad grades.

 

[Vanguard23]

Those aren't the things I'm *going* to put on there. Those are the default topics I CAN put on there. I'm not going to really mention socio-economic background or other cultures, for example.

 

[LizzyM]

This is not your AMCAS PS but something for the pre-med committee to read and take into consideration. What they read they may put into your LOR as background information about your family, etc.

The committee is going to try to put your academic performance and extracurricular activities in the best light they can. If you struggled academically because you were caring for your disabled sister while your mother and father were recovering from injuries sustained in a house fire, the committee might want to know about that situation. It might not be relevant to the story you want to tell in your PS but it would be a nice addition to your committee letter.

If you attended an inner-city public high school, your dad drives a taxi and your mother works on an assembly line you might be the first one in your family to attend college and you may have not had the mentoring from parents and other relatives that some kids take for granted.

Do you see where they are going with this stuff?