Personal Statement vs Secondary Essays

[Mets86]

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Is more weight placed on the personal statement (PS) than the secondary essays? I feel as though I hear more about the PS. Possibly this is because there is more time to work on it than the many secondaries coming in at the same time or because the secondary topics are actual topics which not known.

 

[8744]

Hi.

The secondary essay gives you a place to explain why you called Mahatma Ghandi a "urine drinking mother-****er" in you AMCAS personal statement. It is also a good place to admit that you don't actually have any kittens and yer' Grandma who you claimed to have cared for until she "slid gently into a peaceful dream of death" is actually in a third-rate nursing home in the suburbs of Dubuque and you actually haven't seen her in three years because the smell of "poopy" makes you gag.

They do check these things, you know. My medical school had a whole department of "verifiers."

Glad I could help.

 

[rajad10]

Hi.

The secondary essay gives you a place to explain why you called Mahatma Ghandi a "urine drinking mother-****er" in you AMCAS personal statement. It is also a good place to admit that you don't actually have any kittens and yer' Grandma who you claimed to have cared for until she "slid gently into a peaceful dream of death" is actually in a third-rate nursing home in the suburbs of Dubuque and you actually haven't seen her in three years because the smell of "poopy" makes you gag.

They do check these things, you know. My medical school had a whole department of "verifiers."

Glad I could help.

bs, theres no way they verify things you say in your PS

 

[8744]

bs, theres no way they verify things you say in your PS

Oh yeah? About six months into first year I got called into the Dean of Students office. Apparently they had found out that I hadn't actually won a Nobel Prize for chemistry.

Thinking quickly, I said, "Nobel prize? Of course I didn't win the Nobel Prize. I won the Noble Prize. See? Right there. Call my undergraduate institution and ask them about it."

"Sure, I keep the Harvard registrars phone number in my wallet. Here ya' go."

By the time they sorted it out I had graduated.

 

[8744]

I didn't actually go to Harvard, by the way. A few months later I got an angry letter from the Dean of Students saying that there was no record of my having attended Harvard.

"Harvard?" I wrote back, "I didn't go to Harvard, I went to Harvarads...you know, in St. Croix." I gave him the phone number of the registrar there which was really my cell-phone number. Every call I got for the next three months I always answered (in a thick Jamaican accent), "Hello, Registrars Office, can I help you mon?"

Incidently, if you look closely at my ID badge, between the "M" and the "D" is a tiny "C." I actually didn't go to a real undergraduate university but I did attend McDonald's Hamburger U as an assistant night shift trainee. It says "University of Hamburg" on my AMCAS application so I'm not really lying. Besides, are they really going to call Austria to verify that I went there?

You just have to be smart.

 

[jackieMD2007]