Question 13: Advice on Personal Statement?

The personal statement is enormously important (like everything else! :D). The personal statement is your first shot at being more than data. Everything else on your application is simply a description of what you have done, or a numerical evaluation of your academic performance. Your letters of recommendation are a representation of yourself in a professional setting, but your personal statement must include both your private and professional side. In addition, the personal statement is the one essay you are guaranteed that every school will see. Some medical schools do not have supplemental essays, so treat this always as your first and only shot to show them your stuff. Here are some tips:

1) Make it interesting

Adcoms read thousands of personal statements. Make yours a treat for the eyes.  You want to get your message across, but try and do it in a way that makes you seem interesting, as well as making the personal statement itself worth more than a casual glance. Chances are good that they speed read a good majority of personal statements, at least the first time through. There are plenty of ways to make it interesting. Talking about personal passions or meaningful experiences both tend to be good stuff. Don't feel that everything has to be directly related to a medical experience either. Say you have a passion for teaching and knowledge. If that is an important part of who you are and what is important to you, include it just like you would in your resume activities list (if you followed my advice!).

2)Don't Ramble

Length isn't everything. If you can get your message across just as well in a concise manner, do it. Using every last character allowed will ultimately have no effect. Furthermore, don't feel that you have to restrict yourself to a single topic. Going back to point 1, having multiple paragraphs discussing different aspects of yourself and your passions can be much more pleasurable to read than one, gigantic spiel about your great ant Ella. The more points you can make without seeming rushed the better. Look for filler information that isn't actually useful to the point you are trying to make. Does describing in depth the scene of the hospital the day you had a significant experience really increase the message when compared to simply writing "While volunteering in Trauma one day,"? Not likely! We will talk more about the benefit of having multiple topics to touch on later.

3) Getting it in early is good, make sure you have time for plenty of revisions.

Make no mistake, applying early is an enormous boon! However, your personal statement might be the most important essay in determining your interview potential. Make sure it is the best one you've ever written, and make sure that it is spotless. Grammatical errors are a huge negative to a lot of adcoms! Consider getting your personal statement proof read professionally, as well as taking it to as many proof readers as you can. When I wrote my PS, I wrote multiple paragraphs on things that I eventually didn't use. In fact, in some cases I condensed an entire paragraph into a single phrase by the end of my revisions. Write as much as you can and then piece the things that are best and flow well together. Have your advisers read it, your parents, your non-pre-med friends. Get as much commentary as you can, even if you choose to ignore it! Remember, this statement is about you. Just because you are given ideas from someone that you think have value doesn't mean that you should use them if they don't fit your message and who you are!

4) Your personal statement should fuse your application into something coherent.

In the end, your personal statement should make sense of all of the scores, classes, activities, and life experiences in the rest of your application. Show the adcom how the pieces come together, and how all of this combined makes you a great future doctor! This is the benefit of having multiple topics in your personal statement, rather than one long and grandiose one. You can relate the different parts of who you are together by discussing them and then synthesizing. Have a message, and make sure that each paragraph contributes to it. Tangents might sound interesting, but they are a waste of space if they don't add to the sum of your PS. Save them for interviews!

I won't publish my PS, but here is a general idea of how it flowed.

Introduction- childhood personality and how it lead to my desire to be a doctor.

Personal influence on my by someone I know that contributed to my desire to go into medicine.

What I learned from an experience in medicine, and how I have grown to prepare for it.

An event that strengthened my confidence in my ability to go into medicine.

Conclusions and summing it all up.