personal statement

[wolf]

hello all you experienced applicants,

what do you think are the most important things to include the the amcas personal statement?
what should i not put in there?
i am revising my statement now and i want to make sure that i included everything i should and didn't make some huge error.
thanks

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[Lt. Ub]

I've interviewed applicants for the the med school I attend. I've seen MANY personal statements and they were all very different from each other. There is no specific formula for a statement, and I doubt that you'll make a huge error. No matter what the story the person was telling me about themselves, the thing I usually looked for the most was an evidence for passion for medicine (other interviewers may focus on other things). That goes for the interview as well - I wanted to see the fire in their eyes when they talked about medicine. Good luck.

Philly

[This message has been edited by Lt. Ub (edited 06-04-2000).]

 

[Besyonek]

wolf,

One other point: Make sure there are NO errors -- typos, poor grammar, awkward syntax, punctuation errors, etc. in your essay. I've heard from adcom members that these are remarkably common in personal essays and can often undermine what would otherwise be a competitive application. Ask an English professor (or two) to look it over and critique it. I gave mine to an English Ph.D. and told him to be brutally honest and use as much red ink as he wanted. Make sure the final statement is completely polished and reflects your motivations, passion and uniqueness.

 

[fiatslug]

I tried to write my personal statement on the AMCAS-E, and found it very annoying not to be able to print it and see what the heck I'd written, and how it would look, etc. I ended up doing the paper & pencil AMCAS, and used a good old fashioned glue stick to crop my essay into the space. Yes, typing in all my classes onto that dang form was a real PIA, but I liked actually seeing what my app would look like.

I completely agree with Besyonek about having an English teacher ruthlessly critique your essay. SpellCheck is not enough; you need DumbCheck, Poorly Structured ParagraphCheck, ClicheCheck, etc. Know that it's very hard to put a fresh spin on "I want to be a doctor because I want to help people," and the like. And please, please, for the sake of all that is decent and holy in this mad, mad world, spell "definite" correctly. I direct this plea not specifically to the original poster, but to the generalized You, Dear Reader; you'll make this former English teacher weep!

 

[jawurheemd]

After reading many personal statements of applicants to my school, I realized that most of them sounded similar. Is that bad? I don't think so -- what is bad is when you try to make your personal statment stand out. What usually happens is the applicant comes off as a bit eccentric. Occassionally, there is a personal statment that stands out and is very good, but this is a rarity.

Can you get accepted to medical school just on the basis of your personal statment? Very unlikely. Can a personal statment hurt your chances of admission? Possibly. So, my advice is to write a good personal statment discussing why you want to become a physcian including some life experiences as well as discussing why you would be a good physician. These are the recurrent themes that I've seen in personal statments, and hardly do these statments hurt the applicant unless it is apparent that the applicant doesn't really know what he/she is getting into.

Hope this helps.


fiat, why weren't you able to print your personal statement using AMCAS-E? Even though I used the application 4 years ago, I remember that I was able to print out the application so I could check everything out.

 

[fiatslug]

Possibly because I am el lame-o. I liked playing with glue in kindergarten, too. So I opted for Ye Olde Papere AMCAS.

 

[EmB]

I got the distinct impression, from many of my interviewers, that my personal statement was a major reason that I got as far as I did. Since I ultimately got into a lot of those schools, I have become a firm believer in the power of an effective personal statement. One suggestion that I picked up: I think it's useful and powerful to "frame" your statement with an anecdote. You can begin with a gripping moment in your life and then build off of that to talk about how it connects to your passion for medicine. Since I have a lot of non-medical work experience, I tried to show a common thread through all of it. The trick, I found, was to avoid generalities at all cost. They give you so little room on that form that every word has to count. And, as everyone says, you need to get LOTS of people to read it. Good luck.

 

[nicolette]

Great advice from all the previous posters-here's my two cents...

As far as what not to put in your statement-don't try to include all of your medically related experiences into the personal statement. I know the temptation to fill that space with everything you've accomplished is great. You want to impress the adcoms with your statement and get your foot in the door, right? But be aware that cramming too much info can lead to a less coherent essay. You will have ample opportunity on your secondaries to elaborate on what you have already said as well as to answer detailed questions about all your activities. So as EmB said, for your personal statement, try to have a theme and focus on one or two activities and work on weaving that core/theme throughout. Use descriptive writing to capture the reader's attention (I know...easier said than done) and most of all, have as many people read it as possible. An objective reader will be able to spot inconsistencies/vagueness that you might miss.

Good luck!