What the Heck is required for a Personal Statement?

You write one for your AMCAS (or TMDSAS) primary application that will go to every school. It is not school specific, and allows you to present a side of yourself that may not be apparent just by looking at your grades, test scores, etc. Generally people answer the question: "Why do you want to be a doctor?"

After that, you'll likely have to write essays for secondary applications, which will be more school-specific.

AMCAS cuts you off at 5300 characters (a little over a page). Your secondary essays will be shorter.

 

It never hurts to place yourself in the shoes of the medical schools. What do they receive?

1) Your MCAT scores
2) Your slate of classes as you enter them into AMCAS and your grades in each, added up into a cumulative and science GPA
3) The things you list as your activities and the very short description of each you provide
4) The honors, awards, and publications you list and their very short descriptions that you provide
5) A set of recommendation letters
6) The "personal statement"

What would they want to know about you?
1) Can you handle the academics of medical school and beyond?
2) Do you really want to do this? (Do you know what the medical career entails? What is it that makes you think you can and would want to do this?)
3) Are you the right type of person for medicine (kind, humanistic, creative, etc)?
4) Why should they take you over everyone else?

Where 1-5 from the first section don't answer 1-4 from the second section, you need to answer 1-4 in your personal statement.

 

Here is a link to extremely specific information about writing your PS, created by braluk for the last cycle: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=375844