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Scholarship Access: Becoming a Student Doctor course
Free access to comprehensive medical school prep. Eligible students include AAMC FAP recipients and HS graduates from underserved areas. Apply today. -
Personal Statement
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- Attending Physician
Don't write anything incriminating.
Don't copy someone else.
Write why medicine and don't cater to what you think the adcoms want to read.
Don't go over 5300 characters with spaces.
Don't copy someone else.
Write why medicine and don't cater to what you think the adcoms want to read.
Don't go over 5300 characters with spaces.
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- I hate Pre-Meds!!!
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easy enough! I guess it's just that open ended
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Exerpt on the Personal Statement from a previous SDN post:
The Not So Short Introduction To
Getting Into MedicalSchool
version 1.2.2
July 8, 2006
Ryan Aycock
copyright 2005-2006
Creative Commons Deed
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0
You are free:
• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
Attribution You must give the original author credit.
Noncommercial You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Share Alike If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may
distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
• For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the
license terms of this work.
• Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the
copyright holder.
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
This is a human-readable summary of the Legal Code
The full license is available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode
3.1.1 The Personal Statement
With so much riding on the personal statement, you should be very careful
in writing and editing it. You should show it to your friends and teachers for
review. You should try rewriting again and again until you have perfected
it.
There are plenty of books available on amazon.com that will give you full
details on writing a personal statement. Like the MCAT books, you are on
your own to purchase one.5 Here are a few of my suggestions about outlining
the essay:
1. Begin with a brief story of how you got attracted to medicine
2. Give a short overview of your view of the medical profession
3. Tell the audience what you have done to prepare for medical school
4. Tell what are you hoping to get out of becoming a doctor
5. Close with a paragraph that relates all of your accomplishments to your
first story
Some other things to keep in mind:
• Use verbs, not descriptions of feeling—e.g., "I love working with others,"
versus, "I lived in a homeless shelter for a month to get a feel
for the difficulties that the poor face every day in accessing life's basic
necessities such as healthcare, food, and clothing."
• Your sentences with the most impact should be very short.
• Don't say, "I want to help people." The phrase is trite and overused.
It's immature—If you write it, admissions committees will assume that
you have not fully thought out why you want to become a physician.
Become a social worker if you only want to help people.
• Show some maturity about what doctors do. Don't write, "I plan to
run from one hospital room to another saving lives."
• Be honest in why you like medicine. Now is not the time to bemoan the
fact that many Americans are uninsured and that your only solution is
to become a socialist and give free healthcare to everyone.
• Don't apologize for low grades or lack of experience. The personal
statement is for you to build yourself up. Believe me, you will have
plenty of opportunities to explain your low grades later.
You can read some suggestions from Essay Edge at
www.collegejournal.com/aidadmissions/gradschooladvice/ee index.html .
The Application Process 30
• Stay away from controversial topics such as religion or abortion. First,
you don't want to say that you're a fundamentalist Christian only to
have your reader be a staunch atheist. You put him in a bad position
by forcing him to make a decision on your personal religious beliefs,
rather than your ability to become a doctor.
The Not So Short Introduction To
Getting Into MedicalSchool
version 1.2.2
July 8, 2006
Ryan Aycock
copyright 2005-2006
Creative Commons Deed
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0
You are free:
• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
Attribution You must give the original author credit.
Noncommercial You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Share Alike If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may
distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
• For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the
license terms of this work.
• Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the
copyright holder.
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
This is a human-readable summary of the Legal Code
The full license is available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode
3.1.1 The Personal Statement
With so much riding on the personal statement, you should be very careful
in writing and editing it. You should show it to your friends and teachers for
review. You should try rewriting again and again until you have perfected
it.
There are plenty of books available on amazon.com that will give you full
details on writing a personal statement. Like the MCAT books, you are on
your own to purchase one.5 Here are a few of my suggestions about outlining
the essay:
1. Begin with a brief story of how you got attracted to medicine
2. Give a short overview of your view of the medical profession
3. Tell the audience what you have done to prepare for medical school
4. Tell what are you hoping to get out of becoming a doctor
5. Close with a paragraph that relates all of your accomplishments to your
first story
Some other things to keep in mind:
• Use verbs, not descriptions of feeling—e.g., "I love working with others,"
versus, "I lived in a homeless shelter for a month to get a feel
for the difficulties that the poor face every day in accessing life's basic
necessities such as healthcare, food, and clothing."
• Your sentences with the most impact should be very short.
• Don't say, "I want to help people." The phrase is trite and overused.
It's immature—If you write it, admissions committees will assume that
you have not fully thought out why you want to become a physician.
Become a social worker if you only want to help people.
• Show some maturity about what doctors do. Don't write, "I plan to
run from one hospital room to another saving lives."
• Be honest in why you like medicine. Now is not the time to bemoan the
fact that many Americans are uninsured and that your only solution is
to become a socialist and give free healthcare to everyone.
• Don't apologize for low grades or lack of experience. The personal
statement is for you to build yourself up. Believe me, you will have
plenty of opportunities to explain your low grades later.
You can read some suggestions from Essay Edge at
www.collegejournal.com/aidadmissions/gradschooladvice/ee index.html .
The Application Process 30
• Stay away from controversial topics such as religion or abortion. First,
you don't want to say that you're a fundamentalist Christian only to
have your reader be a staunch atheist. You put him in a bad position
by forcing him to make a decision on your personal religious beliefs,
rather than your ability to become a doctor.
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most of that advice is good, but the key is to be an individual in your essay. There are 30,000 students just like you with a 3.8 and a 30-35 mcat.
Don't follow a formula! This is your chance to distinguish yourself.
You can have all this information in your essay and sound creative at the same time, dont forget that.
Don't follow a formula! This is your chance to distinguish yourself.
You can have all this information in your essay and sound creative at the same time, dont forget that.
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- Pre-Medical
I have no idea if this applies to you or not, but the TMDSAS (Texas State Schools) prompt for personal statements is not the same as the AMCAS prompt for personal statements. In general, if you write for the TMDSAS prompt your statment will work for AMCAS, but not the other way around. The AMCAS prompt is very general.
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Some great advice already on this thread. Just thought I'd add my two cents.
I got some great advice during my mock interview at my undergrad. One woman told me that if she lost the rest of my application and only had my personal statement in front of her, she wanted to be able to get all the info about me from that one paper. So I started with a story, how it related to my knowledge of the field I want to go to, then I talked about a few other things I've done to prepare.
I got some great advice during my mock interview at my undergrad. One woman told me that if she lost the rest of my application and only had my personal statement in front of her, she wanted to be able to get all the info about me from that one paper. So I started with a story, how it related to my knowledge of the field I want to go to, then I talked about a few other things I've done to prepare.
