Starting your personal statement with a non-dental related experience?

[alexamasan]

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I'm finishing up the 3rd or 4th version of my personal statement 😛. I went to writing help centers and they helped me out a lot cleaning up my essay, but the last thing they suggested to me was to add a hook at the beginning. Since my essay pretty much revolves around a certain lesson/moral that I've learned while figuring out my career, I decided to have a personal experience of when that lesson/moral would prove to be true.

I know the safe road would be to use a dental related experience, but it's just that I can think of much better experiences that are not dental related. Just wondering what your opinions are.

 

[mashinka]

I am not too sure, but in my opinion a good essay is a good essay no matter what your experiences are. I definitely talked about non-dental related stuff in my ps so i say go for it! You're applying to dental school so the adcomm already knows you want to be a dentist so i am sure it will be almost refreshing to give them something else

 

[userah]

if you can think of a better experience to hook them, go for it. I talked about my theater experience in the intro. I figured it would help differentiate me from the pool of applicants that start off with "i wanted to be a dentist ever since i was little"

 

[doc toothache]

I'm finishing up the 3rd or 4th version of my personal statement 😛. I went to writing help centers and they helped me out a lot cleaning up my essay, but the last thing they suggested to me was to add a hook at the beginning. Since my essay pretty much revolves around a certain lesson/moral that I've learned while figuring out my career, I decided to have a personal experience of when that lesson/moral would prove to be true.

Yeah, use a "hook". Those naive adcoms are bound to bite it.

 

[alexamasan]

thanks everybody 😀

 

[Palmetto914]

I don't think I mentioned dentistry until about half-way through my PS.