Personal statement is the devil

[WilliamC93]

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Up until about two days ago, I was feeling incredibly burnt out and was not sure if I was going to apply this round. After a couple days of break from school and everything else, I've decided that I'm going all out. The only issue is I don't have much of a personal statement written, and I really, really want to send in my application by June 14th before I spend a month in Ecuador for study abroad. My question is, is the personal statement by far the most important part of the application? In every other category I have good stats: 25AA/24PAT/28RC/26PAT, 3.88 oGPA/3.95 sGPA, 60 shadowing hours, and ~115 volunteer hours (40 in dental office, 60 for thirft store, and 15 for building a baseball field), and I've got two professors, a dentist I shadowed ~25 hours with, and the dentist I volunteer for writing LORs. I hate writing sooooooo frickin much and I want to know if having a sub-par personal statement will screw my chances regardless. I can't think of anything too unique about myself to write, and my reasons for wanting to become a dentist is pretty standard: 'had bad teeth, had braces, now have good teeth,' and 'find it really interesting that such a large field revolves around such a minor part of the human anatomy' and 'love helping others; the having a presentable mouth can really change a person's life' and other lame, common reasons..

 

[customx]

Really? I know you are stressing out, but with those stats, I highly doubt even a subpar PS would negate the fact that fact you have a DAT score in the 99th percentile and a near 4.0 GPA. With those stats you are guaranteed interviews

 

[ModifiedBass]

The personal statement is by far not even close to the most important part of the application, where did you possibly hear that. GPA/DAT are easily the most important and you have those. A sub-par personal statement won't hurt your application, just put some effort into it. If you can't write a less than 2 page essay about yourself/why you want to go to dental school in 3 weeks, I would seriously question your work ethic. I'm by no means a great writer, I don't like it as well, but I wrote mine in a couple of days. Just think about some "special experience" you may have had shadowing once, how your other activities/school work/etc. show your time management, leadership, blah blah blah, tie it all together and you'll be fine.

 

[Glimmer1991]

You're clearly a smart dude. Write a decent statement. It doesn't have to be earth-shattering... but by all means, at least aim for it to be decent! When everything else about your application is great, you don't want this sticking out like a sore thumb.

Who do you know that is a good writer? Ask them to help you and/or brainstorm with you.

A personal statement isn't fun to write... but once you get an idea that really works, it tends to go quickly from there.

 

[WilliamC93]

Oh ok thanks! I can definitely write a statement in three weeks, I just was not sure I would pull out an amazing, earth-shattering statement form 20 drafts and rewrites that would bring a tear to their eye like everyone always said it had to be. Writing has always been my second biggest pet peeve (the biggest is when earphones get caught on something and are pulled out of my ears unexpectedly). I had one 2-page human phys paper to write last term, and that was more stressful than any other the anatomy or ochem tests I had. Yeah I know, its a little odd haha