Personal Statement Advice

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[kyamh]

I don't know that I would want to stand out in my PS on the basis of mental health, suicide, or abuse. These are topics you can choose to bring up in other parts of your application - unless, of course, your experiences directly affected your motivations to become a physician - like the "is there anything else you want to tell us" or you can talk about how your family history of drug and alcohol abuse are part of your disadvantaged background.

It seems as though writing about #1 is your best bet. Can you write out the answer to "why do you want to be a doctor" in a single paragraph? Lay it out, one sentence for one thought. Then once you have a nice cohesive story you can go back and flesh out your single paragraph with vivid examples that bring the statements you are making to life.

 

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[DokterMom]

Alright, thanks.
I'm going to think on this a bit and see if I can come up with a few more scenarios I could actually talk about. (as I'm sure I can come up with other experiences that personally influenced my career path, and they all have, I'm just trying to pick the "best" one with the most concrete arguments)

Odd timing... This is for next spring's application cycle, right?

 

[pietachok]

Odd timing... This is for next spring's application cycle, right?

I second the above question.

I also agree that the topics you are discussing are probably not appropriate for the PS. There are exceptions of course with regards to the abuse and addiction, but in general I would avoid these unless there is a very logical rather than emotional reason to include them.

I would try to change your perspective on the PS -- it is your one and only opportunity to sell yourself. Using it to explain hardships is often a waste, b/c there are other spots on most applications to discuss these topics.

You should not talk about being "bipolar" in your application *at all* unless you absolutely have to b/c it hurt your academic performance (etc.) at some point. If you need to discuss it for that reason, I would get advice (not from pre-meds) on what terms to use -- bipolar, mental illness, etc. are going to be very stigmatizing and raise huge red flags about your ability to complete medical school let alone residency or actual practice. When mentioning chronic illnesses, you typically want to convey that it was a problem in the past, it's now either resolved or well-treated and is not expected to impact your ability to succeed in med school, & you are self-aware/know when to seek more medical assistance to minimize affect on academics if your illness returns/progresses. There are plenty of other threads about this issue on SDN.

 

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[pietachok]

It's a personal statement. People here can't give you ideas, b/c they haven't lived your life. They can offer opinions on whether a topic you pick is appropriate, but the better thing to do is to go have a discussion with some sort of mentor and pick through your motivations and find a common theme to write about. You can also try free writing about yourself and see what comes out.

"I've always wanted to be a doctor" is a little overdone.
Never ever, ever mention ER, House, Greys Anatomy, etc. in the same breath as your motivation to go to med school.

 

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[hmockingbird]

If it were me... not to be harsh but I think medical schools care more about your recent thought processes than you watching a TV show when you were four. They want to see evidence of a mature, rationalised and realistic decision to go into medicine. Not that you can't include this but I would not make it the focus of your statement. I'd maybe do a few sentences that summarize your interest in medicine from preschool to high school but that's it. (And I would leave out "ER" entirely even though you were young haha. I think something about how you first became interested in medicine when your mom was a nursing student and then you enjoyed interacting with your doctor when needed and wanted to help other kids who also had repeated ear infections would probably be enough for the childhood part of your essay. Maybe then say something about how your interest persisted as you got older and give a short example or two from that part of your life of how/why you were still interested.)

For the rest of your statement, I think focusing on the decision to switch from nursing to pre-med is interesting, relevant (gets at the question of "Why DOCTOR?"), and recent. They want to see that this decision is something you have thought critically about, not something you decided on early in life and then just kind-of cruised with after that. You could probably talk about this decision and also generally why you like the field of medicine by tying in some stories from shadowing or if you got to do anything clinical in nursing school.

I kind-of did something similar to part of that with my statement as at the start of college I thought I wanted to be a teacher. I compared the two careers and talked about why medicine was the best fit for me in the end. I also included some stories from shadowing and personal experience that contributed to my motivation to pursue medicine and why/how they did so.

Edit: I forgot to say I second the advice to talk to someone in person to help you parse things out and figure out what's relevant and even how to structure your essay!

 

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