Susan,
I read your personal statement and it reads very well. You have obviously put a lot of time and effort into it. However, it is 483 words long (about 2800 characters) and, as I recall, the ACCOMAS electronic application only allows 250 words or about 2000 characters, including spaces. When I got my PS to the point where yours is now, my work on it had just begun. I put in twice to three times the work in the refinement and tweaking than I did writing the first 10 drafts. Truth. Condensing it to what is allowed and still say everything you want to say is not a small task.
You must really priorotize what you most want to get across and then say those things very, very concisely. It is great that you have a central theme (HIV boy) to refer back to, but be careful about implying that THAT boy was your inspiration to go to medical school. Give them several reasons, and listing among them things like "providing a good lifestyle for my family" (read the money) is certainly not a foul. Just be honest about ALL your reasons and they will respect that. No one is here out of pure altruism, not that your implies that, but we all fall into the trap a bit of trying to give them what we think they want to hear in a PS. I think they pick up on that fast, and cool points get deducted.
Honestly, I would mention the boy with HIV as a brief intro then make way for some other "meat", so to speak, maybe referring back to that breifly later if you can fit it in.
The "Why I wanna be an osteopath" portion is excellent. There again , you can pair (pare?) it down some.
Avoid writing ANY sentences in a passive voice. you do that a bit. Common mistake in writing, everyone does it. That is starting a sentence with any form of the verb "to be". i.e . Being an EMT allowed me...."
Make sure your sentence structure does not contain more than 2-in-a-row of any one type of sentence: simple, compound,complex, and compund complex... again, a big mistake commonly made. Proof read it backwards for this, it really helps. It interrupts the flow. Also this will catch long sentences and fragments, as it takes each sentence out of the context of those that precede it.
Whatever you do, do not type your PS into the application, cut and paste it from Word, after it has been spell checked and proofed by every english instructor you can corner.
Also, I have saved the best for last here. Go to ESSAYEDGE.COM and follow the links to the online course on how to write a medical school PS .. it is awesome. And on the way to the course, (I think it is under the advice tab), there is some really good insight along the way.
Having said all that, your staement is really really good, and with just a bit more editing and pairing (paring?) down, you'll water their eyes. Best of luck to you.
Chet
