Discover Medical School Personal Statement Key Writing Tips

Your medical school personal statement absolutely matters for gaining admission to medical school. The medical school admission essay is your first and only chance to distinguish yourself amongst all other applicants.

Remember the goal of medical school personal statements is to sell yourself to each medical school so that they will invite you to an interview.

How important is your personal statement?

Medical school admissions officers will tell you, "all things being equal between two identical applicants, the personal statement will be the deciding factor."

In other words, if the medical school has two applicants with similar:

• MCAT scores
• GPA

your medical school essay will be the tie-breaking factor.

Armed with this knowledge it should be obvious you want to present the strongest medical school personal statement possible.

But before getting ahead of ourselves let's cover the basics of your essay...

Basics of Your Medical School Application Essay

The American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) limits your essay to exactly 5,300 characters at most. Yes, characters and not words. This is roughly about a page and half. Although 5,300 characters is the maximum length medical school personal statements can be it is not necessary to use all of the allotted space.

You want to write a great statement that shows who you are as a person and why you should be admitted to medical school. So if you can do this in less then the allotted space then by all means do so.

Here's some insider information as well.

Readers are not going to spend a lot of time reading your essay initially purely because of how many personal statements that they have to read on a daily basis. Therefore, being short and to the point makes their jobs a lot easier. And satisfied readers are more likely to have a favorable impression of your personal statement.

Directions Specifically from AMCAS

AMCAS actually refers to your medical school essay as "Personal Comments Essay" and provides the following prompt:
Use the Personal Comments essay as an opportunity to distinguish yourself from other applicants. Some questions you might want to consider while writing this essay are:

• Why have you selected the field of medicine?
• What motivates you to learn more about medicine
• What do you want medical schools to know about you that hasn't been disclosed in another section of the application?

There are a few other idea generators AMCAS provides but those are somewhat trivial in comparison to what you've just read.

As you can tell these are pretty open-ended questions and the goal is not to write a medical school personal statement where you simply answer the above prompts. You have to do much more if you're going to have a fighting chance of catching the reader's attention.

Here's a conceptual tip...

Your reader is going to have a stack of medical school personal statements they are going to have to read. Mostly likely this will be done after a full's day of work and it will be late at night. Therefore, your goal is to write a compelling personal comment that grabs your reader's attention at 12:37am and sticks with them until the next committee meeting where the medical school will decide which applicants they want to bring in for an interview.

This is your ultimate goal to be invited for a medical school interview because this is a required part of the admissions process.

In short you have to write the best essay possible that makes it clear why you would be a great addition to the medical field and what are your past experiences that show you know what you're getting into.

If you are having trouble figuring out how exactly to go about this process I would strongly encourage you to consider getting medical school essay help. The reason being...

One Essay All Medical Schools

This may seem crazy but you write only one medical school essay that then gets circulated to all of the medical schools you apply to.

Obviously there are pros and cons.

One main positive aspect is that you don't have to write an excessive amount of different personal statements for each medical school. Just one essay and you're all set.

However, the negative aspect is that you have to get your medical school application correct the first time because there are no second chances. For instance, once you hit submit on your application you cannot change your essay even if you see errors.

Here's what I mean specifically. Let's say you complete your personal statement in June and then in October you decide to apply to a few more schools. But in the process of applying you realize some errors in your personal comments. Well, you'll have to send that same medical school personal statement out to the additional schools although there are errors in the personal comments.

In summary having one AMCAS application can be a blessing and curse all at the same time. The best way to overcome any problems is to have several individuals who are knowledgeable about medical school admissions read over your application.

The Biggest Gripe From Admissions Officers

This may come as a shocker to many of you, but this is the absolute truth.

Medical school admissions officers say that practically all of the essays they read are not personal enough.

Basically, students are not revealing enough about themselves in their medical school application essays and this is not good. You have to remember the personal comments are your only chance to reveal who you are as a person and sell yourself to the medical schools.

If you need help in how to balance selling yourself without being arrogant or cocky then you must read my eBook which I wrote specifically to help you write your Ultimate Personal Statement.

At the end of the day you have to "come off the paper" in the words of the University of Pittsburgh when it comes to your medical school personal statements. This means that your reader wants to know who you are and what makes you special.

You need to write in a manner that leaves your reader with one impression: I want to meet this applicant in person, therefore I'm going to send them an interview invitation. If you are able to do this then getting into medical school has just gotten tremendously easier.

And here's why...

Medical schools receive far more applications than available seats in any incoming class. Therefore, they have to do everything to weed out applicants to make their jobs easier. What I am trying to say is a medical school will not waste their time bringing an unqualified applicant to an interview.

Therefore, when you receive your medical school interview invitation it means that you are qualified enough on pape e.g. grades and MCAT score, but now the medical school just wants to see how your personality is, your social skills and if you'd fit in at their particular school.

As you can tell how and what you write about in your medical school personal statement can go a long way in getting admitted to medical school.

In contrast, having a bad or poorly written essay can derail your chances of admission. I've come across individuals who have been put on waiting lists for medical school or outrightly rejected and you'd be surprised at what happens when these students contact the medical schools.

The medical schools generally will tell them their numbers and extracurricular activities were very competitive but the admissions committee felt the personal statement was not strong or did not seem sincere enough. It is the details and the overall impression that your personal statement for medical shcool that matters a lot.

If there is any reason for concern or pause the committee will not move forward with your application because there are far too many qualified applicants. Hence, this is why you cannot think of your personal statement as a just a task to be completed for gaining admission to medical school. Take this aspect just as imporantly as your MCAT prep and grades.

Helping You Write

Not everyone is a great writer or even those who are strong writers may not be familiar with what does and does not go into a great medical school personal statement, but that is all going to change right now.

You see while at Northwestern University the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine put on a presentation for exactly what needs to go into your medical school essay. The content of this presentation along with the advice from numberous medical schools has been compiled into an extremely user friendly book that guides you step-by-step through the writing process of your personal statement.

It not only includes what topics to write on but also how to go writing on the topics to ensure you have a medical school personal statement that leads to an interview invitation. Without saying more you need to go take a look at the Ultimate Personal Statement Writing Guide.

Perhaps you're really concerned about your chances of getting into medical school and want to work with a physician who has medical school admission experience? If this is the case I want to refer you to my trusted medical partners who will work with you in a one-on-one environment to help you craft your best personal statement possible. Learn more about this excellent personal statement service.