ps and guidleines

[Lisochka]

I am struggling with my personal statement.
I have read 2 books on that and can't seem to come up with a good statement....
I have heard that there are some guidelines on the pharmcas. org or somewhere else.Do you have a link to that?
Or may be there are some examples of good p.s.?

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[alenadoma]

Unfortunately it's hard to come by good example pharmacy school personal essays. Have you tried looking at medical school personal statements? That helped me a little.
For personal statements, I think it's important to be honest..tell them exactly why you want to be a pharmacist, what was it that made you want to become a pharmacist? If you aren't sure, spend some time doing some soul searching to figure out why you really want to be a pharmacist. Make sure you explain long-term/short-term goals and have a few people read it for some constructive criticism. I wouldn't recommend asking more than about 4 or 5 people, because too many opinions is as bad as not enough. Tell a story to keep the readers interested, that's what I did in mine, and I was really happy with the final outcome.
It does take some time to make a good personal statement. I personally started in the beginning of June, worked on it for a few weeks, left it alone until mid-August, and then spent another month finalizing. Start with a draft, and then rework, rework and rework.
Good luck!

 

[ccpharmd]

Not sure what the two books you've looked through are, but have you tried "Peterson's perfect personal statements : law, business, medical, graduate school"? It helped a lot of my friends (who are already in professional schools) and me when writing the personal statement. The content is really up to you in terms of what you want to present to admissions, but the book helped me with organization (which I think is super important) and a bunch of other things.

The content itself, however, is a whole different story... as you've probably heard one too many times.

Oh yeah I agree with alenadoma, get several people to read over it. I went to the writing center WAY too often (but they were my peers), a friend in professional school, and a professor to read over it. All of the STUDENTS told me the same thing, that it was great, the friend gave me a little bit of constructive criticism because she works in the admissions office at her school, and my professor almost tore apart my PS (but in a good way). It really helped to get different perspectives on it.