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Personal statement ....

Started by bkpa2med
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bkpa2med

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15+ Year Member
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All the while looking at my p.s. and making some revisions to it, I realized a few things and I am very proud of myself. This is a stressful time for us applicants and I would just want to tell you all the stay relaxed, motivated and to believe in yourselves. We each have something unique about us and we need to show that to the adcoms.

How is everyone else doing with their p.s. ? 👍
 
It's okay to spend some ample time on the PS. It's quite important, so you'll end up with a couple of drafts before you submit it. I suggest showing it to many different kinds of people (friends, siblings, teachers, etc)...so that you can get a good, varied feedback. Of course, you can't use everyone's suggestions! But you can definitely choose what suggestions you like and incorporate them into your essay. Good luck!!
 
i start doing mine next week.. its the one thing i look forward to doing during the application process.. i think it would be kinda fun
 
I kind of took a shotgun approach and anecdotally addressed my motivation to pursue medicine and touched on my motivation to pursue osteopathic medicine. I originally wrote a 4000 character essay and found the hardest part was paring it down. AACOMAS doesn't give us all that much space to provide an in depth essay, thus my shotgun approach. Secondaries will be where I address specifics.
And here's some advice from an adcom member I met while at a LECOM-FL open house: try to use little anecdotes to liven things up. She said she gets too many essays that basically put an extracurriculars list into sentence form. The primary essay should be about motivation for medicine, osteopathy, or both. The catch is to save some material for the secondaries.
 
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HunterGatherer said:
It was 3000 characters for the last cycle. It used be only 2000 about 5 years ago. 😱

Wow, the AMCAS character # is like 5300!
 
I know that aamc has an application worksheet online with the personal statement question, my question is where can I find it for aacomas??

Thanks in advance!!
 
amd26 said:
I know that aamc has an application worksheet online with the personal statement question, my question is where can I find it for aacomas??

Thanks in advance!!

You need to wait until AACOMAS opens up for the next application cycle and put it in your primary application.
 
Boner said:
I kind of took a shotgun approach and anecdotally addressed my motivation to pursue medicine and touched on my motivation to pursue osteopathic medicine. I originally wrote a 4000 character essay and found the hardest part was paring it down. AACOMAS doesn't give us all that much space to provide an in depth essay, thus my shotgun approach. Secondaries will be where I address specifics.
And here's some advice from an adcom member I met while at a LECOM-FL open house: try to use little anecdotes to liven things up. She said she gets too many essays that basically put an extracurriculars list into sentence form. The primary essay should be about motivation for medicine, osteopathy, or both. The catch is to save some material for the secondaries.

OMG... hard to believe it's time for another round and I still don't know where I'm going yet! 😱

I also thought it was really hard to wittle down when I wrote mine, I started in May, it took me about a month to perfect it. I took the same approach, mostly "why medicine" but also a chunk on "why osteopathic medicine" in the primary ACCOMAS app. I just made sure not to repeat myself when asked similar questions in the secondary, I may have used some of the same ideas but nothing word-for-word. :luck: