Personal Statement Flow

[DPTinthemaking15]

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I finished my personal statement a few days ago and I really like it. It tells my story towards medicine (even though it has been quite crazy), and I decided to use one of the paid websites to check for grammatical errors. The guy who worked on my paper responded, and he said that he loved my essay. Naturally, I felt proud of my personal statement, but a friend told me my "why" needed to show up sooner in my PS. Is this true? I know everything is subjective, but can I tell a story first and then get to the point?

 

[curbsideconsult]

It depends.

If it's written well enough then the "why" will be made clear through the story without you explicitly stating the reason for you wanting to be a physician. I've seen many personal statements where the "why" is not explicit at all until the middle or a little later but I could see through the story where they were going.

Feel free to PM me your PS if you want another set of eyes to look it over.

 

[Oso]

My opinion is that your 'why' should start to become evident no later than 1/3 of the way through your essay.

Admissions people are reading tons of essays. If they get a good way through your essay and do not know where it is going or why you want to be a doctor then they may quickly lose interest.

 

[Neuro244]

What's the consensus on talking about how you shadowed many other health care professionals and weeded them each out which allowed you to know from experience that you didn't want to pursue those and then moving forward, it allowed you to know you wanted to pursue medicine ?

 

[time2ski]

My opinion is that your 'why' should start to become evident no later than 1/3 of the way through your essay.

Admissions people are reading tons of essays. If they get a good way through your essay and do not know where it is going or why you want to be a doctor then they may quickly lose interest.

Good point