Elsewhere you stated that the dean of a medical school had advised you to stop using your committee letter. Something tells me there was something unusual and bad in that letter, and so this says nothing about whether committee letters are normally problematic, nor if removing excuses from your personal statement was significant...
Couldn't this be a matter of presenting it in the correct tone? You don't want to imply that what happened totally excuses poor performance, but you also need to account for what happened, how it caused you to mature, and why it won't happen again. Otherwise they're left to guess at why you did poorly during X period, and are left to reach their own conclusions about your character/motivation.
Well, I have no doubt that I presented in the right tone. I am confident that my essay was extremely well written (I have writing awards in spite of being an engineer). The same dean who discussed my committee letter with me ALSO suggested I consider dismissing my advisers advice. He specifically said that it brought red flags up to the adcom even though it was well written. Whether or not you can blame the Committee Letter vs. changing my essay, certainly taking that part OUT of my essay didn't doom my application.
I also have now, due to my work, and association with family members and family members of my other half, come to present this issue to ~8 people who sit on adcoms. 5 are clinical professors at a good med school. 1 is the dean of admissions of a top 10 med school (where I didn't apply), 1 is the dean of my parents' alma mater, and 1 is a member of my family who is on the adcom at another top 10 school. The answer has been consistent--do not waste space in the AMCAS specifically discussing this...use the space on the 2ndary.
Some schools screen pre-secondary though, don't they? I guess in that case it would depend on if the story behind the lapse is compelling and/or fits into the rest of your story.
Your AMCAS has to go to ALL schools, however, so I personally feel it is worth the gamble and/or picking schools that don't screen pre-secondary. I got more than 50% of the 2ndaries from schools that screened pre-secondary...all OOS schools for me, I believe. You do have to make some compromises and play the game.
The AMCAS instructions state (for the personal statement):
In addition, you may wish to include information such as:
• Special hardships, challenges or obstacles that may have influenced your educational pursuits.
AMCAS says you
may wish to include them. And I think eloquently presenting a life hardship that shaped you in your essay is totally different than specifically linking it back to your grades and defending/explaining those grades. People reviewing apps are smart enough to realize that if someone discusses growing up impoverished and in a family w/out healthcare, that they probably want to give a 2ndary/interview to find out how any weaknesses in the transcrpit are or are not tied to the background of that student...if they don't think like this, I have to question whether or not any discussion in the AMCAS really could have convinced a school to give you a 2ndary in spite of a dip in grades, etc. Some schools are sticklers from #'s, and pretty much won't budge no matter what you tell them.
The AMCAS instructions state (for the personal statement):
In addition, you may wish to include information such as:
• Commentary on significant fluctuations in your academic record that are not explained elsewhere in your application.
They will be explained elsewhere--in your 2ndary and sometimes in LOR's. I strongly feel based on all the feedback from admissions-affiliated individuals that for MOST students, this statement should say "elsewhere in your AMCAS or Secondary applications." As I said before, you might get cut from some schools that screen secondaries b/c they don't understand your situation...but (1) give them credit for being smart enough to realize potential and (2) this is not the majority of schools.
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Anyhow, above and beyond all, regardless of where you discuss your hardships, make sure you present them positively and focus more on the way in which they helped you to grown and/or what you learned that will keep your grades from slipping should the hardship or another hardship occur during med school.
