Personal Statement for Medical School

The personal statement for medical school should not be taken lightly, it is your chance to make your case that you are a great candidate for medical school. Your medical school essay enables the admissions committee to view you as more than grades and numbers...

Take this opportunity to put your special touch on your medical school application where you explain who you are as a person. When writing your goal is to convey your commitment to medicine, while answering several key questions.

If you want help in writing your medical school personal statement and have access to insider information on what to include and leave out then I may have the perfect guidebook for you.

Key Questions

All writing has a purpose and you're going to use this essay to highlight your positive qualities and get admitted to medical school.

If you have not realized by now, getting into medical school is very competitive and you can use the personal statement to enhance your chances of getting noticed by the admissions committee. You can make this happen by focusing on two key questions:

• Why you want to pursue medicine
• Why you should be allowed to become a doctor.

As you write you're also going to weave in additional information about yourself such as:

• exposure to medicine
• community involvement
• research you conducted
• explain past academic performance (if necessary).

It is very important that you cover these topics in a manner that shows your personality and does not just rehash what you did. Admissions officers want to get a sense of who you are as a person and the strength of your medical school essay can be the deciding factor in whether you get invited to a medical school interview or not.

Construction

AMCAS limits your medical school personal statement to 5,300 characters (not words, but characters) meaning every word, phrase, and sentence must be chosen extremely carefully.

Never write something in your essay that is already found in another part of your application. Be sure you are making the case of why you should be admitted into the field of medicine.

Creativity is essential to writing a good personal statement, but there are guidelines to be followed. Do not write a bibliographic history, these are boring, unimagitive and the reader can gather these facts from other parts of your application. Which brings me to another point, know your audience.

The people reviewing your application are physicians, academics, medical students, and admissions officers. Therefore, write keeping your audience in mind and if something is questionable it is best to error on the side of caution.

Some aspects to keep out of your essay include: jokes, being overly dramatic, and cliches. Anything you think will be novel probably has already been tried so don't add this unnecessary flair to your writing. Since you do not know your readers, please do not be argumentative or philosophical.

It is important to complete all the basic writing tasks to ensure you stand above other applicants. This means taking care of all typos and grammar. One minor error can bring you the wrong type of attention, so proofread and have others critique your drafts.

One way to ensure your personal statement medical school is up to par is to have a stranger or someone who does not know you too well read your personal statement.

This works because the individual does not know you and all they have is the 5,300 characters to gauge whether you answered the two questions: why medicine and why you. I will advise using individuals who are proficient in literature, english, and/or public speaking and typically good resources include: academic advisors, mentors, clergy, etc.

Reflection Journal

This may be an unconventional suggestion, but follow it because your future is riding on getting admitted to medical school. The advice which I received from admissions officers of a top-ranked medical school was to use a reflection journal.

The reflection journal will act as part of the standard pre-writing activities which any good writer follows. The overall theme of the journal should encompass the vision for your life as it relates to medicine.

Think about what you have learned or experienced which has led to you choosing to apply to medical school. Do you have any unforgettable moments related to your exposure to medicine? In the reflection journal it is important to write down any strengths, special qualities and abilities. Lastly, its a good idea to know your thoughts on the contemporary issues in medicine whether locally, nationally, or globally.

The personal statement is very time intensive and allowing at least three months to compose it is not out of the ordinary. You may find what was once suitable to include in your essay may not be essential after considering its merits after a few months. To realize this now is a lot better than to have submitted your sample and conclude after it is too late that you did not like some of the content you wrote.

Be sure to review the elements of critical thinking, the basic components of writing a good essay (style and composition), and always use an active voice.

What It Should Convey

Once again, you must convey why you want to practice medicine and why you should be granted the privilege of practicing medicine. Admissions committees want to know how you made this career decision and do you understand what it means to live your life as a doctor.

Be sure to explain the positives about yourself, which means illustrating you have what it takes to be a successful medical student and great physician.

Going further it will be excellent if you can show what you plan to do as a physician, that you can be trusted with the skills you will receive, have a desire to positively affect society, and ultimately whether medicine is in your heart. The applicant who can clearly convey these aspects of himself will be well positioned to be invited for an interview.

Show excitement about yourself as a candidate, so that the admissions staff will want to meet you in person.

What It Should Be

When in doubt, just be sincere. The rules of good writing are important and always write using the active voice, passive tense should be avoided at all costs. Make the personal statement easy to read by being well thought out, having connections between ideas, and providing an order to thoughts and feelings.

Be a great storyteller who uses concrete examples which support the "why." If you can make the reader feel as though they just met you and how it feels when you help someone it will really improve the quality of your medical school application.

There is no right or wrong medical school essay, because everyone has a different experience which they are bringing to medicine, so never try to be someone else, just be yourself.

Although it is easy to find "winning" personal statements online take them with a grain of salt, they served the purpose for the particular applicant who wrote it, but it may not be suitable for your application or your life experiences. Read other personal statements purely to facilitate creative thinking and gain insight into presenting your case of why medicine and why you. In the end, you have to take the time to reflect on your life, follow the above guidelines, write with sincere passion and good things will happen.

If you are concerned that you can't write well, don't know exactly what to include or omit, then I encourage you to get a copy of my guidebook to writing the perfect personal statement!