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The 2026-2027 DO School Specific Threads are now available in the School Specific Discussions forum. The 2025-2026 discussions are now available in the prior year discussions forum.
For those of you who wrote a personal statement for AMCAS, did you just shorten it a bit for AACOMAS or did you take a whole different (osteo) approach to the personal statement?
Careful if you shorten it, it may seem the same to you but have others check it out. Could totally lose its strengths... depends on how much you cut out obviously. Good luck!
Its also totally fine to use the same thing. DO secondaries will ask why DO/describe a holistic experience, etc.
As others have said, I used the same PS for both as it answered the question "why medicine" and "why am I uniquely suited for this career." You can elaborate on "why DO" in secondaries.
The only change I made was adding osteopathic in front of the word physician every time I used it 😀
I have the same question as OP. I have no problem using the same thing for both, but the main concern is that DO personal statement has a 4700 character limit and my personal statement is like 5100 characters. Am I picking up wrong details about the character limit or did you guys have shorter PS?
For those of you who wrote a personal statement for AMCAS, did you just shorten it a bit for AACOMAS or did you take a whole different (osteo) approach to the personal statement?
I wrote my AMCAS essay first, which is around 5000 characters. I had to shorten it by doing lots of editing and rewording for my AACOMAS application. I ended up with 4500 characters exactly for the AACOMAS application. My AMCAS essay's prose is definitely more cohesive, but they convey the same exact thing at the end of the day.
I wrote 2 completely different essays. They both profess the same reasons for my desire to pursue medicine, but in entirely different ways. I wrote my amcas statement awhile ago thinking I would just edit it down. However, I found that impossible to whittle down without sacrificing what I consider to be important content.
Wrote PS with 4500 characters in mind and focused on why medicine/why now (nontrad). Figured other app services wouldn't mind if they had to read a little less and I could add in a sentence or two if needed.