personal statement writers block

[MaggieD]

In between studying for this upcoming MCAT, I'm trying to rough out a personal statement for the AACOMAS app. (3000 characters? WTF? thats only like 4 paragraphs!) I caught a bad case of writers block. I know its early, but I want to be able to cut and paste a finished statement when I fill out the app. I just can't seem to wrap it up or even get anything that seems to adequatly convey my desire for osteopathic medicine.

Any application veterans have any advice? I'll email it to anyone if they care to check it out.

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[jhug]

maggie, i'd be happy to help. Just pm it to me and i'll see what i can do! My advice would be to just start writing everything you feel for medicine in general. You'll start to see a general trend/idea. Embellish that idea and why/what has happened to make you feel that way.

 

[Bevo]

my first personal statement was like 3 pages single spaced. I slowly cut out a lot of stuff and tried consolidating the rest. I also had a very good writer friend, PhD at harvard, edit a lot of it for me for content and grammer and what not.

It took me close to 16 revisions before I was happy with it, but when I submitted my aacomas app it was to long. I had to revise it a few more times to cut it down.

Its not much space but you have to be clear and direct with what you want to say.

 

[Nanon]

I wrote this in pre-allo, but I just wanted to let you know that I just started (today) a message board for personal statement peer review. Here it is. Maybe this can be of some help to people. I also have a website devoted to what people probably shouldn't write in a personal statement, but have anyway for our enjoyment. If anything, it might help clear up your writers block, or give you some ideas about how to get your point across.

I'm also starting a twisted O'Chem tutorial on this site that you might enjoy while you review for the MCAT...

Hope this is of help,

Nanon

 

[SuzieQ]

I had a couple different events in my life that affirmed my passion for medicine, and like you said, the word limit is a huge problem so I couldn't write about them all. So what I did was start 3 different drafts, all different stories about how I'm sure I want a career in medicine. It helped to cut down on the words and starting fresh each time gave me new ideas. Then I combined parts of one draft with the other. In the end, I was torn between 2 drafts, so I asked the professor, whom I had edit it, to select which one stood out more to her.

I really think the personal statement put personality into my application, that's why I spent so much time on it. Since you are starting so early, you might have time to try that. Good Luck.