personal statement Q

[asnlady]

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just needing help on writing my PS.

some of my grades during the beginning of undergrad were not the best and i had to repeat a few. do i state this in my personal statement or should i just completely leave my PS to "why medicine?"?

any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[jaywalk]

just needing help on writing my PS.

some of my grades during the beginning of undergrad were not the best and i had to repeat a few. do i state this in my personal statement or should i just completely leave my PS to "why medicine?"?

any help would be greatly appreciated

I didn't put anything negative in my PS. There is not much room to write so i took the entire thing on why medicine and things that I have done that led me to making medicine my career choice

 

[noshie]

just needing help on writing my PS.

some of my grades during the beginning of undergrad were not the best and i had to repeat a few. do i state this in my personal statement or should i just completely leave my PS to "why medicine?"?

any help would be greatly appreciated

I put in one sentence where I quickly mentioned why my grades were so low in undergrad, but then I spent the rest of the paragraph talking about what I learned from the activites that led to my bad grades, and how I went to graduate school to better my background in the sciences...

Don't dwell on your poor grades... You can mention them in a way that leaves the reader with a positive impression of you. It seems that you are saying that you only had a small time where you had some poor grades. That would probably not need to be mentioned if it was really not that bad.

 

[asnlady]

thanks for the suggestion guys!

 

[mommy2three]

I put in one sentence where I quickly mentioned why my grades were so low in undergrad, but then I spent the rest of the paragraph talking about what I learned from the activites that led to my bad grades, and how I went to graduate school to better my background in the sciences...

Don't dwell on your poor grades... You can mention them in a way that leaves the reader with a positive impression of you. It seems that you are saying that you only had a small time where you had some poor grades. That would probably not need to be mentioned if it was really not that bad.

ditto to this....if you are going to mention them make sure you mention what you learned from the experience and how it shaped you as a student as well as a person

 

[TriagePreMed]

I would bring Zero attention to any negatives you have in your application. If you were going through a family crisis or something, you can state it without saying "this is why I got low grades." Just say something like "During my sophomore year I had to live through my aunt's/uncle/etc. illness which made me realize how consuming medicine must be but made me confident this is what I wanted." If it's something else, tailor it that way. Don't make things sound like some excuse. Always take responsibility even if you know it was beyond your ability to control.

 

[asnlady]

I would bring Zero attention to any negatives you have in your application. If you were going through a family crisis or something, you can state it without saying "this is why I got low grades." Just say something like "During my sophomore year I had to live through my aunt's/uncle/etc. illness which made me realize how consuming medicine must be but made me confident this is what I wanted." If it's something else, tailor it that way. Don't make things sound like some excuse. Always take responsibility even if you know it was beyond your ability to control.

i agree. although circumstances were out of my control, i am still taking responsibility because i know i should have been able to still take care of things despite of what was going on. i knew i needed to bring up the ugly grades on my personal statement but just didn't really know how to without sounding like i'm making excuses for myself.

really thank you for all the suggestions though. when i'm done, i'll try to get someone to proofread it 😀

 

[TriagePreMed]

Just don't forget not to mention anything about grades. Med schools are smart and if they see some bad grades during a period of time, they will remember your PS saying something about difficulties and put 2 and 2 together. Never bring direct attention to something bad.