Personal Statement Questions

[beckhunter116]

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I was wondering if other non-trads are having problems with having your ps flow? Basically, I have a lot of things in the PS I want/need to discuss. When I started school I needed time to adjust to the responsibilities of school and working. Then I wanted to talk about a period when I didn't volunteer b/c my partner was in school and I was working/taking care of all the household stuff. Of course then I go into my reasons for wanting to go into medicine.

I'm just wondering if this is okay?

If anyone would like to read it just pm me. Thank you!!!

 

[Krisss17]

Hi beckhunter,

Remember that a lot of information will go into the application via the EC category, etc. Save the PS to answer the question of why medicine and what brought you to this point.

Do not bring up anything negative, and don't try to explain anything, let that wait until you get the interviews.

 

[combatwombat]

I was wondering if other non-trads are having problems with having your ps flow?

yes

When I started school I needed time to adjust to the responsibilities of school and working.

sounds familiar. I would repeat Kriss's advice to not mention anything bad and put your most positive take on your whole story. You only get a page, make it as positive and compelling as you can. Also, re: overall flow, don't be afraid to try starting over from scratch and just freewriting for a half hour and seeing what you come up with. I went through at least 3 versions of my PS before settling on the one I submitted.

 

[anon3]

Use your EC/activity space for those activities and they meant to you. I was a ***** and just put down very short descriptions of what I did.

For example, in listing your work you can use some of the ~1300 characters they give you to talk about how you adjusting to school at the same time. You could make an ec/activity entry of being a stay at home dad. If I did it over again, I'd also keep the activities chronological so they can see the timeline and list awards at the end rather than throw everything together in random fashion.

I tried to tie stuff like starting school and family all into my PS and in retrospect, I didn't have enough close to the room needed, so my PS and ECs sucked because they were uninformative outside of what I managed to put in the PS. I managed to get into one of my preferred choices for med school anyways but I think I was just lucky I hit it off with the interviewer.

For PS, keep it focused on why you want to be a doctor.