OptomCAS Personal Statement

[kleronomia]

Copied directly from OptomCAS:
The essay for OptomCAS is "Please describe what inspires your decision for becoming an optometrist, including your preparation for training in this profession, your aptitude and motivation, the basis for your interest in optometry, and your future career goals."

Your essay should be limited to 4500 characters. For each school to which you are going to apply, you may tailor your essay on the abovementioned topic. After you save your essay(s), you may upload them to be sent to the appropriate designated schools in the "School Designations" section found at the end of the application. We encourage you to name each essay to correspond with the name of each school.

My question is what kind of tailoring could/should be done for each school? I thought the personal statement should be a common essay that addresses your goals, and the secondaries would be the place to be more geared towards school-specific motivations.

Does anyone have thoughts about this?

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[sbopt87]

You don't do tailoring for each school in this personal statement. If a school requires a secondary application, where they will ask you to write something similar, that is when you will tailor it by saying what brought you to apply to them, what do you like specifically about that school, what does it have that another may not.

I wouldn't mention in the optomcas personal statement, that a particular school was your influence in why you wanted to be an optometrist. They will see this and each school you send it to will question it, if you do.

In my essay I made it a journey type description in my quest to find the person I want to be.

Pm me if you want more details about what I wrote.

 

[missbrightside]

I am confused, so we don't tailor the essays to the specific schools at all? it says "for each school for which you're going to apply, you may tailor your essay" and they "encourage you to name each essay with the name of each school." They want us to name the school at the top of each essay?
I always thought it was one general essay we send to all the schools.

 

[Loptometriste]

I tailored my personal statement for each school. I wanted to show them that I was thinking about them instead of just making a general 'one size fits all' essay. It is like a cover letter for a job. If you applied to 5 jobs, would you use the same cover letter, or would you tailor it to each position?

I had the intro and the core of the statement the same, but I added a part of why I was choosing their school and what makes us a good fit for each other.

 

[PinkCupcake]

I made one personal statement that I sent to all the schools I applied to and got interviews to all of them. Don't worry about tailoring a personal statement unless you really, really want to.

 

[sbopt87]

Its all up to you. But to me the personal statement I wrote seemed to work just fine for the schools I applied to. And to me the secondary app (if a school requires one or asks you to do one)to me was you basically telling them why you like their school. Because if you do a secondary they will usually say it can't be similar to the personal statement. But that is just what I suggest.

 

[drumstix]

Are you guys formatting it in an actual essay style with different blocks of paragraphs, etc.? Or is it one big essay with no paragraphs clearly separated from each other by a blank line. As it stands, the one I am submitting is one giant paragraph because I needed the precious characters but am now revising my personal statement and thinking if it would hurt to keep it like this or if I should separate out different paragraphs by a blank line? Any thoughts?

 

[Loptometriste]

For me, I made it into an essay with paragraphs. Then, when you put it into OptomCAS, it makes it one big blob. So, don't worry about it cause OptomCAS won't give you returns or tabs--just spaces.