Personal Statement

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Hardbody

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Am I the only one that hammered out my personal statement in like 3 hours? I had several friends and family read it, and I only had to make a couple of small changes. Other than these small changes everyone loved it and I am ready to submit (finally). I am just curious because I have read how several people say to write the statement over a period of months, but sometimes I get in the writing mood.
 
I'm sure you're not the only one. I would suggest to have someone that doesn't know you read it as well. Sometimes you may get a biased opinion with family and friends. 😉

Hardbody said:
Am I the only one that hammered out my personal statement in like 3 hours? I had several friends and family read it, and I only had to make a couple of small changes. Other than these small changes everyone loved it and I am ready to submit (finally). I am just curious because I have read how several people say to write the statement over a period of months, but sometimes I get in the writing mood.
 
Hardbody said:
Am I the only one that hammered out my personal statement in like 3 hours? I had several friends and family read it, and I only had to make a couple of small changes. Other than these small changes everyone loved it and I am ready to submit (finally). I am just curious because I have read how several people say to write the statement over a period of months, but sometimes I get in the writing mood.

It took me several weeks to perfect my PS. In addition to allowing friends and family read it, I sent it to our director of writing , director of our health professions office, a political science professor, current medical students and several physicians to proof read it and make suggestions before sending off my final draft. Besides your grades + MCAT score, it is arguably the most important thing that you will turn in for consideration. Take your time to ensure that it is the best the it can be. So far I have had very good feedback from my interviewers about my PS and it has generated quite alot of meaningful discussions...a great PS can really set you apart from others. Best of Luck!
 
HunterGatherer said:
A lot of people just don't know where to start or how to finish. That was my big problem. Oh, I also suck at writing

The thing with me is that I suck 99% of the time, but that 1% of the time I get on a roll writing (like I did last night). Anyway I submitted my application earlier today so I can't change my statement (nor would I want to).
 
It took me a couple weeks. I used pretty much the same one for MD and DO, and since I'm a reapplicant, I wanted it to be 10x better than the one I used last year. I had quite a few people read it and edit it for me. One for style and flow, one for grammer, and a couple others just for their opinions on what needed to get improved. My first draft was complete garbage, but if you can bang it out in 3 hours and it's good, more props to you.
 
I wrote my frist draft in a very short period of time. I had spent a bit of time thinking about it...but it only took a few hours to get all the words onto paper. That being said, I had it edited by quite a few ppl. Most didn't provide very much good input...but several provided input that I feel made the phrasing of my essay much better.
 
HunterGatherer said:
A lot of people just don't know where to start or how to finish. That was my big problem. Oh, I also suck at writing

I think the reason I was able to hammer my statement out so fast is that I knew exactly where I wanted to start and end. That kind of made the middle easy to write, but if I would have tried to write my statement a few weeks ago I probably would have had writers block.
 
i think even for me, i churned out the core of the ps in a few hrs. a month went into getting it to look better with the help of fellow sdn'ers. 🙂
 
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