Personal statement vs. secondary questions that ask "why medicine"

[DoctorWannaBe]

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I have heard people mention some secondary questions that ask why you want to go into medicine (Northwestern comes to mind). This is the general topic of my personal statement, so how do I go about answering something like this? Am I writing my PS wrong, or am I supposed to come up with new reasons of "why medicine", or am I supposed to summarize from my PS?

 

[ATPase]

bump

 

[tBw]

The primary was only something like 5300 characters. Did you really cover your entire ambition in that?

Details. If you said in your primary you enjoyed volunteering somewhere, describe a particular event or patient that had a significant effect. If you already did that talk about how medicine fits in with your vision for your life. If you already did that, choose another patient/clinical situation and go into human details on that, or talk about research you've done or....whatever, just know that there are always more angles/different details you can give that can make you seem a more 3 dimensional applicant.

 

[Cydney Foote]

Totally agree with tBw -- the secondary should cover another aspect of your interests/activities/personality that you didn't have space to write about before. Your ambition to enter medicine is the same, but as you said that was the "general" topic before. Now you'll have a chance to flesh out the image that you started to introduce there. It definitely doesn't sound like your PS was "wrong" but there are surely other aspects of your profile that will supplement what you wrote there. You might want to take a look at this advice on secondary essays and see if it's helpful.

Good luck!

 

[Street Philosopher]

Hopefully, most people will have several reasons for going into medicine. Personally, my decision was based on a lot of factors, and I chose to focus on a few of them in my personal statement. I used secondaries to elaborate more or to discuss other aspects of my motivation to go into medicine... you get the idea.