The Personal Statement CLICHE LIST!!!!!!

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apnea said:
That's what scares me most about med school/residency/hospital work. i'm scared i'll be eating junk all the time and i'll get just absolutely horrifically fat again 🙁:scared:
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I like my hospital cafeteria...especially breakfast. Nothing beats $2 for eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, and a biscuit (free coffee, tea, and hot chocolate).
 
I went into premed because a girl dumped me because she didn't think I would amount to anything. So I switched my major out of spite. Restraining order or not, I'll show her.

Spite is a perfectly cromulent reason to enter medicine, right?
 
punkindrublic said:
I went into premed because a girl dumped me because she didn't think I would amount to anything. So I switched my major out of spite. Restraining order or not, I'll show her.

Spite is a perfectly cromulent reason to enter medicine, right?
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lol thats awesome
 
punkindrublic said:
I went into premed because a girl dumped me because she didn't think I would amount to anything. So I switched my major out of spite. Restraining order or not, I'll show her.

Spite is a perfectly cromulent reason to enter medicine, right?
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Sounds like the perfect stuff. I want to read it when you're done😀
 
punkindrublic said:
I went into premed because a girl dumped me because she didn't think I would amount to anything. So I switched my major out of spite. Restraining order or not, I'll show her.

Spite is a perfectly cromulent reason to enter medicine, right?
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Ouch....that actually hits close to home for me 😉. It's not that I chose medicine to spite her, but it was the end of a relationship that gave me a chance to rethink my life and where I was going. Somehow I think I'll leave that out of my PS, but who knows...it's due in 2 days and I'm still trying to write it >).
 
jochi1543 said:
I dated a resident once, he had it the other way around - he lost like 30 pounds in his 1st year. He was a little pudgy to begin with, but he was REALLY thin after that year. He just never had time to eat!
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that'd be nice :laugh: we'll see...
as it is now i've had to cut my workouts down to 2 hours per day so i have enough time to study 🙄
 
kypdurron5 said:
I like my hospital cafeteria...especially breakfast. Nothing beats $2 for eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, and a biscuit (free coffee, tea, and hot chocolate).
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that's...really cheap 👍










(omg i'd weigh like 200 pounds if i ate all that :scared::scared::scared:)
 
A quick question..... I have several (kind of cliché) experiences I want to mention in my PS. I'm not talking about visiting Africa on a medical missions trip...but I lived there for a majority of my youth. The trouble is that I can't seem to tie everything together so that it seems....completely relevant. The experiences I'm talking about are very significant events in my life and background, but don't really further the main idea of "why I want to be a doctor/why I'm applying to medical school." Do you guys think it's relevant to talk about significant events that helped form the person you are today, even if there's no direct connection to medicine/becoming a physician? (but possibly a connection to compassion, understanding, or just cool/unique life experiences)

[PS- during interviews last year I had several interviewers surprised to find out about my background, and thought I should have included this in my PS. One interviewer even suggested that I might have a good chance of getting in because of my diverse background...so I'd definitely like to include it this year]
 
Yeah, the cliches don't end after your med school application PS; they reappear when you're trying to write your residency application PS as well.

I told several people when they asked me how I wrote my PS that I was trying to write something that wasn't cliched, wasn't bragging, and didn't seem overly trite. It's very hard to do.

best of luck, and remember - so long as you can string 3 or 4 sentences together coherently and you have a vocabulary sutied to your age, you'll most likely be fine.

jd
 
kypdurron5 said:
A quick question..... I have several (kind of cliché) experiences I want to mention in my PS. I'm not talking about visiting Africa on a medical missions trip...but I lived there for a majority of my youth. The trouble is that I can't seem to tie everything together so that it seems....completely relevant. The experiences I'm talking about are very significant events in my life and background, but don't really further the main idea of "why I want to be a doctor/why I'm applying to medical school." Do you guys think it's relevant to talk about significant events that helped form the person you are today, even if there's no direct connection to medicine/becoming a physician? (but possibly a connection to compassion, understanding, or just cool/unique life experiences)

[PS- during interviews last year I had several interviewers surprised to find out about my background, and thought I should have included this in my PS. One interviewer even suggested that I might have a good chance of getting in because of my diverse background...so I'd definitely like to include it this year]
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yeah! I'd definitely include how your diverse background has shaped your character.... and the qualities you listed (compassion, etc.) definitely tie in to everything else - showing why you're a good fit for medicine. I think, the more uniqueness you can bring to the table, the better.
 
jochi1543 said:
I dated a resident once, he had it the other way around - he lost like 30 pounds in his 1st year. He was a little pudgy to begin with, but he was REALLY thin after that year. He just never had time to eat!
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no time to eat, huh? welp. see ya later!
 
kypdurron5 said:
I like my hospital cafeteria...especially breakfast. Nothing beats $2 for eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, and a biscuit (free coffee, tea, and hot chocolate).
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we had similar but I think it cost a little more.. only problem is it always turned my stomach. not good food at all.

I guess if you're hungry enough anything would be good though.
 
This reminds me, one day I was volunteering at the hospital, and I was just sitting in one of the waiting rooms waiting to be paged. Someone paged me, so I put my sandwich down on the table and left, since I'd come back in less than 5 mins. There was no one in the room when I left. I come back a few minutes later, there's still no one there. I reach into the paper bag to get my sandwich out, and someone had EATEN half of it!!!! They just bit it off from the other side! Ate half of it, left their freaking bite marks all over it, put it back into my bag, and left like nothing happened, all within minutes! WTF? How ****ed up is that?👎

I went to the cafeteria and told them, they pitied me and gave me a free sandwich to make up for the one that was eaten.:laugh:
 
jochi1543 said:
This reminds me, one day I was volunteering at the hospital, and I was just sitting in one of the waiting rooms waiting to be paged. Someone paged me, so I put my sandwich down on the table and left, since I'd come back in less than 5 mins. There was no one in the room when I left. I come back a few minutes later, there's still no one there. I reach into the paper bag to get my sandwich out, and someone had EATEN half of it!!!! They just bit it off from the other side! Ate half of it, left their freaking bite marks all over it, put it back into my bag, and left like nothing happened, all within minutes! WTF? How ****ed up is that?👎

I went to the cafeteria and told them, they pitied me and gave me a free sandwich to make up for the one that was eaten.:laugh:
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one day when kids shadow me, that's exactly how i'm gonna eat lunch for free.

uh, buddy... wanna check the schedule and see what we have next? yea, just leave the sandwich on that counter over there.
 
jochi1543 said:
This reminds me, one day I was volunteering at the hospital, and I was just sitting in one of the waiting rooms waiting to be paged. Someone paged me, so I put my sandwich down on the table and left, since I'd come back in less than 5 mins. There was no one in the room when I left. I come back a few minutes later, there's still no one there. I reach into the paper bag to get my sandwich out, and someone had EATEN half of it!!!! They just bit it off from the other side! Ate half of it, left their freaking bite marks all over it, put it back into my bag, and left like nothing happened, all within minutes! WTF? How ****ed up is that?👎

I went to the cafeteria and told them, they pitied me and gave me a free sandwich to make up for the one that was eaten.:laugh:
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HAHAHAHA People are crazy!
 
My favorite (dead grandmother) has already been mentioned but Paul Farmer and Mountains Beyond Mountains comes in a close second. If I had a dollar for every applicant who says he read the book on the plane coming back from Europe...

"fascinated by the human body" (those exact words) appeared in more than half of all the essays I read 5-6 years ago but that has become far less common (thank God).
 
jochi1543 said:
This reminds me, one day I was volunteering at the hospital, and I was just sitting in one of the waiting rooms waiting to be paged. Someone paged me, so I put my sandwich down on the table and left, since I'd come back in less than 5 mins. There was no one in the room when I left. I come back a few minutes later, there's still no one there. I reach into the paper bag to get my sandwich out, and someone had EATEN half of it!!!! They just bit it off from the other side! Ate half of it, left their freaking bite marks all over it, put it back into my bag, and left like nothing happened, all within minutes! WTF? How ****ed up is that?👎

I went to the cafeteria and told them, they pitied me and gave me a free sandwich to make up for the one that was eaten.:laugh:
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HAHAHA tooooo funny...if i hadn't sworn off bread more than once per week i'd totally do that just to futz with them. Most med students eat stuff i can't even look at for too long...but the first strictly raw foods vegan kid that wants to follow me around is completely screwed
 
Depakote said:
Admittedly I haven't read many personal statements, but I'm waiting for someone to come up with a completly 100% unique reason for going into medicine.
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Unpossible. Unless, of course, you count non-sequiturs.
 
I applied because all my friends were doing it.

Really. I was 19 and impressionable. 🙄
 
Every time I proof-read a lot of PSs, I saw the following items repeatedly. It's not that they aren't true, they just won't make your application stand out, because everyone else said the same thing. But I still had some of these things in my application 😛

-my mother/father/grandma lay there sick/dying, and I knew I wanted to be a doctor
-<insert doctor here> was so kind/compassionate/caring
-the human body fascinates me
-I've always wanted to be a doctor
-a dramatic story of "OMG! will my mother be alright??" when you're the EMT
-PAUL FARMER. I'm sure he's a great guy, but everybody mentions him.

And don't say that you discovered that you wanted to go to med school when you volunteered in the ER (even though you'd already been pre-med for two years).
 
It's funny....I've never heard of Paul Farmer prior to this thread. I guess that's one clich&#233; I can cross off my list...
 
MedStudentWanna said:
I think the most cliche thing of all is people telling others what's cliche. I think people only do it to come off as a know-it-all who should be turned to for expert advice when really the only advice they're dishing out is stuff they've heard from countless others who were just as wrong as they are now.

Notice the two things I quoted above. The OP said these ideas make your personal statement weak. So, if claiming that you wanted to be a doctor since you were a kid makes your PS weak and claiming that growing up, you didn't want to be a doctor makes your PS weak, what exactly does the OP think a person should claim? It's either one or the other, isn't it? Either you wanted to be a doctor as a kid or you didn't want to be a doctor as a kid, but god forbid you should ever (gasp!) be honest and say to hell with cliches, I'm going to be myself.
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Personally, I avoid cliches like the plague.

Claiming you wanted to be a doctor since you were a kid makes your personal statement weak because it's not true. Kids want to be doctors in the same way they want to be astronauts, firemen, and soldiers. It's an infantile kind of wanting that's going to come through loud and clear. Either that or it's going to sound creepy because what normal guys think about when they're fifteen are chicks.

How on earth a twelve-year-old can want to be a doctor without knowing anything about the profession is inexplicable. And you simply don't need that kind of dedication to be one, either. Pretty much you only have to fake it for a year or two before you apply and you're in.

I have read quite a few personal statements for people on SDN but I quit because most of them were sick-making and it is a testament to the high MCAT scores and GPAs of the typical SDN member that they are not put into the reject pile strictly based on their personal statements. Mostly I would cringe from the first sentence to the last. They are that bad.

Mine was awful, too, by the way.
 
Panda Bear said:
Personally, I avoid cliches like the plague.

Claiming you wanted to be a doctor since you were a kid makes your personal statement weak because it's not true. Kids want to be doctors in the same way they want to be astronauts, firemen, and soldiers. It's an infantile kind of wanting that's going to come through loud and clear. Either that or it's going to sound creepy because what normal guys think about when they're fifteen are chicks.

How on earth a twelve-year-old can want to be a doctor without knowing anything about the profession is inexplicable. And you simply don't need that kind of dedication to be one, either. Pretty much you only have to fake it for a year or two before you apply and you're in.

I have read quite a few personal statements for people on SDN but I quit because most of them were sick-making and it is a testament to the high MCAT scores and GPAs of the typical SDN member that they are not put into the reject pile strictly based on their personal statements. Mostly I would cringe from the first sentence to the last. They are that bad.

Mine was awful, too, by the way.
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:laugh:

But I totally agree with a lot of you. Cliches are just hard to avoid, and the best thing to do is present them in a unique way. If that makes sense at all.
 
Panda Bear said:
Personally, I avoid cliches like the plague.

Claiming you wanted to be a doctor since you were a kid makes your personal statement weak because it's not true. Kids want to be doctors in the same way they want to be astronauts, firemen, and soldiers. It's an infantile kind of wanting that's going to come through loud and clear. Either that or it's going to sound creepy because what normal guys think about when they're fifteen are chicks.

How on earth a twelve-year-old can want to be a doctor without knowing anything about the profession is inexplicable. And you simply don't need that kind of dedication to be one, either. Pretty much you only have to fake it for a year or two before you apply and you're in.

I have read quite a few personal statements for people on SDN but I quit because most of them were sick-making and it is a testament to the high MCAT scores and GPAs of the typical SDN member that they are not put into the reject pile strictly based on their personal statements. Mostly I would cringe from the first sentence to the last. They are that bad.

Mine was awful, too, by the way.
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Well, it's always a cliche that makes you want to do something. Just don't use a cliche to support why you still want to do it now.

No one is completly 100% original. After adcoms have seen 100,000 apps, it's not like you can really be original. It's all been done. Just don't make an ass of yourself while doing it.
 
TheRealMD said:
Well, it's always a cliche that makes you want to do something. Just don't use a cliche to support why you still want to do it now.

No one is completly 100% original. After adcoms have seen 100,000 apps, it's not like you can really be original. It's all been done. Just don't make an ass of yourself while doing it.
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I gurantee mine is not original, but I'd be hard pressed to find a Personal Statement with as many references to superman as mine.
 
LizzyM said:
My favorite (dead grandmother) has already been mentioned but Paul Farmer and Mountains Beyond Mountains comes in a close second. If I had a dollar for every applicant who says he read the book on the plane coming back from Europe...
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actually, your office gets about $100 every time you see those phrases...
 
etf said:
actually, your office gets about $100 every time you see those phrases...
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If only...

Central administration gets ~$100. The admissions office gets a budget line from the administration. I'm just a volunteer adcom member (med school faculty member). What do I get? I get coffee at the adcom meetings. It works out to about 1 cup for every 50 applications reviewed.
 
LizzyM said:
If only...

Central administration gets ~$100. The admissions office gets a budget line from the administration. I'm just a volunteer adcom member (med school faculty member). What do I get? I get coffee at the adcom meetings. It works out to about 1 cup for every 50 applications reviewed.
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Can you work through like 50 apps a day? That's like a free cup of coffee for most of the year! 😛
 
TheRealMD said:
Can you work through like 50 apps a day? That's like a free cup of coffee for most of the year! 😛
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No. We review files independently at home or in the office & then meet a few times a month for discussion and "action". It works out to 15 cups per year, max. Not that I do it for the coffee.
 
apnea said:
That's what scares me most about med school/residency/hospital work. i'm scared i'll be eating junk all the time and i'll get just absolutely horrifically fat again 🙁:scared:
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ha. i gained a freshman 30lbs. lost 30. gained 10 in muscle... and medschool... how i fear that itll all come back!
 
MedStudentWanna said:
I think the most cliche thing of all is people telling others what's cliche. I think people only do it to come off as a know-it-all who should be turned to for expert advice when really the only advice they're dishing out is stuff they've heard from countless others who were just as wrong as they are now.
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No, I'd say what you just did was to come off as a know-it-all.
 
Panda Bear said:
Personally, I avoid cliches like the plague.

Claiming you wanted to be a doctor since you were a kid makes your personal statement weak because it's not true. Kids want to be doctors in the same way they want to be astronauts, firemen, and soldiers. It's an infantile kind of wanting that's going to come through loud and clear. Either that or it's going to sound creepy because what normal guys think about when they're fifteen are chicks.

How on earth a twelve-year-old can want to be a doctor without knowing anything about the profession is inexplicable. And you simply don't need that kind of dedication to be one, either. Pretty much you only have to fake it for a year or two before you apply and you're in.

I have read quite a few personal statements for people on SDN but I quit because most of them were sick-making and it is a testament to the high MCAT scores and GPAs of the typical SDN member that they are not put into the reject pile strictly based on their personal statements. Mostly I would cringe from the first sentence to the last. They are that bad.

Mine was awful, too, by the way.
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Some tips i got from career services:
-you need to use experiences AFTER high school, such as volunteering, so don't use, "when i was 5 i fell off my bike and busted my knee" BS
-try not to use negative things such as trying to explain bad grades or relationship problems
-use positive, but not too positive...for example, don't try to act like you know what it's like to be a doctor from volunteering because the only way to know is to actually BE a doctor
-don't make your PS too long if you don't have to. adcoms read through several of these, and if you are brief, terse, and to the point, a shorter essay is better than a long one with fluff.
-try to avoid elegant vocab, because adcoms don't really care if you can go to thesaurus.com and replace average words.
-while helping people is cliche, using this reason, but not in those exact words, is only half-convincing...for example, if you want to help people, then an adcom person might respond with, "well why dont' you be a nurse, or social worker?" Thus, convince them why you want to be a doctor, not why you want to help people.
 
AppTrail said:
Some tips i got from career services:
-you need to use experiences AFTER high school, such as volunteering, so don't use, "when i was 5 i fell off my bike and busted my knee" BS
-try not to use negative things such as trying to explain bad grades or relationship problems
-use positive, but not too positive...for example, don't try to act like you know what it's like to be a doctor from volunteering because the only way to know is to actually BE a doctor
-don't make your PS too long if you don't have to. adcoms read through several of these, and if you are brief, terse, and to the point, a shorter essay is better than a long one with fluff.
-try to avoid elegant vocab, because adcoms don't really care if you can go to thesaurus.com and replace average words.
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On average, how many characters do people use out of the 5300 character limit? Does it even matter? Because I've heard adcoms don't like personal statements that are "too brief" but I don't know what that is (1/2?, 3/4? 1 char less than max? No guidance here!)

I ask because my experiences often relate multiple points for just one event, but I want to avoid trying to "draw" then out for the sake of filling space.
 
TheRealMD said:
On average, how many characters do people use out of the 5300 character limit? Does it even matter? Because I've heard adcoms don't like personal statements that are "too brief" but I don't know what that is (1/2?, 3/4? 1 char less than max? No guidance here!)

I ask because my experiences often relate multiple points for just one event, but I want to avoid trying to "draw" then out for the sake of filling space.
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Honestly, there are so many opinions and how to do it, but what i did is try to eliminate over-redundant phrasing and also i avoided verbose prepositions, cause i dont' want my PS to sound like a piece of literature. I'm kinda taking the cover letter approach in that I get to the point...although i do spend the first paragraph telling a story.

i've heard that it probably isn't necessary to use multiple stories to explain one point, and you can even save these experiences for the secondaries...but i guess it depends on your thesis...like mine is 2-tiered, so I pretty much used one story/vignette for each tier...but i think if the stories are somewhat different, then it would work, as opposed to two stories from the same volunteer experience...my two cents though
 
AppTrail said:
Honestly, there are so many opinions and how to do it, but what i did is try to eliminate over-redundant phrasing and also i avoided verbose prepositions, cause i dont' want my PS to sound like a piece of literature. I'm kinda taking the cover letter approach in that I get to the point...although i do spend the first paragraph telling a story.

i've heard that it probably isn't necessary to use multiple stories to explain one point, and you can even save these experiences for the secondaries...but i guess it depends on your thesis...like mine is 2-tiered, so I pretty much used one story/vignette for each tier...but i think if the stories are somewhat different, then it would work, as opposed to two stories from the same volunteer experience...my two cents though
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We adcom members don't count the characters but we do see how much space the PS covers. If a PS appears to be less than half the length of the others we see (so ~2700 characters) it might be called out as "very short".
 
I'm still at 5800 characters with 2 hours to submission >). Let me get an opinion here....does this seem a little too cynical?

"Given my life experiences, I can’t help but feel completely inadequate when talking about “service” activities. Between working on my undergraduate degree and working to pay for that degree I found it difficult to go beyond seeking clinical exposure. There are ways to serve in my community; I could have volunteered to feed overweight homeless people, I could have helped build free houses for people making more money than my own family, I could have spent more time handing out ice chips at the hospital so the nurses could spend more time surfing the internet, and I could have walked a few more miles to try and scare away cancer."

Alas, if only I had the courage to use this.....at least it felt good to write! >)
 
AppTrail said:
Honestly, there are so many opinions and how to do it, but what i did is try to eliminate over-redundant phrasing and also i avoided verbose prepositions, cause i dont' want my PS to sound like a piece of literature. I'm kinda taking the cover letter approach in that I get to the point...although i do spend the first paragraph telling a story.

i've heard that it probably isn't necessary to use multiple stories to explain one point, and you can even save these experiences for the secondaries...but i guess it depends on your thesis...like mine is 2-tiered, so I pretty much used one story/vignette for each tier...but i think if the stories are somewhat different, then it would work, as opposed to two stories from the same volunteer experience...my two cents though
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Yeah, I understand.

And I don't really have to worry about secondaries. Texas schools stick all that stuff in primaries and thankfully opt for secondaries that aren't really related to my PS at all like "What will you bring to our med school?" These are the questions I like answering! 😀
 
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