I know the open-endedness of the personal statement is scary. I want to acknowledge that because I think there are very few people that know exactly what they are going to write about and how they will write it. You are not alone if you are unsure or even at a complete loss, I know I was.
Personal Statement:
The prompt for the personal statement is simply "Why Medicine?". You have 5,300 characters to answer the prompt, including spaces and punctuation. I'm not going to pretend I can teach you how to write the perfect personal statement because I honestly don't think mine was perfect. No one's is going to be. I will go through some tips and guidelines you might want to follow and hopefully that will be helpful!
1. Pre-write: Ideally your personal statement will be done before AMCAS allows you to submit your application. It is always better to apply as early as possible so make sure to pre-write your personal statement so it is ready to submit as soon as AMCAS opens.
2. Do not focus on writing exactly 5,300 characters: The character cap is to keep you from writing too much and does not mean you HAVE to meet it. I think a good rule of thumb to follow is to write between 4,200 characters (roughly 80% of the cap) and 5,300 characters. My personal statement was 4,952 characters.
3. Write a Story: This means you should have a beginning, middle and end. It also means you should have some sort of problem that you have overcome. I don't mean to say if you haven't survived cancer, lost a close family member, etc that you have nothing to write about. Your "problem" can be anything that shows you grew as a person. It should also tie into your interest in medicine.
- If the problem is not entirely about you, don't spend too much time on it. Remember, this is about you and how you grew as a person. Set up the problem and then turn to talking about how it helped you grow and how it inspired you to pursue medicine.
- Don't worry if your problem does not seem big enough. I was self-conscious because I did not feel like my story was as compelling as others may be but that is okay! Everyone is different, write about what makes you special.
4. Do NOT just re-write your resume: While you will likely weave some of your extracurriculars into your personal statement, do NOT write about all of them. You have an activities section for that. Your personal statement is supposed to be about you as an individual and WHY you want to be a physician. It is not about what you have done to be a good applicant. Instead write about how specific experiences have made you the individual you are.
5. Be Genuine and Vulnerable: Do NOT make up a story - It will show through and is not worth it. You also need to talk about your personal statement in interviews so it is so important that it is a real story.
6. Be Mindful of Certain Topics: While I encourage you to write about a personal story in your personal statement, be mindful that certain topics may not go over so well. A huge example of this is mental illness. I know this is 2020 and there is absolutely no reason to be ashamed of having struggled with mental illness, but the admissions committees are made up of older individuals that grew up in a different time. While the stigma around mental illness is slowly subsiding (as it should be) it may still be present in the offices of admissions. I'm also not saying you cannot write about your struggle but know that it may be a risky move. However, if you have a substantial dip in your grades due to mental illness it is definitely okay to write about it if asked.
7. Have Someone Proof Read: This is so important. Make sure they are checking word choice (positive words are always better than negative ones), flow, spelling, organization and understanding! Remember: strangers will be reading this so do not assume they know anything about you.
Activities:
The activities section of the primary application gives you the space to write about all the incredible things you did to be a strong applicant. For a deep dive into what types of extracurriculars are important for your application check our my "Extracurriculars You Need for Medical School" blog post. For each activity you will have 700 characters to explain what your responsibilities were, why it was important to you and/or your community, what you learned from it and how this has improved you as an individual. That's a lot I know. You will also get to choose 3 activities as "most meaningful" and will have 1300 extra characters to explain why. Here are some tips:
1. Pre-write: These take a LOT longer than you think they are going to so again, you need to pre-write them.
2. Choose your 3 most meaningful activities carefully: These should be activities that really taught you something. They should also be distinct from each other. For example, I picked one volunteer activity, one research activity and one shadowing activity. Another good option would be to choose a leadership position you held. My advice is to pick activities that have strong stories attached to them. Choose a particular experience (a hardship, a lesson, an eye-opening event) and use it to explain why this activity was vital to your growth as an individual. For example, I talked about the first time I witnessed someone pass away on an operating table.
3. Choose your words carefully: You need to pack in a lot of information with very little characters. Each word should be purposeful. Each sentence should convey something important.
4. Include Awards: These don't need 700 characters of explanation and can go together. Examples are: Dean's List, Honors, Research recognition, etc.
5. Include a Hobby: This can be anything but don't skip over it! Adcoms want to know you have interests outside of science/medicine. Did you play a sport that taught you teamwork? Do you love to paint and have learned to express your creativity through art? Did you do gymnastics and learn the value of hard-work?
6. Do not feel the need to fill all the spaces: You should have a decent amount of the slots filled but do not stress if you don't fill them all. No one does. I had 11/15 slots filled.
7. Combine Shadowing: You don't need a separate entry for each set of shadowing hours. Put one of them in the main info and the rest of them in the body text.
8. It doesn't matter what order they go in: AMCAS puts them in alphabetical order anyway.
9. Have Someone Proof Read: So important here because you have so few characters. You need to make sure you didn't leave out details that are necessary for understanding.
Good luck and Happy Writing
xoxo
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