Personal Statements

[Res-J]

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For most MD/PhD programs, your admission is contingent upon acceptance by the MD committee as well. If this is the case, then how do you discuss your interest in academic medicine without turning off the MD adcoms? Do they care?

 

[DarkChild]

why would MD adcoms be turned off by your interest in academic medicine? the vast majority of those involved in academic medicine are MDs...
and thus your question has been answered

 

[Res-J]

I realize that, but they're generally not on admissions committees from what I understand. Maybe this is a non-issue anyway. Thanks.

 

[giverny]

Hope this helps... but of course, this is just n=1:

I focused my AMCAS personal statement on my motivations for MEDICINE... with a small section on the importance of research in this motivation... and made it clear in the last paragraph that I wanted a career as a physician-scientist... HOWEVER, my personal statement for AMCAS was definitely not heavily research!

Then, the secondaries will come in.... and you will have plenty of space to write all about your research in your MD-PhD essays and make it clear why you are doing MD-PhD. If this is your focus in your AMCAS essay, I fear you may become redundant in your MD-PhD essay... and I believe that the most important thing about these essays is to give the Adcoms the greatest insight into who you are without meeting them... why would you want to waste space saying the same things twice??

Hope this helps some.

 

[Newquagmire]

Yes, I concur. From the people I've talked to, it seems like the general trend is to make the primary AMCAS essay a "why do you want an MD" and the secondaries/MSTP essay a "why do you want an MD/PhD."