What to include and what not to include in personal statement

[amberleigh]

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Hi everybody,

Could anybody here tell me if its okay to include your greatest failure in your life in your personal statement? I mean the failure that made you a better person afterwards.

 

[Woodsy]

yeah sure as long as you word it so that it shows you want to improve and have learned and improved from it.

 

[gatorfan99]

I would VERY careful if I were you.. Make sure that once you state your failure you follow with a very convincing argument on how you are COMPLETELY overcame it and how you are MUCH better now...

Remember, adcom really could care less about every personal detail in your life...

 

[ecdoesit]

I agree with gatorfan99. You really need to have a convincing argument. Remember to prove your argument so that adcom believes it too. And I really hope your failure doesn't include any academic misconducts. Most committee wont like that. Also, I would keep it short unless you can tie it to why you want to be a dentist.

 

[wimmcs]

I agree with gatorfan99. You really need to have a convincing argument. Remember to prove your argument so that adcom believes it too. And I really hope your failure doesn't include any academic misconducts. Most committee wont like that. Also, I would keep it short unless you can tie it to why you want to be a dentist.

Gosh! This is a tough one! I would probably not write about any failures unless it was obvious in your record that there's something wrong. As everyone mentioned, have an extremely convincing story on how you learned from this experience and has made you the person that you are and how you've "matured" from this experience. Writing a PS can be such a stressful situation. It literally took me months to think, procrastinate, wonder, and little by little I began constructing my PS, by every day or every other day adding or editing it and I had a couple of good friends who were a lot of help and who knew me enough to help me write about myself. Because I'm sure you know how hard it's to write about one self. Solicit friends or family and try not to stress over it. Take it one day at a time and little by little you'll see improvements until one day you'll come up with a "great work of art". Good luck!

 

[Serge718]

I don't know if I would write about my faliures. But if you have a very compelling story of faliure and your victory over it then great. But don't go writing something like, "People have always told me that I am not going to amount to much in life, so I want to go to dental school to prove them wrong". This may sound stupid but an Ad-com once told me that someone actually wrote something along those lines.