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The Ultimate Guide to Writing A Medical School Personal Statement in 2022: What NOT to Write in Your Personal Statement and 6 Other Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know
Posted in: Pre-Med: Personal Statement & Essays
Getting accepted to medical school depends on 3 big factors: undergrad GPA (overall and science play a part), your MCAT score and your Personal Statement. We’ve interviewed each of our physician advisors , tutors, and quite a few students to write this comprehensive guide to writing medical school personal statements in a way that capture the authentic you as well as the attention of the admissions committees at the Medical institution of your choice.
Quick Link: Personal Statement Review Service
Why are Personal Statements so Important for Getting into Medical School?
“ What sets me apart from every other applicant? ” is a question that most medical school applicants obsess about in the months leading up to applying. And before you ever even get an opportunity to interview, your personal statement is where you must answer this question and prove to admissions committees that you deserve a shot.
Personal statements can either make or break your application for medical school.
By writing a powerful personal statement, you show the admissions committee that you are the kind of candidate who will make an exceptional physician and be a valuable asset to the school. Additionally, it helps to distinguish your application from the many other students with similar MCAT scores and GPAs .
Similarly, a weak personal statement can tank your chances of getting an interview. When a medical school admissions committee has several hundred applications to review, a poorly written personal statement with typos and lackluster content is irredeemable.
Apart from its role in weeding out unqualified candidates, the personal statement also serves as a foundation for many interview discussions and questions . Committee members often only have a few minutes to glance over an application when they sit down to interview them. Personal statements provide them with the right amount of information. They can use it as a springboard for the interview by picking out a few key points to discuss.
Since it’s possible this is the only part of your application they’ll read, it needs to be perfect.
This guide will take you through every aspect of writing your personal statement – to knowing how it’s presented on your application, to what makes a great (and not so great) essay, the writing process and tips. We’ll also share many examples of traditional and non-traditional personal statements, and include additional resources that you can study as you prepare to apply to medical school.
How are Personal Statements Presented on the AMCAS?
While applying to medical school can be a grueling process, the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) strives to make it a bit easier with its centralized medical school application processing service.
This means that most of your information: academic stats (GPA, MCAT, etc), work experience, volunteer activities, extracurriculars, and research opportunities will fit into nice little boxes and form fields on your application. Your application is saved so that you don’t have to reenter information multiple times if you’re applying to lots of schools.
The essay part of the application comes in Section 8. And, this is the one part of the application that you might need to tweak multiple times based on the schools or programs you’re applying to.
The personal statement prompt is presented on the AMCAS as:
"Use the personal comments essays as an opportunity to distinguish you from other applicants. Some questions you may 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? In addition, you may wish to include information such as: special hardships, challenges or obstacles that may have influenced your educational pursuits. Commentary on significant fluctuations in your academic record that are not explained elsewhere in your application.”
Seems pretty straightforward, right? Except knowing how much weight is placed on the personal statement is what makes this deceptively simple prompt the cause of so much anxiety for students.
Before we get into what makes a great personal statement and offer some advice for writing, here are a few tips for entering the essay on the AMCAS application:
Keep it under 5,300 characters ( including spaces) – You will receive an error message if you exceed the character count.
Do not type directly into the text box – Use a text only word processing tool, or type the essay into Microsoft Word or a Google Doc – but save the file as a *.rtf. This will eliminate formatting issues when you copy and paste the essay into the AMCAS box.
Proof the PDF the AMCAS generates – This version is exactly what admission committees and interviewers will see. If you see any formatting issues, fix them before submitting your essay.
Don’t settle for anything less than perfection – There is no spell checker function on the AMCAS application. In addition to checking the PDF for formatting issues, proofread carefully for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Once you submit the application, changes cannot be made.
How to Write a Medical School Personal Statement (With Examples and Prompts)
Even though the majority of medical school applicants have not conducted groundbreaking research to cure cancer, built a new hospital, or supplied water to a village in a third world country through outreach, medical schools still seek specific qualities when reviewing personal statements – specifically: accountability, reliability, and maturity , which are demonstrated through research, volunteer activities, and mentorship experiences.
If a student can show that they possess these characteristics through their personal statement, they can set themselves apart from other applicants.
So what, exactly, makes a great personal statement? Of the thousands of personal statements our advisors have read over the years, here’s what you should do to create a standout essay.
When Writing Your Personal Essay: BE AUTHENTICALLY YOU (The Person, not the Future Doctor)
Being authentic in your personal statement is essential. Your goal is to engage the reader, but in a way that is authentic to you and your personality. Resist the temptation to write what you think admissions committees want to hear. What they want to hear is your truth about why you want to be a doctor, and what specifically sets you apart from other applicants.
It’s even more important to be authentic in your personal essay if you make it to the interview stage. Your interviewers will be comparing you – in the flesh – to the ‘you’ that they first met in your personal statement. If you hype yourself up in your essay then fall flat during the interview, interviewers will know you’re trying to pull the wool over their eyes.
As medical school student, Ariel Lee says, “Adcom members are very good at sniffing out hollow and disingenuous essays, so be sure to tell the authentic story of how you came to love medicine.”
Keeping your voice throughout the personal statement is important. Don’t let your parents write this essay for you because you will get caught in a trap. You want to make sure the admissions committees knows who you are as a person and the personal statement is one great place in the medical school application where you can do that.
Table of Contents
Why passion is important for medicine and how to express it when writing your personal statement.
You need to demonstrate why being a doctor is important to you .
We talk a lot about avoiding cliches in your personal statement. Saying you want to become a doctor “to help people” is just one of them. Dr. Renee Marinelli, Director of Advising at MedSchoolCoach, cautions that some cliches are “extrinsic experiences that now looking back as you apply to medical school, you think would convince an admissions committee that you want to go into medicine but in actuality, they didn’t have as big of an impact on you than you may have thought.”
For example, saying “I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was 5 because a really nice doctor helped me when I had a broken arm.” While it may indeed be your personal story, it comes off as cliche.
Your passion for medicine doesn’t have to stem from some grand experience or sudden revelation. Of course you want to help people if you are going into the field of medicine. But maybe it didn’t all click for you until college when you fell in love with psychology and started volunteering in nursing homes.
You don’t need to have a lifelong dream of becoming a physician to demonstrate your passion and go on to become an amazing doctor.
8 Examples of Effective Central Themes and Why to Stick with One when Writing Your Personal Statement
Your theme is also considered your personal brand or narrative, and it is the essence behind your answer to “Why do you want to be a doctor?”
Emily Singer, a graduate from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and writer at ProspectiveDoctor.com, offers this advice for developing your theme ,
“Perhaps a better approach to starting the personal statement is not to focus on the question that your essay will ultimately answer, but on the personal aspects of your experiences on earth that shaped who you are – a person whose goals and values align with entering the medical profession.”
Developing a central theme that connects your passions to medicine is a critical component of your personal statement. A consistent narrative keeps your essay focused, aids the flow of content, and keeps the reader engaged and reminded of your unique story throughout the beginning, middle, and end of the piece.
You can draw on many personal experiences and attributes during the process of developing your theme, including:
• 1. Personal Experiences • 2. Academic Achievements • 3. Passions & Interests • 4. Values & Principles • 5. Research Opportunities • 6. Extra Curricular Activities • 7. Volunteer Initiatives • 8. Leadership & Mentoring
Should You Include Personal Stories When Writing a Personal Statement? Yes, but Stick to the Plot
A memorable personal statement captures the reader’s attention from the first sentence, which is usually accomplished with an interesting personal story or anecdote. It’s absolutely ok – and encouraged – to include some creativity, ingenuity, humor, and character. However, some students tend to go over the top, let their anecdote carry on a bit too long, and ultimately come off as trite or immature.
Admissions committees care far less about what you did, and more about the reasons why you did them, what you’ve learned, and how you grew as an individual. Your personal statement gives you the opportunity to show, not just tell, how your experiences have impacted your journey to medicine.
Consider the following examples of statements about a student’s volunteer experience at a food pantry:
“Through my work at the local food pantry, I came to understand the daily battles many individuals face, and it allowed me to develop deeper empathy and compassion.”
“When I saw Mr. Jones, a regular at the kitchen, struggling to maneuver his grocery cart through the door, I hustled over to assist him. My heart sunk when I saw he was wearing a new cast after having been assaulted the night prior.”
Which do you think performed better in terms of conveying personal characteristics?
Share your Vision of the Future with the Admissions Committee
Yes, admissions committees want to know why you want to become a doctor. But they also want to know how you envision yourself impacting the medical community in the future.
This doesn’t have to be as grand as “curing cancer.” If you grew up in an underserved community, perhaps you saw the inequity in healthcare and want to work toward accessibility and affordability.
What’s not ok to say here is, “I want to become a plastic surgeon and make a lot of money in the future” (even if there’s some truth to it!). Instead, say something more along the lines of, “I want to become a plastic surgeon to help people regain their self-confidence.”
Listen to Dr. Davietta Butty: “Give it Some Personality!”
In addition to your personal statement being grammatically accurate and error-free, there needs to be a little something-something to it! Admissions committees read hundreds, if not thousands, of essays every year. It can become tedious, especially if the writing is dry and the reader isn’t engaged. Creative writing, a distinct voice, and letting your personality shine are all good things when it comes to your essay. This is the time to ditch the onerous APA formatting and hypothesis-based research papers and dazzle adcoms with your unique story.
As Dr. Davietta Butty, a Northwestern School of Medicine graduate, avid writer, pediatrician, and MedSchoolCoach advisor puts it , “I think the best personal statements are the ones that showcase the applicant’s personality. Remember that this is your story and not anyone else’s story and you get the opportunity to say it how it makes sense to you.”
When Showing Emotion in your Medical School Personal Statement, Focus on the Why
Personal tragedies, like the death of a loved one, can be a powerful motivator for a personal statement. In a field where life and death are constantly at odds, experiences in death can seem like an impressive qualification, but must be treated with caution.
It’s important to focus on the why, and not the how. Don’t get mired in the details of the tragedy, but show how the experience impacted you as it relates to your career in medicine. How did it help you develop skills? Have you changed your perspective as a result? How did you use that new perspective or those new skills? Would it make you a better medical student?
If you’re considering including an emotional experience in your essay, read this article for some more insightful advice.
3 Things NOT to Include in Your Medical School Personal Statement
Now that you’re inspired by the prospect of writing an insightful and engaging essay, let’s take a look at what NOT to include.
1. DO not include your MCAT Score and Undergraduate GPA on your personal statement.
It’s already listed in the data-heavy part of your application and it’s part of a computer algorithm that determines if your personal statement is worth reading. If your personal statement is being read, then you can be assured that adcoms know your scores are worthy.
2. No spelling mistakes in your medical school personal statement.
With today’s word processing solutions and free grammar checking apps , there is absolutely NO excuse for errors.
3. No Name Dropping in your Medical School Personal Statement!
Name dropping is obnoxious in almost any situation. It’s braggadocious and brushed off at best. At worst, it could negatively impact your chances if the adcom reader thinks poorly of the person you’re talking about. If it’s a well-known and well-respected name in the medical field, and you truly worked closely with them, a better route would be to request a letter of recommendation.
What are Personal Statements About? Truth, Honesty and Sincerity
See the first point above: Be Authentically YOU . False or embellished stories could backfire and tank your reputation. Honesty and integrity are prized qualities in physicians; don’t start your career off with a lie.
Your Personal Statement should Focus on Depth not Breadth
The personal statement is not the time to rehash your resume. It IS the time to talk about how those experiences impacted you and steered you toward medicine. “I volunteered at nursing homes” is on your CV. “Volunteering at nursing homes and seeing the effect brain exercises had on patient recall and memory made me interested in geriatric psychology and Alzheimer’s research” is an appropriate way to expand on your CV in your personal statement.
Should You Cover Awards Received in High School in Your Personal Statement?
If you’re going to mention any awards in your essay, make sure they’re recent and relevant to your goal of getting into medical school and becoming a doctor. Don’t reach back to high school and talk about your “Future Scientist” award.
4 Cliches to Avoid when Writing Your Personal Statement
Don’t overlook your closest sources of inspiration: your friends and family who have gone through the medical school personal statement writing process. Seeing what they’ve written about can help you get ideas, good and bad.
After you read a friend’s personal statement, think about what it meant to you. Did any of their examples or reasons feel like stereotypes? Did you think “WOW, I would accept this person!” or did you think “Meh, that was just okay”?
These gut feelings will help you understand what will work for you and what may not. This review process can also help determine whether or not what you plan to write about will come across as genuine and authentic or cliched and common.
Admissions committees know you want to be a doctor because you want to “help others.”
Other cliches to avoid include:
• an innate passion for medicine (“I’ve wanted to be a doctor my entire life”)
• dramatic patient anecdotes (“The patient was wheezing and his lips were rapidly turning blue. I knew something had to be done fast”)
• routine doctor visits (“That doctor helped me overcome my fear of immunizations and inspired me”)
• stories of when you were a pre-med and saved a patient’s life (“While on a volunteer shift I noticed the patient’s vitals drop and notified the doctor in time for the patient to get lifesaving treatment”)
What Should a Personal Statement Be About? You.
Your personal statement is about you. If you wouldn’t have a conversation and refer to yourself as “Ben,” “him,” and “he,” then don’t do it in your writing, either.
Remember to let your voice shine through and make the statement about you, not other people. You might choose a story that involves your grandmother. Yet, your grandmother is not the one applying to college, you are.
If you write about other people make sure their story does not overpower yours. You should be talking about your relationship with the other person and how it molded, shaped, and impacted you.
What Shouldn’t You Focus on When Writing Your Personal Statement?
You’re not going to tug on any heartstrings relaying the story about your second cousin who broke his toe. Personal stories are good, but remember that they need to be relevant, engaging, and close to you to be impactful.
How Should I Speak to my Shortcomings in my Personal Statement?
If your essay is being read, it means that your grades are strong enough to have gotten you here.
We’ve talked about a lot of big picture dos and don’ts of the personal statement. Now let’s take a look at the actual components of the essay so we can start thinking about organization and writing.
How Do You Start a Personal Statement?
Start your personal statement long, and then condense it. Pick a quiet place, turn off your phone, grab a cup of coffee, and begin drafting your medical school personal statement. This is your first impression, and it needs to be memorable. Start your essay with a personal story or anecdote and introduce your narrative/theme by tying it to the story.
For the early draft writers, focus on the overall content, structure and message, and then edit down your ideas to fit the length limits for the application. It’s much easier to write a long personal statement and then condense it than try to craft a perfectly structured, concise draft in one sitting.
What Do You Include in a Personal Statement?
AMCAS’ 5,300 character count works out to be about 500 words, or 1.5 pages. Easy enough, right? But when you’re staring at a blank page, it can be paralyzing.
Find a theme and stick to your theme. This affects how you will highlight pivotal experiences- remember, not just that you conducted research, but how it affected you personally and drove your desire to pursue medicine.
Also use this theme to tie back to any of your admirable traits that will make you a good physician. As cringeworthy as it feels to toot your own horn, the personal statement truly is the place where you need to shine and set yourself apart from other applicants.
Each paragraph or section of your personal statement should support the idea behind your theme. Whether you are sharing examples or defining your personal traits and values, each section builds and further develops your theme.
How Do You End a Personal Statement?
This is where everything comes together and you leave a lasting impression on the reader. Instead of using the conclusion to rehash the points you already covered (i.e. “For the reasons stated above, I believe…”), use the conclusion to look to the future and share your vision for how you want to impact the field of medicine. Your personal stories, pivotal experiences, and admirable attributes you already shared will all naturally support this vision and your reason for applying to medical school.
And don’t actually say “In conclusion” in your conclusion. Just wrap it up and conclude.
Four Questions to Ask when Brainstorming a Medical School Personal Statement
When it comes time to put pen to paper, think about big questions.
What are your biggest dreams?
What are your values? Why?
How will college help you achieve your goals?
What are your main academic interests? What appeals to you about those subjects?
Seek out information provided by admissions offices at your top choices. They will likely have clear language about what kind of students they are looking for and what kind of community they are striving to create. For example. Yale looks for “applicants with a concern for something larger than themselves.” Princeton looks for “students with intellectual curiosity, who have pursued and achieved academic excellence.” Find the mission statements for your top choices and practice writing stories that prove you are the kind of student they want to admit.
You know what makes a strong personal statement, what missteps to avoid, and have a plan for breaking it into manageable sections. Now let’s dig into the actual writing process.
Not all of these tips will work for all students. You know whether you’re a meticulous planner, or whether stream of consciousness writing and heavy editing works best for you. But these are some tips from advisors and students that may help you get started.
11 Medical School Personal Statement Prompt Examples
Consider the following brainstorming prompts. You can use these to get the creative juices flowing, or if you’re a more visual planner you can create an idea cloud or outline.
Significant/formative life experiences: things that have greatly influenced your life, the way you conduct yourself, your outlook on the world, or your decisions:
• Excelling at something, especially if it enables you to teach or impact others (sports, science, foreign languages, special skills)
• Getting a second chance at something
• Connecting with or working with a person that made a significant impact on your life
• Getting out of your comfort zone (traveling, moving, interacting with people from different backgrounds)
• Overcoming an obstacle or challenging life experience that was out of your control
• Reflecting on a mistake you made and how it influenced how you conduct yourself
People that had an impact on you (positive or negative), and how that affected your journey to medical school:
• Parents, siblings, or friends
• Mentors, teachers, or professionals
• Authors, actors, speakers, or personal heroes
Personal characteristics and skills that you have, and how those skills translate into being a good physician:
• Integrity, compassion, diligence, humanity, courage, respect, curiosity, or optimism
• Communication, organization, collaboration, leadership, or competence
Medical School Personal Statement Introduction Example 1
I had just past the final mile marker, my ankles hurt from the uneven trail and my arm ached from my fall. My 21-kilometer trail run was finally coming to an end. From the beautiful rainforest valleys of Hawaii where movies like “Jurassic Park” were filmed, ascending above steep cliffs with endless views of the turquoise pacific water, down muddy, slick slopes with ropes to assist the unsure footing, my race was exhilarating, treacherous and exhausting. At last crossing the finish line, I held my arms high as my son and husband applauded my finish. This accomplishment was completed with resolve and determination; by taking each piece of the entire race as it came; from the river crossing, to the elevation gain and the finish running in mud soaked clothes and shoes. Instead of becoming overwhelmed on the seemingly insurmountable entire journey, I managed it step by step, and eventually succeeded. This approach has translated outside of my races and into my life where it has been exceptionally useful on my journey of becoming a physician.
What Does this Medical School Personal Statement Introduction Do?
Interesting, ‘paints a picture’ for the reader to imagine and continue reading
Discuss characteristics of applicant; dedication, determination, perseverance
Introduces ‘theme’ of personal statement- approaching life and journey to become a physician in a ‘stepwise’ manner
Medical School Personal Statement Example #1 (Got 4 acceptances)
Student Accepted to Case Western SOM, Washington University SOM, University of Utah SOM, Northwestern University Feinberg SOM
With a flick and a flourish, the tongue depressor vanished, and from behind my ear suddenly appeared a coin. Growing up, my pediatrician often performed magic tricks, making going to the doctors’ feel like literal magic. I believed all healthcare facilities were equally mystifying, especially after experiencing a different type of magic in the organized chaos of the Emergency Department. Although it was no place for a six-year-old, childcare was often a challenge, and while my dad worked extra shifts in nursing school to provide for our family, I would find myself awed by the diligence and warmth of the healthcare providers.
Though I associated the hospital with feelings of comfort and care, it sometimes became a place of fear and uncertainty. One night, my two-year-old brother, Sean, began vomiting and coughing non-stop. My dad was deployed overseas, so my mother and I had no choice but to spend the night at the hospital, watching my brother slowly recover with the help of the healthcare providers. Little did I know, it would not be long before I was in the same place. Months later, I was hospitalized with pneumonia with pleural effusions, and as I struggled to breathe, I was terrified of having fluid sucked out of my chest. But each day physicians comforted me, asking how I was, taking time to reassure me that I was being taken care of, and explaining any questions related to my illness and treatment. Soon, I became excited to speak with the infectious disease doctor and residents, absorbing as much as I could to learn more about different illnesses.
In addition to conventional medical settings, I also came to view the magic of healing through other lenses. Growing up, Native American traditions were an important aspect of my life as my father had been actively involved with native spirituality, connecting back to his Algonquin heritage. We often attended Wi-wanyang-wa-c’i-pi ceremonies or Sun Dances, for healing through prayer and individuals making personal sacrifices for their community. Although I never sun danced myself, I spent hours in inipis, chewing on osha root, finding my own healing through songs. In addition to my father’s heritage, healing came from the curanderismo traditions of Peru, the home of my mother, who came from a long line of healers, which involved herbal remedies and ceremonies in the healing of the mind, body, energy and soul. I can still see my mother preparing mixtures of oils, herbs, and incense while performing healing rituals. The compassion and care she put into healing paralleled the Emergency Department healthcare providers.
Through the influence of these early life experiences, I decided to pursue a career in the health sciences. Shortly after starting college, I entered a difficult time in my life as I struggled with health and personal challenges. I suddenly felt weak and tired most days with aches all over my body. Soon, depression set in. I eventually visited a doctor, and through a series of tests, we discovered I had hypothyroidism. During this time, I also began dealing with an unprocessed childhood trauma. I decided to take time off school, and with thyroid replacement hormones and therapy, I slowly began to recover. But I still had ways to go, and due to financial challenges, I made the difficult decision to continue delaying my education and found work managing a donut shop. Unbeknownst to me, this experience would lead to significant personal growth by working with people from all walks of life and allowing me time for self-reflection. I found myself continuously reflecting on the experiences in the hospital that defined my childhood and the unmatched admiration I had for healthcare workers. With my renewed interest in medicine, I enrolled in classes to get my AEMT license to get more experience in the medical field.
As my health improved, I excelled in my classes, and after craving the connections of working with others, I became a medical assistant. In this position, I met “Marco,” a patient who came from Mexico for treatment. Though I spoke Spanish while growing up, I had little experience as a medical interpreter. However, I took the opportunity to speak with him to learn his story. Afterwards, he became more comfortable, and I helped walk him through the consultation process, interpreting the physician’s words and Marco’s questions. This moment showed me the power of connecting with others in their native language. As a result, I began volunteering at a homeless clinic to continue bridging the language barrier for patients and to help advocate for the Latinx community and those who struggle to find their voice.
My journey to become a doctor has been less direct than planned; however, my personal trials and tribulations have afforded me the opportunity to meet and work with incredible people who have been invaluable to my recovery and personal development. Most importantly, I have seen the value of compassionate and empathetic care. Though I have not recently witnessed any sleight of hand or vanishing acts, what healthcare providers do for patients can only be described as magic. I look forward to bringing my diverse background as a physician and expanding my abilities to help patients in their path to healing.
Medical School Personal Statement Example #2 (Got 3 Acceptances)
Student Accepted to Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Harvard Medical School, Yale SOM
I’ll never forget his screams of pain.
It was the first time I had heard a man cry for help, and it shook me to my core. It had been a long night of training in South Korea for me and my fellow Army Rangers. We were reaching the end, heavy with exhaustion, when my friend took the direct impact of an explosive to his leg. The shockwave momentarily rattled my sense of balance. Struggling to see in the dark, I switched on my headlamp . In that instant, all I could focus on was his face. His eyes darted back and forth, sweeping the surroundings for any semblance of help, but all I could do was stand there and watch as our medics treated him.
No amount of training prepared me to see a friend in pain. As I watched the helicopter fly him away, I couldn’t help but think— even though I’d gone through some of the best military training in the world, in that moment, I could do nothing for him. Fortunately, he is okay, but had there been no medic available, the situation could have ended with tragedy. That night, I realized that through a career in medicine, I could be more than just a bystander to suffering— I could be in the position to not only reduce unnecessary pain but to also help those affected by conflict and trauma be restored to the fullness of life.
Upon returning home from this deployment, I shifted my focus to developing my skills in trauma care. I completed various trainings on caring for casualties in a combat environment and preparing non-medic Rangers to provide self-aid or buddy-aid in the absence of a medical provider. In a final scenario-based training lane, I helped lead my team in the treatment and packaging of a trauma patient for evacuation, setting a record time in our company and earning a military medal. This achievement, however, was only the beginning. These trainings and my successes served as a foundation that I built upon to ensure I could provide life-saving care in combat situations. I continued to hone this skillset over my next two combat deployments as a machine gunner to Afghanistan, where, I was prepared to use these critical abilities to decrease mortality on the battlefield. In medicine, like in the army, the actual practice of one’s craft may be life or death. Therefore, evolving both dependability and proficiency during training is imperative in preparation for that final test, both in war and in medicine.
After leaving the military, confronting injury and trauma continued to be a reality. A year after exiting the service, two Army Ranger leaders whom I knew were critically injured on a mission overseas. One was my former team leader, who was shot in the neck, and the other was caught in an explosion that later resulted in a triple amputation. The relentless efforts of doctors and nurses is the reason why both of these brave men are alive today. Recognizing that without the diligent care of these medical professionals, these men would not have survived, I became ever more dedicated to serving others.
While in college, this dedication pushed me to routinely visit the West Haven VA Hospital to provide a community of support for the older, disabled veterans there. I first began visiting this hospital for my own medical care but witnessing the suffering of the other veterans at the hospital spurred me to return repeatedly not as a patient, but as a friend to my fellow veterans. As a veteran and student, seeing and hearing about the pain and loss of function experienced by many other veterans reminded me of the importance of advocacy in healthcare: to understand, to care for, and to fight for those who are unable to do so themselves.
I continued to see these effects of conflict while volunteering as a tutor to individuals from the Middle East who were affected by the very war I served in. Alaa lives in Syria and dreams of becoming a surgeon. Together, Alaa and I discussed chemistry, biology, and math. Despite his love of learning and dedication, the instability of his community, which was plagued by violence, often barred him from focusing on his studies and committing to a routine tutoring schedule. Although I’ll never intimately know the reality of growing up in a war-torn country, working with Alaa taught me to keep the bigger picture of healthcare in mind. It reminded me that a career as a physician would provide me with the capability to help those like Alaa who are affected by conflict.
When I reflect on medicine, I draw many parallels to my life in army special operations. The training is intense, the hours are long, and the structure is hierarchical. The mission, above all else, is to provide the best outcome for those around you. On my journey to a career in medicine, I plan to continue to add to what I’ve learned from my experiences so far: humility, empathy, dependability, communication, teamwork, and leading from the front. For over four years I lived by the Ranger Creed, and I plan to imbue the same ethos in serving as a physician— to keep myself mentally alert and morally straight, to shoulder more than my share of whatever task presents itself. In crossing from the path of a warrior to that of a healer, I hope to continue a life of service to improve the human condition and reduce unnecessary suffering in the world one person at a time.
Medical School Personal Statement Example #3 (Got 1 acceptance)
Student Accepted to Weill Cornell
My path to medicine was first influenced by early adolescent experiences trying to understand my place in society. Though I was not conscious of it at the time, I held a delicate balance between my identity as an Indian-American and an “American-American.”
In a single day, I could be shooting hoops and eating hotdogs at school while spending the evening playing Carrom and enjoying tandoori chicken at a family get-together. When our family moved from New York to California, I had the opportunity to attend a middle school with greater diversity, so I learned Spanish to salve the loss of moving away and assimilate into my new surroundings.
As I partook in related events and cuisine, I built an intermixed friend group and began to understand how culture influences our perception of those around us. While volunteering at senior centers in high school, I noticed a similar pattern to what I sometimes saw at school: seniors socializing in groups of shared ethnicity and culture. Moving from table to table, and therefore language to language, I also observed how each group shared different life experiences and perspectives on what constitutes health and wellness. Many seniors talked about barriers to receiving care or how their care differed from what they had envisioned. Listening to their stories on cultural experiences, healthcare disparities, and care expectations sparked my interest in becoming a physician and providing care for the whole community.
Intrigued by the science behind perception and health, I took electives during my undergraduate years to build a foundation in these domains. In particular, I was amazed by how computational approaches could help model the complexity of the human mind, so I pursued research at Cornell’s Laboratory of Rational Decision-Making. Our team used fMRI analysis to show how the framing of information affects its cognitive processing and perception. Thinking back to my discussions with seniors, I often wondered if more personalized health-related messaging could positively influence their opinions. Through shadowing, I had witnessed physicians engaging in honest and empathetic conversations to deliver medical information and manage patients’ expectations, but how did they navigate delicate conflicts where the patients’ perspectives diverged from their own?
My question was answered when I became a community representative for the Ethics Committee for On Lok PACE, an elderly care program. One memorable case was that of Mr. A.G, a blind 86-year-old man with radiation-induced frontal lobe injury who wanted to return home and cook despite his doctor’s expressed safety concerns. Estranged from family, Mr. A.G. relied on cooking to find fulfillment in his life. Recognizing the conflict between autonomy and beneficence, I joined the physicians in brainstorming and recommending ways he could cook while being supervised. I realized that the role of a physician was to mediate between the medical care plan and the patient’s wishes in order to make a decision that preserves their dignity. As we considered possibilities, the physicians’ genuine concern for the patient’s emotional well-being exemplified the compassion that I want to emulate as a future doctor. Our discussions emphasized the rigor of medicine—the challenge of ambiguity and the importance of working with an individual to serve their needs.
With COVID-19 ravaging our underserved communities, my desire to help others drove me towards community-based health as a contact tracer for my county’s Department of Public Health. My conversations uncovered dozens of heartbreaking stories that revealed how inequities in socioeconomic status and job security left poorer families facing significantly harsher quarantines than their wealthier counterparts. Moreover, many residents expressed fear or mistrust, such as a 7-person family who could not safely isolate in their 1 bedroom/1 bath apartment. I offered to arrange free hotel accommodations but was met with a guarded response from the father: “We’ll be fine. We can maintain the 6 feet.” While initially surprised, I recognized how my government affiliation could lead to a power dynamic that made the family feel uneasy. Thinking how to make myself more approachable, I employed motivational interviewing skills and even simple small talk to build rapport. When we returned to discussing the hotel, he trusted my intentions and accepted the offer. Our bond of mutual trust grew over two weeks of follow-ups, leaving me humbled yet gratified to see his family transition to a safer living situation. As a future physician, I realize I may encounter many first-time or wary patients; and I feel prepared to create a responsive environment that helps them feel comfortable about integrating into our health system.
Through my clinical and non-clinical experiences, I have witnessed the far-reaching impact of physicians, from building lasting connections with patients to being a rock of support during uncertain times. I cannot imagine a career without these dynamics — of improving the health and wellness of patients, families, and society and reducing healthcare disparities. While I know the path ahead is challenging, I am confident that I want to dedicate my life to this profession.
Medical School Personal Statement Example #4 (Got 2 Acceptances)
Student Accepted to George Washington SOM and Health Sciences, Drexel University COM
Immigrating into a foreign country without speaking a word of the language is a terrifying task for anyone. My mentee at Computers4kids, Sahil, came to the United States at seventeen and had been struggling to integrate with society due to the language barrier. Although I was born in the United States, I can empathize with the struggle he encounters daily, since both my parents and many members of my family have dealt with the same issues. Often, these barriers exacerbate mundane issues the immigrant population faces as they have difficulty finding people who can understand and care for them. Since I am bilingual in Farsi, when Sahil approached me with his driving instructions manual written in Dari, I thought I could teach him the rules of the road with no issues. I asked him to read the first sentence, but he diverted his gaze and mumbled that he did not know how to read. As I realized he seemed embarrassed by his illiteracy, I placed my hand on his shoulder and assured him that he could learn. I increased my weekly hours at the site to spend an equal amount of time on the rules of the road and on phonetics and reading. Within a few months, he was more comfortable greeting others around the Computers4Kids site and participating in interactive projects. Upon reflection, I appreciate the importance of creating a judgment-free zone that encourages learning and reciprocal care. Once Sahil noticed that I saw him no differently after learning of his illiteracy, he was ready and willing to work on the basics of language and reading, instead of solely memorizing words.
I did not realize how pivotal a judgment-free zone in a medical environment is until I worked at the University of Virginia Emergency Department as a medical scribe. Although I had scribed at a smaller hospital before, I had always strived for a position at a high-volume healthcare center and level one trauma center. Close to the end of a long shift, I walked into the room of a patient with the chief complain of ‘Psychiatric Evaluation’. A male patient with schizophrenia was hyperventilating and speaking through tears as he described seeing his deceased wife and daughter everywhere he looked. Between short breaths, he mentioned he was going to Florida to attack the person who “murdered his family”. The resident diffused the situation by acknowledging the patient’s feelings and suggesting that he stayed for psychiatric help instead of flying to Florida. Eventually, the patient agreed and was admitted. Seeing the resident create this judgment-free environment was eye opening, as the previously distressed patient was now accepting counseling. The powerful influence of acceptance can lead to valuable insights about patients’ lives, potentially increasing the range of care one can administer.
I decided to transition to primary care in the most recent fall season because I would be able to build a more personal relationship with families in my community. I began working at Union Mill Pediatrics and was finally able to serve the community I grew I up in. I was given the responsibility of acting as the primary contact for a few families with children who have autism. Dr. Maura and I perused the plan of care for one of these children, Ayaan, determined by the Board-Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), to ensure that set therapeutic goals were reasonable and generalizable. When I asked Salwa, Ayaan’s mother, about some of the goals set by her BCBA and the school, she mentioned they would repeat exercises he already knew how to complete. I informed Salwa of her right as a patient to bring up her concerns with Ayaan’s teachers. I was overjoyed when she updated me that she instructed Ayaan’s teacher to continue putting his hearing aid in despite Ayaan’s constant cries. Salwa explained that the tantrums would curb after two days, which proved to be true. Similarly to how I encourages Salwa to advocate for her son, I will advocate for my patients and help them develop confidence to speak about their needs. After finding her voice as the patient’s guardian, Salwa gained the confidence to ask about a support group as she faces difficulties raising Ayaan alone. After some research, I found a few active groups to send her. By proving to Salwa I had her best interests in heart, she opened up to me about her mental health issues, which enabled me to extend the appropriate resources her way.
I have witnessed the potential that physicians have at work to forever change a family’s quality of life by being open-minded and remaining judgment-free. As a physician, I will aim to provide for my community through attentive healthcare and community service. I will advocate for my patients with cultural, language or socioeconomic barriers to healthcare. Building a trusting relationship with my future patients can result in a more productive office visit and enhance my ability to administer holistic care. My goal is for patients to leave their visit with not only a reasonable plan of care, but also a greater appreciation of their health and their rights as patients.
Medical School Personal Statement Example #5 (Got 2 Acceptances)
Student Accepted to Hackensack Meridian SOM, Nova Southeastern CoOM/KPCOM
Growing up, I inherited a deep admiration for medicine. From my grandfather’s chilling stories as a forensic psychiatrist assessing mental fitness, to my father’s heroic accounts as a pediatric dentist operating on toddlers with severe tooth decay, I was enamored with the honor of healing. These exposures nurtured my natural curiosity and innate aptitude for the sciences. Yet my mother, who had studied dance and theatre, instilled in me a fervent love of the arts and creative practice. Following in her footsteps, I took up multiple musical instruments, attended a high school for the arts, and earned a degree in art history coupled with a dance minor. Still, my dream was to pursue medicine, and though it seems counterintuitive, my love of art has only facilitated my enduring love of science, reinforcing why pursuing a career as a holistic, health-centered physician is my deepest aspiration.
My affinity for the health sciences began in the dance studio, where I devoted many hours of my adolescence. Dance, insidious in its promotion of grotesque health practices, demanded that I limit my calories to 1,200 a day counting everything from ibuprofen to a stick of gum, and to dance through a severe hamstring tear. My conceptions of health were severely warped until college dance came to my rescue. These new progressive teachers uplifted dancers of all physical and cognitive abilities, distributed scientific journals on effective warm-up techniques, and abandoned conventional dance norms. I was disturbed by all the unlearning I had to do, but eager to reacquaint myself with my body and disseminate new knowledge. Thus, I was honored when dance again presented an opportunity in health, as I was hired to teach dance at my childhood summer camp. Here, I could separate my curriculum from unreasonable physical expectations and interpersonal competition. I found a fierce sense of joy and fulfillment from being an advocate for physical and emotional health, and I knew I wanted to continue helping others heal while also deconstructing my own negative health experiences.
These formative experiences in the arts profoundly supported my intellectual development, allowing me to thrive in science-based settings and ultimately prompting me to seek out colleges with robust research programs. At the University of Michigan, I had the privilege of participating i n a campus research lab, undoubtedly resulting in my most valuable college experience. The world of scientific inquiry can be intimidating, but after a year of reading dozens of papers and learning novice lab protocols, I began my own independent investigation of zebrafish retinas. My goal was to uncover the mechanisms of retinal regeneration in fish, thus addressing vision loss. The excitement I felt in utilizing challenging lab techniques, working with animals, witnessing the culmination of my efforts through image analysis, and being a part of such life-altering research was unmatched. What once seemed like magic was now tangible; I was an artist helping craft the solutions to science’s unanswered questions. In the context of my multidisciplinary interests, my research reinforced the creative, humanitarian side of science, and that science was where I felt compelled to take action and build a career.
Art continued to deepen my passion for and understanding of medicine. The revolutionary approaches of my dance teachers modeled the importance of critique as it pertains to health. This was not a new concept to me; my high school art teachers had urged us to challenge institutional weaknesses. It was not until college, however, that I realized how this line of thinking intersects with medicine. Studying art history, I repeatedly encountered artists whose work tackled issues in health. Keith Haring confronted the AIDS crisis when society had turned on the gay population, and Marc Quinn confronted the disease of addiction in his self-portrait sculptures, made entirely of his own frozen blood. Art, I learned, is so often a response to disease, be it physical, mental, or sociological. These artists had been champions of health in light of its stigmas and politics; art thus fostered new intentions, instilling within me an ardent goal of social activism through medicine.
Art has contributed to my journey, and while it is not my ultimate goal, I hope to incorporate my artistically based insights into my work in science and medicine as a health and social justice advocate. I am driven to continue exploring these intersections, having compiled an entire portfolio on the connection between dance and science, researched disability in the arts, and pursued my personal interest in LGBTQ+ health advocacy by connecting with and shadowing a variety of gender care physicians. My intention to pursue medicine is personal, fulfilling, and pressing, and I take seriously the responsibility I will have as a physician to be a mogul for change in areas of healthcare that compromise the human experience. Further, my natural inclination towards science and involvement in academic research has instilled in me the confidence and skills necessary to be an effective medical practitioner. With this balanced mindset, I know I will contribute to a more ethical and well-rounded approach to healthcare.
Medical School Personal Statement Example #6 (Got 3 Acceptances)
Student Accepted to Johns Hopkins SOM, Washington University SOM, Hofstra Zucker SOM
As a notoriously picky nine-year-old with a penchant for grilled cheese, I was perplexed when I learned that my younger sister, Rachel, had been diagnosed with Celiac Disease. I felt a sting of betrayal knowing my comfort food was the culprit for Rachel’s terrible stomach aches. Yearning to understand how my favorite food was poisoning my favorite person, I developed an insatiable desire to discover the “why” behind Celiac. As Rachel’s doctor explained her disease, I was both fascinated that a simple protein could cause so much damage and inspired by the doctor’s compassion. He described every detail in a way Rachel would understand, addressed her every concern, and held her hand when she was scared. I wanted to be just like Rachel’s doctor so that I too could use science to decipher medical mysteries while also reassuring my patients that I would be their advocate and help them heal.
My interest in medicine drove me to learn more about what it meant to be a doctor. As a freshman in high school, I arranged a shadow day with Dr. M, a cardiologist. He taught me about echoes, showed me a pacemaker implantation, and in the midst of a cardioversion, even beckoned me over to press the button that discharged the defibrillator. I could not contain my excitement recounting how much I had learned during my first day in a clinical setting. From there, my curiosity skyrocketed and I embarked on a relentless pursuit to explore the spectrum of the medical field. I was moved by the supportive atmosphere of the NICU, struck by the precision involved in ophthalmology, absorbed by the puzzle-like reconstruction of Mohs surgery, and awed by the agility of cardiothoracic surgery. Between high school and college, I shadowed over a dozen physicians, cementing my interest and furthering my passion for a future medical career.
My college classes allowed me to immerse myself further in the study of the human body. Following my fascination with cancer, I secured an internship working on a melanoma immunotherapy clinical trial at the National Institutes of Health. I savored the stimulation, grasping new experimental techniques and developing assays; but my work took on even greater meaning when I learned that my grandfather had been enrolled in an early-stage immunotherapy trial himself while battling mucosal melanoma. Although immunotherapy did not heal my grandfather, I was immensely proud to be advancing the science years later. Through long nights and evolving experiments, I gave the trial its final push through an FDA approval checkpoint; ultimately, my contributions will help more grandparents go into remission. The most fulfilling moments came every Monday when I accompanied the leading physician scientists on their rounds. As I met patients, listened to their stories, and celebrated their improvements, the pulsating blister on my thumbpad from endless pipetting became akin to a medal of honor. Reflecting on these encounters, I wanted to continue driving scientific innovation, but I also wanted a more active and personal impact in the patient’s experience.
My desire to connect with patients brought me to Alliance Medical Ministry, a clinic serving uninsured, disadvantaged communities in North Carolina. I stepped up to lead efforts to organize a community COVID-19 vaccination clinic, communicating personally with every eligible patient and arranging vaccine appointments for over a thousand people across the hardest hit areas of Raleigh. The experience became even more rewarding when I trained to administer vaccines, becoming a stable, anchoring presence from the beginning to the end of the process. One memorable patient, “Amy,” had not seen a doctor in years because of the associated financial burden. When she came to the clinic suffering from diabetic ketoacidosis, she was not even aware of her diabetes diagnosis. While I waited with her for transportation to the ER, she expressed her fears about contracting COVID at the hospital. However, she emphatically dismissed my suggestion about receiving a vaccine. I listened intently to all her concerns. Not only was she worried about the vaccine infecting her with the virus, but also her history of being denied healthcare due to her socioeconomic status had instilled fears that she would not be taken care of should she have an adverse reaction. I took her hand in mine and reassured her of the clinic’s mission to provide care regardless of ability to pay. I further explained everything I knew about how the vaccine worked, its safety and efficacy, and how my body reacted when I received my own injection. I could not help but beam behind my N95 when days later, Amy returned, sat in my chair and confidently rolled up her sleeve for me to give her the protective shot.
I have grown by exploring the multifaceted world of medicine through shadowing, pioneering research to advance patient care at the NIH, and cultivating trusting relationships with patients from the vaccine clinic. As a doctor, my desire to be an innovative thinker and problem solver will fuel my unrelenting quest for discovery throughout a lifetime of learning. Most importantly, I aspire to use my medical knowledge to improve lives and establish meaningful patient partnerships, just as Rachel’s doctor did with her.
Medical School Personal Statement Example #7 (Got 2 Acceptances)
Student Accepted to UCSF SOM, Harvard Medical School
Countless visits to specialists in hope of relief left me with a slew of inconclusive test results and uncertain diagnoses. “We cannot do anything else for you.” After twelve months of waging a war against my burning back, aching neck and tingling limbs, hearing these words at first felt like a death sentence, but I continued to advocate for myself with medical professionals. A year of combatting pain and dismissal led me to a group of compassionate and innovative physicians at the Stanford Pain Management Center (SPMC). Working alongside a diverse team including pain management specialists and my PCP, I began the long, non-linear process of uncovering the girl that had been buried in the devastating rubble of her body’s pain. From struggling with day-to-day activities like washing my hair and sitting in class to thriving as an avid weightlifter and zealous student over the span of a year, I realized I am passionate about preventing, managing and eliminating chronic illnesses through patient-centered incremental care and medical innovation.
A few days after my pain started, I was relieved to hear that I had most likely just strained some muscles, but after an empty bottle of muscle relaxers, the stings and aches had only intensified. I went on to see 15 specialists throughout California, including neurologists, physiatrists, and rheumatologists. Neurological exams. MRIs. Blood tests. All inconclusive. Time and time again, specialists dismissed my experience due to ambiguous test results and limited time. I spent months trying to convince doctors that I was losing my body; they thought I was losing my mind. Despite these letdowns, I did not stop fighting to regain control of my life. Armed with my medical records and a detailed journal of my symptoms, I continued scheduling appointments with the intention of finding a doctor who would dig deeper in the face of the unknown. Between visits, I researched my symptoms and searched for others with similar experiences. One story on Stanford Medicine’s blog, “Young Woman Overcomes Multiple Misdiagnoses and Gets Her Life Back”, particularly stood out to me and was the catalyst that led me to the SPMC. After bouncing from doctor to doctor, I had finally found a team of physicians who would take the profound toll of my pain on my physical and mental well-being seriously.
Throughout my year-long journey with my care team at the SPMC, I showed up for myself even when it felt like I would lose the war against my body. I confronted daily challenges with fortitude. When lifting my arms to tie my hair into a ponytail felt agonizing, YouTube tutorials trained me to become a braiding expert. Instead of lying in bed all day when my medication to relieve nerve pain left me struggling to stay awake, I explored innovative alternative therapies with my physicians; after I was fed up with the frustration of not knowing the source of my symptoms, I became a research subject in a clinical trial aimed at identifying and characterizing pain generators in patients suffering from “mysterious” chronic pain. At times, it felt like my efforts were only resulting in lost time. However, seeing how patient my care team was with me, offering long-term coordinated support and continually steering me towards a pain-free future, motivated me to grow stronger with every step of the process. Success was not an immediate victory, but rather a long journey of incremental steps that produced steady, life-saving progress over time. My journey brought me relief as well as clarity with regard to how I will care for my future patients. I will advocate for them even when complex conditions, inconclusive results and stereotypes discourage them from seeking continued care; work with them to continually adapt and improve an individualized plan tailored to their needs and goals, and engage in pioneering research and medical innovations that can directly benefit them.
Reflecting on the support system that enabled me to overcome the challenges of rehabilitation, I was inspired to help others navigate life with chronic pain in a more equitable and accessible way. Not everyone has the means to work indefinitely with a comprehensive care team, but most do have a smartphone. As a result, I partnered with a team of physicians and physical therapists at the University of California San Francisco to develop a free mobile application that guides individuals dealing with chronic pain through recovery. Based on my own journey, I was able to design the app with an understanding of the mental and physical toll that pain, fear, and loss of motivation take on patients struggling with chronic pain. Having features like an exercise bank with a real-time form checker and an AI-based chatbot to motivate users, address their concerns and connect them to specific health care resources, our application helped 65 of the 100 pilot users experience a significant reduction in pain and improvement in mental health in three months.
My journey has fostered my passion for patient-centered incremental medicine and medical innovation. From barely living to thriving, I have become a trailblazing warrior with the perseverance and resilience needed to pursue these passions and help both the patients I engage with and those around the world.
Medical School Personal Statement Example #8 (Got 1 Acceptance)
Student Accepted to University of Florida COM
Growing up as a Black woman, my family’s experiences with racial bias in medicine were central to my perception of doctors. From my grandmother’s forced electric shock therapy in the Jim Crow South that resulted in severe brain damage, to my father’s ignored appendicitis that led to a near-death infection after rupturing, every trip to the doctor came with apprehension. Will these strange men with sharp tools heal me or hurt me? This question repeated in my head as I prepared to undergo my first surgery to remove suspiciously inflamed lymph nodes at age 11. I woke up groggy from anesthesia with a negative cancer diagnosis but a blistering third degree burn. The surgeon had successfully removed the malignant masses but had left the cauterizing iron resting on my neck in the process. Today when I look in the mirror and see the scar, I am reminded of the troubling reality that myths such as black people having thicker skin and less sensitive nerve endings are still pervasive in the medical field. By challenging the systemic disparities in medicine that disadvantage minority populations, I vow to my inner child that I will be a different kind of doctor, a doctor who values the patient as much as the procedure.
My experiences with a variety of communities, minority and majority, stem from growing up in a military household that came with frequent relocations. I was exposed to a wide range of communities from an early age—rural Oregon to tropical Hawaii, industrious Japan to politicized D.C, sunny San Diego and finally to radical Berkeley where I began my pre-medical education. I chose to view medicine from an anthropological lens while at Cal and supplemented my coursework with community service. As co-coordinator of UC Berkeley’s chapter of Peer Health Exchange, my 9 th grade students were, at first, mistrusting –even with my Angela Davis-esque afro, I was clearly not from Oakland and not quite old enough to be lecturing them. But it was the Good Samaritan Law lecture, during which students learned they would not face police penalty for calling 911 if a friend was in trouble, that I finally gained their trust. One student shared, “I always worried that I wouldn’t be able to call for help because I’m undocumented.” Later as a health advocate at UCSF, I encountered the same sentiment from families in the pediatric clinic who worried that accessing healthcare for a sick child might put their immigration or legal status at risk. I learned that to get to the root of barriers to access, trust is invaluable. Navigating marginalized spaces with cultural competency is an asset that I pride myself in.
I carried this foundation into my research and clinical work on HIV, a disease that disproportionately affects Black and Brown communities and is often left untreated by the stigmas surrounding medicine for these communities. As an HIV PreP Navigator at the Oasis clinic, I was on rotation when a thirteen-year-old girl was referred to the clinic after testing positive for HIV. We analyzed her T cell count and viral load, and discovered she fit the AIDs criteria. In the following weeks, we worked on medication adherence, and as the girl’s CD4 count rose, so did her spirits and mine. Medicine is more than just a diagnosis and prescription—it is active compassionate treatment. It is holding steady when the entire ground seems to shake with the magnitude of an illness. It is being able to look a patient in the eye and truly see them despite the myriad of differences.
The disparities and differences in patient circumstances has been emphasized by the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognizing this disproportionate effect of the virus on minority communities, I worked at a COVID-19 testing facility in one of the most underserved and impoverished communities in the Los Angeles’ area. Assuring patients of the safety of Covid testing measures was a big part of the job. “Have you done it?” They would ask. “What about Tuskegee?” Being Black, I felt the burden of responsibility that came with these questions. How could I have such faith in medicine knowing the traumatic past? My response was simple, “I believe in the science. I can explain PCR testing to you if you like.” By eradicating some of the mystery surrounding these lab techniques, people felt more comfortable. The opportunity to serve as a trusted community leader by directly interacting with patients and working on a team with doctors, EMTs, and nurses amid an international crisis reaffirmed my journey into medicine.
Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.” As an aspiring physician, these words have served as a motivating mantra. To “get off the ground” for me means to become the first medical doctor in a lineage of sharecroppers and farmers. Medicine has been my “sun” for as long as I can remember; its promise to bring light has kept me jumping at every opportunity. Like my grandmother, my father, and so many others, I have experienced disparity in medicine. The scars that mar our bodies are my constant reminder that there is much work to be done. I see medicine as the ability to directly enact that change, one patient at a time.
Medical School Personal Statement Example #9 (Got 2 Acceptances)
Student Accepted to Touro CoOM, Nova Southeastern CoOM/KPCOM
I fight the heavy sleepiness that comes over me, but before I know it, I am out like a light. Forty-five minutes later, I wake up with a sore throat, watery eyes, and an intensely cold, painful feeling plaguing my entire right leg. Earlier, my parents and I arrived at the Beckman Laser Institute for another treatment of my port-wine stain birthmark. Despite my pleas to not undergo these procedures, my parents still took me twice a year. As I was rolled into the cold, sterile operating room on a gurney, I felt like I was experiencing everything from outside of myself. Despite my doctor’s and nurses’ best efforts to comfort me, I felt my heart racing. Feelings of apprehension and fear of the unknown flooded my senses at the sight of beeping machines and tubes that seemed to go everywhere. As the anesthesiologist began to administer the “sleepy juice,” I felt sad, realizing that my birthmark was a permanent resident on my leg and that I would have to receive this treatment for the rest of my life.
As an adult, I am grateful my parents continued to take me to the laser institute. Starting treatment so early aided in the lightening of my birthmark, which did wonders to improve my self-confidence. However, I suffered daily, feeling like I constantly had to hide something about myself. I kept my secret from everyone except my parents. Despite there being several medical doctors in my family, I knew that any sign of illness or disease would be held against me socially amongst other Egyptians. My secrecy was made even more difficult by the advice of my doctor to avoid certain physical activities, as they could worsen the underlying pathology of the veins in my legs. On his advice, I only wore long pants and would not run with other children during recess and gym class. This all added to the isolation I felt growing up, not knowing anyone with a similar condition to mine. Even as a child, no amount of explaining or encouragement could make me understand the benefit of those painful laser treatments.
What eventually changed my perspective was the team of compassionate doctors and nurses who have been caring for me since I began this journey. I was particularly touched when one of my doctors shared with me that she had also undergone a procedure that she would be performing on me. In that moment, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Not only was she a specialist in the field, but her empathy for what I would soon go through became a source of instant comfort and ease for me. I knew that what she said was heartfelt, and not simply an attempt to convince me to undergo a procedure. I realized then that one of the reasons I had felt so afraid was because I had been alone in what I was going through.
A few years later, I attended a conference held by the Vascular Birthmark Foundation, where a variety of specialists convened to discuss port-wine stain birthmarks and other related conditions. Once we arrived at the hotel where the conference would take place, I met a woman who had a facial port-wine stain birthmark. As we began sharing stories about our experiences with our condition, we connected over how difficult it had been to receive treatment. We both knew what it felt like to be told that the birthmark was simply a cosmetic issue, and that any form of treatment we received would have no corrective purpose, if it was even considered treatment in the first place. There was a certain sense of freedom that I felt in finally being able to talk about my illness with someone I could trust to understand. Thinking back to the doctor who connected with me over a procedure she had also experienced as a patient, I felt truly called in that moment to pursue my goal of becoming a vascular physician. My goal would be to become a source of comfort and familiarity for patients who struggle as I have, to give them the same relief that I experienced from finally being understood.
Despite the pains I went through, I now realize that the experiences I have had as a patient can help me better understand what it means to be a physician. By being an excellent listener and openly sharing my experiences with receiving treatment, I can foster an honest and safe physician-patient relationship. I believe this approach will not only comfort my patients, but also help them make informed decisions about their treatment. My commitment to this approach has also led me to choose a DO path for my medical career. Having researched the holistic treatment approach that a DO delivers, I realized that being treated by a DO would have done wonders for my self-confidence and overall health as a young patient. The aspects of my port wine stain that were always left untreated were the emotional and social side effects of my condition. As a DO in the dermatology or interventional radiology specialty, I hope to gain the tools to provide empathetic and comprehensive care to my patients that reassures them that they are not alone in their journey to better health.
What’s the Best Way to Start Writing Your Personal Statement?
Free writing is helpful to some people. Instead of focusing on how good you want your essay to be, just start writing. Even if it’s a stream of consciousness, or your beginning ideas, get it on paper. It’s best to start long and condense. You can always cut/paste, reorganize, and fine-tune later.
Dr. Butty reminds students that, “You can then decide whether that experience speaks to you or whether you have this other experience that you think might work better; but you can’t actually do that until you are able to let go and start writing. Don’t worry about it being good at first, just worry about getting your thoughts on paper.”
When Should I Start Writing My Personal Statement?
Rome wasn’t built in a day! Don’t try to write a perfect personal statement in one sitting. Even for people who can write off the cuff, this is typically a time when procrastination doesn’t pay. Applying to medical school is stressful enough without pulling an all-nighter trying to write something as important as your personal statement.
Dr. Katzen, MedSchoolCoach Master Advisor and previous admissions committee member at GWU, recommends starting on the personal statement in December/January for students planning to apply in May/June. This gives you plenty of time to have others review it or to get professional personal statement editing services. It also gives you time to write multiple drafts and be 100% satisfied with your final essay.
How Many Drafts Should You Write of a Personal Statement?
Revising will usually take longer than putting together the first draft. Don’t settle for your first draft. Go through your work critically. Be prepared to replace repetitive words, be more concise, and fine-tune your transitions. Once you revise, at least twice, get feedback from your recommenders so that they know what you are submitting.
On the topic of multiple drafts, be sure to allocate enough time to take breaks between drafts and really reflect on your essay.
In fact, some advisors (and medical school students) recommend perfecting a first draft, then setting it aside and completely starting from scratch on a new draft. Maybe your first draft focused on volunteer or research experience, and your second draft showcases your creative writing more. Is one better than the other? Or is there a way to merge them to create a third and perfect draft?
Should You Get a Peer Review of a Medical School Personal Statement?
Ask others to read your essay, but be selective of who you ask . Close friends and family may be brutally honest and discourage you, or they may say what you want to hear and avoid any criticism altogether. If you want to involve those closest to you during the process, it’s better to ask them something like, “Why do you think I would make a good doctor?” Ask them this early in the process so that you can see how their perspective and recollection of your life experiences might tie into your personal narrative.
If you want others to read your personal statement, it’s usually better to ask someone more impartial — like a professor, work or research colleague, or a medical school student who’s already been through the application process.
How Many Times Should I Proofread My Personal Statement?
You should proofread your personal statement until it’s grammatically perfect. There is zero room for errors on your personal statement. Spelling and punctuation errors, typos, and grammatical issues WILL reflect poorly on you.
We recommend using a text only editor for the final draft of your essay so that there are no formatting issues when you paste it into the AMCAS editor. But during the writing process, it is absolutely ok to use a more dynamic word processor – like Word or Google Docs – that will alert you to errors while writing.
Bonus points if you utilize a writing assistant software that can give you feedback on more in-depth issues related to tone and syntax. To go a step further, a professional writing advisor can help you identify repetitive ideas, be more concise, fine-tune your transitions, and help you avoid common mistakes.
Best of all, the advisors like the ones at MedSchoolCoach have experience serving on medical school admissions committees. They’ve read thousands of personal statements and know exactly how to help you shine.
Brush Up on Your Technical Writing with Dr. David Flick
David Flick, MD and Associate Director of Advising at MedSchoolCoach offers some technical writing tips for the residency personal statement. While this is a longer and even more challenging essay than you’ll hopefully be writing in the coming years, the advice applies to the medical school personal statement as well!
Dynamic Writing – Dynamic writing refers to the rhythm of your writing. There needs to be a mix of long and short sentences as well as variety of sentence structure. Read your essay out loud. If you have to catch your breath in the middle of a sentence, it’s too long. If there is a repetitive rhythm it’s usually because too many short sentences are strung together.
Language & Vocabulary – It’s important to consider both the reader as well as your reputation when making language and vocabulary choices. While it’s safe to assume members of an admissions committee are intelligent, this is not the time for smarty-pants vocabulary that will distract the reader from the message. At the same time, it’s important to make word choices that elevate your writing by making sentences more descriptive.
For example, Dr. Flick says to avoid using “really” and “very” as adverbs . There is almost always a better word choice.
“Really great” can be fantastic/wonderful/amazing
“Very important” can be significant/critical/momentous
In the sentence, “I really enjoyed the research experience” the word “really” can be truly/positively/certainly
He also recommends that you avoid using contractions , as they are for informal and conversational writing, not application writing.
Punctuation – Dr. Flick argues that simple sentence punctuation is usually best. When you start modifying sentence structure with quotations, semicolons, and ellipses, it can be a distraction for readers. Even if you know how to use punctuation correctly, there’s no guarantee the reader does. They may get hung up on the placement of a semicolon and lose the meaning of the sentence.
Syntax – Syntax refers to the order and arrangement of words and phrases in a sentence. Common syntax issues are related to run-on sentences, subject-verb agreement, matching tenses, and passive voice. Writers with a solid grasp on syntax are able to craft clear, direct sentences.
This resource has some great examples of syntax errors in sentences, why they’re incorrect, and how to fix them.
Now let’s take a look at some real personal statements from both traditional and non-traditional medical school applicants.
Medical School Personal Statement Examples
Examples of traditional medical school personal statements.
The following example is from a medical student who made their submission an AMCAS-style personal statement. It serves as a great example for an effective personal statement and we thought it was a good read overall!
"Four-letter word for “dignitary.” The combinations surge through my mind: emir? agha? tsar? or perhaps the lesser-used variant, czar? I know it’s also too early to rule out specific names – there were plenty of rulers named Omar – although the clue is suspiciously unspecific. Quickly my eyes jump two columns to the intersecting clue, 53-Across, completely ignoring the blur outside the window that indicates my train has left the Times Square station. “Nooks’ counterparts.” I am certain the answer is “crannies.” This means 49-Down must end in r, so I eliminate “agha” in my mind. Slowly, the pieces come together, the wordplay sending my brain into mental gymnastics. At the end of two hours, I find myself staring at a completed crossword puzzle, and as trivial as it is, it is one of the greatest feelings in the world. As an avid cruciverbalist, I have a knack for problem-solving. In college I had fallen in love with another kind of puzzle: organic chemistry. While some of my peers struggled with its complexity, the notion of analyzing mass spectroscopy, IR spectrums, and H-NMR to identify a specific molecule invigorated me. In my biology classes, the human body was an amazing mystery to me. Intricacies such as hormonal up- and down-regulation really pulled at the riddler in me; I was not satisfied until I understood the enigma of how the body worked. Graduate school at Columbia was an extension of this craving, and I chose a thesis topic that would attempt to elucidate the sophisticated workings of neuro-hormonal balance peri-bariatric surgery. In non-academic settings, I also pursued activities that would sharpen my intellect. To me, the act of teaching was a form of problem-solving; a good teacher finds the most effective way to convey information to students. So I accepted the challenge and taught in both international and domestic settings. In church, I assumed leadership positions because it forced me to think critically to resolve conflicts; and in lab, I volunteered to help write a review on the biological mechanisms of weight regain. It was exactly what I loved: isolating a specific human phenomenon and investigating how it worked. I believe medicine and puzzles are in the same vein. After participating in health fairs, working at a clinic, and observing physicians, I understand that pinpointing the exact needs of a patient is difficult at times. In a way, disease itself can be a puzzle, and doctors sometimes detect it only one piece at a time – a cough here, lanugo there. Signs and symptoms act as clues that whittle down the possibilities until only a few remain. Then all that is left is to fill in the word and complete the puzzle. Voila! Actually, it is not as easy as that, and inevitably the imperfect comparison falls through. I distinctly remember a conversation I had with a psychiatric patient at Aftercare. He had just revealed to me his identity as Batman, and he also believed he was Jesus. During downtime in-between tests he decided to confide in me some of his dreams and aspirations. He swiftly pulled out a sketchpad and said confidently, “When I get better, I’m going back to art school.” Any doubts stemming from his earlier ramblings vanished at the sight of his charcoal-laden sheets filled with lifelike characters. “They’re… really good,” I stammered. I was looking for the right words to say, but there are times when emotions are so overwhelming that words fail. I nodded in approval and motioned that we should get back to testing. Those next few hours of testing flew by as I ruminated what I had experienced. After working 3 years at the clinic, I had been so caught up in the routine of “figuring out” brain function that I missed the most important aspect of the job: the people. And so, just as the crossword puzzle is a 15×15 symbol of cold, hard New York streets, a person is the polar opposite; patients are breathing, fluid, and multi-dimensional. I have come to love both, but there is really nothing I want more in the world than to see a broken person restored, a dream reignited, to see Mr. Batman regain sanity and take up art school again. The prospect of healing others brings me joy that surpasses even completing the challenging crosswords in the Sunday paper. This is why I feel called to a life in medicine. It is the one profession that gives me the opportunity to restore others while thinking critically and appreciating human biology. I am passionate about people, and medicine allows me to participate in their lives in a tangible, physical way that is aligned with my interest in biology and problem-solving skill. The New York Times prints a new puzzle each day, and so does the Washington Post, USA Today, and the list continues. The unlimited supply of puzzles mirrors the abundance of human disease and the physician’s ongoing duty to unravel the mystery, to resolve the pain. A great cruciverbalist begins with the basics of learning “crosswordese,” a nuanced language; I am prepared to do the same with health, starting with my education in medical school. Even so, I am always humbled by what little I know and am prepared to make mistakes and learn along the way. After all, I would never do a crossword puzzle in pen."
Examples of Non Traditional Medical School Personal Statements
Because many medical school applicants today are non-traditional students, we wanted to provide a successful non-traditional student personal statement example.
"Twenty-five years ago, I was delivered by C-section at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. Despite my breech presentation I was expected to be in perfect health. Yet much to everyone’s shock, I arrived with my left knee hyper-extended by more than 90 degrees and my right foot clubbed inwards. The medical consensus was that I might never walk – a sentiment shared by my mother, herself a physician. As she held me for the first time, she could not imagine that 23 years later we would be running together across the finish line of my first ten-mile race, or that gaining the ability to run would spark my interest in medicine. My future was transformed by Dr. Lynn Staheli, the pediatric orthopedic surgeon who pioneered the procedure used to reverse my hyperextension. He operated to correct my clubbed foot and knee, with the caveat that I would have only partial flexion in my left leg. I spent the majority of my infancy in a body cast and my childhood in physical therapy. I was able to compensate for my limited range of motion while skiing and learned to ride a bike with only my right leg. However, knee pain during these activities and my leg swinging stiffly sideways while running were constant reminders of my injury, which appeared to be a lifelong impediment. At the time I did not fully understand how my life had been irrevocably impacted by the highly skilled medical intervention of my surgeon. While Dr. Staheli gave me the ability to walk, my mother inspired me to run. My mother took up running for the first time at age 50, training for the New York Marathon. Watching her transform into an avid runner, I too began to believe that I could overcome my physical impediment. Limited flexion made it difficult to build muscle in my left leg, and I needed extreme focus to change my natural gait. Eventually, countless hours on the elliptical trainer corrected my motion, and weight-lifting strengthened my legs. By college I was running nearly every morning. I entered my first race – San Francisco’s Presidio 10-miler – with my mother for her 58th birthday. This year for her 60th we crossed the finish line hand-in-hand for the third year in a row. As I prepare for my first half-marathon this July, I now fully appreciate the impact that Dr. Staheli made on my life 25 years ago. Even though I grew up in a physician family, my interest in pursuing medicine as a career was sparked by my appreciation for the profound impact that medical intervention had on my quality of life. As I wanted to make similar improvements in the lives of others, I began exploring health sciences and health care from as many vantage points as possible. I spent time in clinics, first shadowing physicians at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and later as a volunteer on the transplant ward of a children’s hospital in Moscow, Russia during my study-abroad program."
How Do You Write the Best Personal Statement? With MedSchoolCoach!
Remember, the time to start working on your personal statement is December/January before the May/June you plan to apply to medical school. Whether you simply need a fresh set of eyes on your essay , or you need guidance throughout the entire medical school application process , MedSchoolCoach is here to help.
We’ve helped thousands of students get accepted into medical school with expert guidance from our Physician Advisors and Writing Advisors. Our Advisors have years of experience serving on admissions committees and more than 500,000 hours of advising under their belts. They’ll work with you one-on-one, get to know the real you, and help you create a compelling and authentic essay that wows.
More than 90% of students who work with MedSchoolCoach on their personal statement receive at least one interview invitation. Are you ready for yours?
Additional Medical School Personal Statement Resources
Do you want to learn even more about personal statements? Dive into these great resources!
Free Medical School Personal Statement Webinars
Preparing Your Personal Statement For Medical Programs Hosted by MedSchoolCoach Director of Writing & College Advising, Jennifer Speegle
Creating the First Draft of Your Medical School Personal Statement Hosted by MedSchoolCoach advising and writing advisors, Ziggy Yoediono MD and James Fleming
Where to Begin When Writing Your Personal Statement Hosted by MedSchoolCoach Associate Director of Writing and College Advising, Jennifer Speegle, Associate Director of Advising, Ziggy Yoediono MD, and Writing Advisor, Carrie Coaplen Ph. D
The Medical School Personal Statement – What Makes a Great Intro and Why It’s Important Hosted by Director of Advising, Dr. Renee Marinelli, MD, Master Advisor, Dr. Ziggy Yoediono, MD, and Founder of MedSchoolCoach, Dr. Sahil Mehta, MD
The Prospective Doctor Podcast
Episode 2 – The Personal Statement
Episode 42 – Writing Your Personal Statement
Episode 76 – How to Tackle the Medical School Personal Statement
Weekly Weigh-In
In this Weekly Weigh-In, med school students discuss their own process for writing their personal statements!
About the Authors: Sahil Mehta MD & Renee Marinelli MD
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What is considered "name dropping" in personal statement?
- Thread starter GomerPyle
- Start date Jul 1, 2013
Full Member
- Jul 1, 2013
ericksonj15
- Jul 2, 2013
GomerPyle said: Last year I got criticized for name dropping my personal statement. For example, I included patient first names and I also included physician first and last names as well as which hospital they were affiliated with( ex. Dr. John Doe from Murray Health Care).... I understand that using first and last name, as well as hospital affiliation is name dropping, but can I just say just the last name (shadowing Dr. Doe, I learned......)? Also, is it fine if I use patient first names? It just sounds weird if I say "the female patient" or whatever - it sounds more personal when you use the first name, but I was told not to even use the first name either. Maybe put quotes around the name so that they see it is fake? If anyone can please let me know the guidelines for this, I'd appreciate it! Thanks Click to expand...
I talked about a patient. I just called him 'the patient'. The doctor, I used his full name since it was a shadowing activity listed in my AMCAS app anyway. I didn't say what hospital it was at, but again, that's on AMCAS already.
Doctor Strange
Sorcerer supreme.
"the patient" "a doctor" etc. Don't use names. It sounds tacky.
Irish Football
Mcat rudy ruettiger.
I name-dropped SDN users in my personal statement. Whoops.
Okay, so it's okay to say the doctors name, just not the affiliated hospital. I'll keep it safe and just mention last name (not first). As far as patient names - my personal statement is centered around a particular patient, and I can't call her "the patient" the whole time...it just wouldn't sound personal! I guess I will just name her "Mrs. Smith" ?
Doctor Strange said: "the patient" "a doctor" etc. Don't use names. It sounds tacky. Click to expand...
GomerPyle said: Okay, so it's okay to say the doctors name, just not the affiliated hospital. I'll keep it safe and just mention last name (not first). As far as patient names - my personal statement is centered around a particular patient, and I can't call her "the patient" the whole time...it just wouldn't sound personal! I guess I will just name her "Mrs. Smith" ? Click to expand...
Lol hearing so many different things... Okay - so I assume I should just go with a super generic name such as Ann and type (pseudonym) after the first time I mention that name, that way they know it is a made up name. Also, with doctors, I can probably just call him "the surgeon" but it would be better if I could just state his name (Dr. lastname). Would that be okay, or is the consensus that it's not okay?
I Love Cats
I honestly think the name drop is okay, especially if they are a significant contributor to your app in some way, like doing research with or shadowing them. If they are in your app already, why not just say it again? Just don't beat the horse by giving them more glory and focus than yourself. This is my opinion.
the evil queen of numbers
To go back to the original meaning of the phrase "name dropping" this usually means to use a name as a means of impressing someone. So if you talk about going on rounds with Dr. Gupta in Atlanta and scrubbing into a procedure with Dr Oz in NY while on a summer reserach rotation that might seem like name dropping in the PS even if you mention your shadowing of them or whatever in the experience section. It just sounds like showing off or trying to impress the adcom with your close ties to medical celebrities.
Benedictus123
Yeah, I mentioned the name of one of the doctors I shadowed, and I didn't think it was a big deal. It was just a natural part of the narrative. Like Lizzy indicates, 'name dropping' usually means mentioning someone famous, not just saying anyone. Everyone does it in real life conversation. I'll never forget the time I screwed up haploid and diploid while chatting with a Nobel Prize in Medicine winner in his office. If I mentioned that incident in my PS, THAT would be name dropping.
medschool2016
I agree, I shadowed a doctor, he is listed in my activities, and he is writing me a rec. Putting down Dr. A in my opinion is just silly. If confidentiality is the issue, people will already know who I am talking about.
But OP you said you were criticized last year for "name dropping" yet you want to continue the same thing this year. The majority of the people on here said to use a generic Mr. or Mrs. Doe and be equally generic with the docs you shadowed. As just about everyone said the real names of the docs are elsewhere on your application if the readers are interested. Learn from last year and be GENERIC.
BABSstudent
Established member.
GomerPyle said: Lol hearing so many different things... Okay - so I assume I should just go with a super generic name such as Ann and type (pseudonym) after the first time I mention that name, that way they know it is a made up name. Also, with doctors, I can probably just call him "the surgeon" but it would be better if I could just state his name (Dr. lastname). Would that be okay, or is the consensus that it's not okay? Click to expand...
So listing a patient's real first name is a no-go? i have to write some thing like "John (Psedonym)?"
csx said: So listing a patient's real first name is a no-go? i have to write some thing like "John (Psedonym)?" Click to expand...
Thank you so much guys. So for patient names, use a generic name and type (pseudonym) after the first time you mention the name. For doctors, you can use their real name as long as you don't build them up to be some sort of celebrity or big shot - and don't mention their affiliated hospital. Just use Dr. "lastname" and you will be fine.
Dr. Kenzō Tenma
ok sorry if I didn't catch anything or am ignorant, but in my PS, I talked about a relative of a patient, so I shouldn't use his real last name (it's a very common last name in a part of the world & does not reveal who he is at all)? I referred to him as Mr. ______ . And for shadowing/volunteer/research experiences I referred to in my PS, I used the doctor's last name, which seems ok? like Dr. ______ Thanks!
LizzyM said: I just posted this anecdote on another thread... applicant used a real first name, had the name of the organization in his "experience" section and the mother of the person mentioned by real first name was the adcom member reading the application!! (Making it worse, the adcom member had just buried her son who was mentioned by name in the PS.) Click to expand...
AxiomaticTruth
Hopefulmed3.
I mention the first name of the patient(which is pretty generic) and the nickname he liked to be called by. I don't say what disease he has, just that it is rare. Is that too much information?
acceptmeplease
hopefulmed3 said: I mention the first name of the patient(which is pretty generic) and the nickname he liked to be called by. I don't say what disease he has, just that it is rare. Is that too much information? Click to expand...
This thread has made me very paranoid. In my app, already submitted, I mentioned the first name of a patient along with the gender, an age, and a disease. Though I have previously been well versed in HIPAA, it never occurred to me while writing my personal statement that I was violating any privacy laws. Probably because the name is common enough (though it is in fact the real name), I am just guessing the age (but I am probably close, as it's a child), and I am guessing the disease (but it is either this or something similar, because I know what unit she was on and who her physicians were). Any input on what could be the consequences of having these details in a personal statement? If it is that bad, I might just forego applying this cycle - I was considering taking another year off anyway... :/
snorlax said: This thread has made me very paranoid. In my app, already submitted, I mentioned the first name of a patient along with the gender, an age, and a disease. Though I have previously been well versed in HIPAA, it never occurred to me while writing my personal statement that I was violating any privacy laws. Probably because the name is common enough (though it is in fact the real name), I am just guessing the age (but I am probably close, as it's a child), and I am guessing the disease (but it is either this or something similar, because I know what unit she was on and who her physicians were). Any input on what could be the consequences of having these details in a personal statement? If it is that bad, I might just forego applying this cycle - I was considering taking another year off anyway... :/ Click to expand...
username456789
This should not be rocket surgery. If the patient's real name is John Robinson, just say "Mr. R" or "JR." Or, be like me and just use a different name altogether, but still go by the same rule I just mentioned (John Robinson now becomes "Mr. S" or "WS." If you shadowed a doctor, he or she is referred to as "Dr. S", "Dr. K", etc.
BABSstudent said: Well, it is too late now. You already spent the money so you should probably go with it. If anyone brings it up, just say it was a fake name and estimations. But serious, in the future, keep in mind the patient and their privacy. Would you like it if some premed took your low point and made it the center part of their application? What if they did it without your consent and stated what you said to a doctor/your health record (which you thought was private). It may come off extremely negative depending on who reads your application or they might not notice. Whatever happens in the end, at least you know about HIPAA and will (hopefully) never reveal a patient's health information again in a way that allows someone to readily identify them. Click to expand...
Purrrrrr!?!11??
GomerPyle said: I understand that using first and last name, as well as hospital affiliation is name dropping, but can I just say just the last name (shadowing Dr. Doe, I learned......)? Click to expand...
S: name-dropping (the practice of casually mentioning important people in order to impress your listener) "the hard thing about name-dropping is to avoid being too obvious about it" Click to expand...
Getting redic up in here. For a physician: If it's someone you mention multiple times and it sounds weird not to mention the name, "Dr. Smith" is fine. "Dr. Bob Smith, MD, Professor of Neurodermatologic Surgery" sounds like you are trying to impress people. See the distinction? For a patient: "I was intrigued by the patients. One patient, "Mr. Doe," had a fascinating conditon.... blah blah." Using quotes and "Doe" makes it easy to tell it's a fake name.
JJMrK said: Getting redic up in here. For a physician: If it's someone you mention multiple times and it sounds weird not to mention the name, "Dr. Smith" is fine. "Dr. Bob Smith, MD, Professor of Neurodermatologic Surgery" sounds like you are trying to impress people. See the distinction? For a patient: "I was intrigued by the patients. One patient, "Mr. Doe," had a fascinating conditon.... blah blah." Using quotes and "Doe" makes it easy to tell it's a fake name. Click to expand...
- Jul 3, 2013
ericksonj15 said: Why would you ask for advice if you are going to go ahead and ignore 99% of the responses? In any event, writing Ann (pseudonym) looks absurd and is a waste of 11 characters. Click to expand...
LizzyM said: While were off -topic, let me warn all y'all about the minefield that is the "greatest challenge" secondary question. Remember that your parents' names, alma maters, etc are on your primary application. Now you go and write about your father's urinary incontinence after his prostate surgery (while that's your biggest challenge, I'm not sure) or about your parents' divorce after one of your parents came out of the closet, or about your father's love child that came as a surprise to the rest of the family. You can tell your story but be careful about sharing too much about other people who should have a right to privacy (in one of the three examples above, I happened to know the applicant's grandmother and I was a bit surprised at the information shared by the applicant). Click to expand...
GomerPyle said: I'm kind of leaning towards doing it this way - "My very first patient, Ann (pseudonym) was experiencing respiratory distress....." and refer to as Ann for the rest of the essay? I want to note that I will be mentioning the pseudonym in parenthesis the first time I mention Ann. Click to expand...
- death2cancer
- Mar 14, 2012
- Apr 16, 2010
- weanprednisone
- May 23, 2016
- Jun 5, 2012
- Apr 8, 2018
Revise Med School Personal Statement Before Reapplying
When reapplying to medical school, be sure to make more than simple edits.
Tips for Reapplying to Medical School
Highlight how you've grown through new volunteer or work experiences, additional coursework or an improved MCAT score. (Getty Images)
Failing to gain admittance to medical school after a grueling application cycle can be disappointing. After all of your hard work, the prospect of improving your application for a subsequent cycle may seem nearly impossible, especially given that some aspects, like your undergraduate GPA, may be unalterable.
If you are one of the many students faced with the task of reapplying to medical school , it is important to focus on revising those aspects of your application that are under your direct control.
Perhaps more than any other section of your application, the personal statement can be molded to reflect the strides you have made since the previous application cycle.
Here are three tips for modifying your personal statement for another round of applications to medical school .
1. Recognize that large-scale revision is required: When reapplying, remember that some medical schools have already reviewed your application and submitting a barely revised version of last year's essay will not impress admissions committees.
Consider writing another draft of the personal statement – not simply cleaning up lengthy sentences and improving your word choice.
Submit a Unique Med School Application
Ali Lotfi, M.D. March 20, 2018
Read your previous essay carefully and decide how being a reapplicant has changed your outlook on your prospective medical career. Brainstorm new avenues that your personal statement could take and eliminate ideas that are no longer as relevant to your application as they once were.
Be sure to highlight any major changes in how you see your future. You may find that your emphasis on the volunteer position you held in the emergency department as a college freshman no longer reflects your current understanding of what it means to be a doctor .
In addition, challenges that you faced in the past may no longer illustrate your current readiness for medical school as well as those you have faced in the intervening time between applications.
Focus on what is new about you, and consider dropping your emphasis on the volunteering or shadowing you did early in college in lieu of a focus on newer experiences.
2. Demonstrate growth but don't forget prior strong points: Medical schools are interested in how you have matured as a prospective student since your last application cycle. That maturity may be reflected in new volunteer or work experiences, additional coursework or an improved MCAT score .
Whatever routes you have taken to improve your application, be sure to highlight the personal, academic or professional growth you have experienced as a result.
Do you feel more academically prepared to enter medical school after completing a master's degree? Or has volunteering in a hospice setting allowed you to grasp the delicacy of life and the role of medicine in mortality in a new way?
In addition, incorporate aspects of your previous essay that have been reinforced since your last application. How have your new experiences enhanced your understanding of old ones? How has your conception of medicine changed in light of both the strengths you highlighted in your previous essay and personal changes since your last application?
3. Continue to demonstrate commitment to medicine: No matter whether you are applying to medical school for the first or third time, admissions committees wish to know that you are sure about your choice to attend medical school.
There is no room in your application for doubt that medicine is the right choice for you, and your essay is the prime place to demonstrate how committed to a career in medicine you are.
Instead of writing that you have always wanted to help people or that you have wanted to be a doctor since you were a child, highlight recent experiences that have led to a careful and conscious decision to continue pursuing this career path. For instance, did a medical mission trip since your last application create an interest in global health?
Rather than leaving your explanation of why you would like to pursue medicine untouched, provide concrete proof that you have continued to deepen your understanding of both the physician's role in the medical setting and how you might fit into that role.
Medical School Application Mistakes
Tags: medical school , graduate schools , education , students
About Medical School Admissions Doctor
Need a guide through the murky medical school admissions process? Medical School Admissions Doctor offers a roundup of expert and student voices in the field to guide prospective students in their pursuit of a medical education. The blog is currently authored by Dr. Ali Loftizadeh and Dr. Azadeh Salek at Admissions Helpers , a provider of medical school application services; Dr. Renee Marinelli at MedSchoolCoach , a premed and med school admissions consultancy; Dr. Rachel Rizal, co-founder and CEO of the Cracking Med School Admissions consultancy; Dr. Cassie Kosarec at Varsity Tutors , an advertiser with U.S. News & World Report; Dr. Kathleen Franco, a med school emeritus professor and psychiatrist; and Liana Meffert, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Iowa's Carver College of Medicine and a writer for Admissions Helpers. Got a question? Email [email protected] .
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2023 Medical School Personal Statement Ultimate Guide (25 Examples Included)
25 medical school personal statement examples, plus a step-by-step guide to writing a unique essay.
Part 1: Introduction to the medical school personal statement
Part 2: a step-by-step approach to writing an amazing medical school personal statement, part 3: in-depth analysis of a top-5 medical school personal statement, part 4: unique vs. clichéd medical school personal statements: 10 key differences, appendix: medical school personal statement examples.
You probably know someone who achieved a solid GPA and MCAT score , conducted research, shadowed physicians, engaged in meaningful volunteer work, and met all the other medical school requirements , yet still got rejected by every school they applied to.
You may have even heard of someone who was rejected by over 30 medical schools or who was shut out by every program two years in a row, despite doing “all the right things.”
It’s also common to come across people who have incredibly high stats (e.g., a 3.8 GPA and a 518 MCAT score) but didn’t get into a top-10 or top-20 medical school.
With stories like these and the scary statistic that over 60% of medical school applicants do not matriculate into medical school in any given year , it’s hard not to be anxious about the admissions process and wonder how you’ll ever get into medical school .
We bet you’ve puzzled over why so many qualified applicants are rejected beyond the fact that there are too few spots. After all, you’ve noticed how some applicants receive many interview invitations and acceptances, whereas others receive few or none.
The main reason why many qualified applicants are rejected from every med school—or significantly underperform expectations based on their admissions profile—is that they do not stand out on their application essays.
While the need to stand out holds true for every piece of written material on your applications, your personal statement is the single most important essay you will have to write during your admissions process. It’s especially important to get right because it allows you to show admissions committees how your story sets you apart among other qualified candidates (i.e., your competition). Moreover, the quality of your personal statement has a significant influence on your admissions success.
Of course, this means that writing a great medical school personal statement comes with a lot of pressure.
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Medical school personal statement challenges and opportunities
As you prepare to write, you’re probably concerned about:
Choosing the “right” topic
Making sure your essay is unique and not clichéd
Your essay clearly highlighting why you want to go into medicine
Whether it’s what admissions committees are looking for
The good news is that the AMCAS personal statement prompt—“Use the space provided to explain why you want to go to medical school”—is intentionally vague and gives you the opportunity to write about anything you want in up to 5,300 characters (including spaces), which roughly corresponds to 500 words or 1.5 single-spaced pages.
In other words, you have complete control over how you show admissions committees the following:
Who you are beyond your numbers and your resume (i.e., why you? )
The reasons you want to go into medicine (i.e., why medicine? )
Remember that admissions committees want to accept people , not just a collection of GPAs, MCAT scores, and premed extracurricular activities. Your personal statement and other written materials must therefore clearly highlight the specific qualities and experiences that would make you an excellent physician.
If your essay does this, you’ll have a leg up on other applicants. On the other hand, a clichéd personal statement will bore admissions readers and consequently make them less interested in admitting you.
Put another way, your personal statement is your best opportunity to stand out—or to look like everyone else who reads tons of sample essays, tries to “play it safe” with boring anecdotes, and ends up in the rejection pile.
What this personal statement guide covers
As you begin drafting your essay, you might find yourself perusing countless medical school personal statement examples online, at your college’s premed counseling office, or from friends who applied to med school a year or two ago. But remember that the sample personal statements you find on Student Doctor Network, Reddit , premed blogs, or at your college’s pre-health advising center are the same ones that everyone else is looking at and attempting to imitate!
To help you avoid common pitfalls and write a memorable personal statement, we wrote a comprehensive guide to help you get one step closer to earning your white coat rather than having to reapply to med school .
At a high level, this guide covers the following:
A step-by-step approach to producing a standout personal statement (Part 2)
A paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of a top-5 personal statement (Part 3)
Key differences that separate unique vs. clichéd personal statements (Part 4)
Medical school personal statement examples (Appendix)
Upon reviewing this guide, you’ll have all the information you need to go from having no topic ideas to producing a personal, meaningful, and polished essay. Throughout the guide, you’ll also come across various “special sections” that address common questions and concerns we’ve received from applicants over the years.
And if you’re left with lingering questions about how to write a personal statement for medical school, just submit them in the comments section at the end of the guide so we can answer them, usually within 24 hours.
Without further ado, it’s time to begin the writing process.
When should I begin to write my med school personal statement?
The earliest we recommend you begin working on your personal statement is fall of your junior year. That way, even if you decide to go to med school straight through (i.e., without taking a gap year or two), you will have completed a bulk of the extracurriculars that you will cover on your application and will also have an essay that describes your current thoughts and feelings about medicine. But regardless of whether you apply straight through or apply post-undergrad, it’s a good idea to begin working on your personal statement during the fall or winter preceding your application cycle (e.g., start writing your essay between September 2021 and January 2022 if you intend to apply during the 2022–2023 application cycle) so that you have plenty of time to write a great essay and can take full advantage of rolling admissions by submitting your primary application early.
Before writing, the typical applicant does two things:
Pulls up their resume and attempts to identify the experience that is “most unique” or “most authentic”
Searches for essay sample after essay sample, hoping to be inspired by someone else’s writing
Eventually, students begin to read every sample essay they can get their hands on, hoping that consuming countless examples will give them the “aha moment” they need to produce their own personal statement.
Here’s the problem: Without understanding why an essay is strong, you risk producing a cliche essay based on some “template” you came across.
With this “template approach,” you’ll risk making your essay sound like someone else’s, which is a sure-fire way of producing a clunky or clichéd essay. This is precisely why we included the numerous sample personal statements at the end of this guide.
We also don’t believe that reviewing your CV or thinking through your personal experiences to identify the “most unique” topic ideas is a valuable approach to brainstorming your personal statement. This “resume-first” approach tends to lead to writing an introduction that may not communicate your intended message, especially because it might not flow with the remainder of your experiences.
So, what should your personal statement include? Over the years, our students have found the most success by taking our “qualities-first” approach—thinking through the impression they want to leave on adcoms and then selecting the experiences that best highlight those qualities.
How to write a great personal statement introduction (Goal: Engage the reader)
Before you begin to write, we recommend that you:
Develop a list of qualities you want to demonstrate; and
Think of events or situations that highlight these qualities.
Then , you should write about one of these events or situations in a way that demonstrates these qualities and captures the reader’s attention.
The myth of the "perfect topic"
Every topic can lead to a standout or average personal statement, depending on how compellingly you write it. In other words, there's no such thing as a "good" or "bad" essay topic, only strong or weak execution. Many students delay working on their personal statement until they discover the “perfect topic,” but no such topic exists. We’ve read incredible essays and weak essays on pretty much every topic. What mattered was how the writer linked the topic with their personal path to medicine. We should reinforce a point mentioned in passing in the previous paragraph: pretty much every medical school personal statement topic has been used at this point. You can stand out by sharing your personal stories, unique insights, and eye-opening experiences, not by writing about a brand-new topic, as so few exist.
Step 1: List your greatest qualities.
To answer the personal statement prompt more easily, focus again on the question of what you want admissions committees to know about you beyond your numbers and achievements.
We’re not talking about your hobbies (e.g., “I followed Taylor Swift to every concert she performed in the U.S. during this past year”), although you could certainly point to aspects of your lifestyle in your essay to make your point.
Instead, we’re talking about which of your qualities –character, personality traits, attitudes–you want to demonstrate. Examples include:
Extraordinary compassion
Willingness to learn
Great listening skills
Knowledge-seeking
Persistence
And so on. If you have difficulty thinking of your great qualities (many students do), ask family members or close friends what you’re good at and why they like you. It might be awkward, but this exercise really helps because others tend to view us very differently from how we view ourselves.
Finally, choose the two or three qualities that you want to focus on in your personal statement. Let’s use compassion and knowledge-seeking as the foundational qualities of an original example for this guide.
We cannot overstate how important it is to think of the qualities you want to demonstrate in your personal statement before choosing a situation or event to write about. Students who decide on an event or situation first usually struggle to fit in their qualities within the confines of their story. This is one of the biggest medical school personal statement mistakes we see students make.
On the other hand, students who choose the qualities they want to convey first are easily able to demonstrate them because the event or situation they settle on naturally highlights these qualities.
I listed several qualities I can demonstrate, but I'm not sure which to choose. Can you say more?
Your personal statement represents just one part of your much larger application. You'll have opportunities to demonstrate several of your great qualities through your AMCAS Work and Activities section, your secondary essays, and even your interviews. Therefore, any two or three qualities you want to convey through your personal statement will work; don't stress about figuring out the "perfect" ones, as no such thing exists. And when in doubt, ask family members and friends.
Step 2: When or where have you demonstrated these qualities?
Now that we’re off our soapbox and you’ve chosen qualities to highlight, it’s time to list any event(s) or setting(s) where you’ve demonstrated them.
We should explicitly mention that this event or setting doesn't need to come from a clinical experience (e.g., shadowing a physician , interacting with a young adult patient at a cancer center, working with children in an international clinic) or a research experience (e.g., making a major finding in cancer research during your gap year ), although it’s okay if it involves an extracurricular activity directly related to medicine.
In fact, since most students start their essays by describing clinical or research experiences, starting off with something else–travel (e.g., a camping trip in Yellowstone), volunteering (e.g., building homes in New Orleans), family (e.g., spending time with and learning from your elderly and ill grandmother back home in New Hampshire), work (e.g., helping out at your parents’ donut shop)–can help you immediately stand out.
Let’s start with the example of building homes in New Orleans. Why? Because we could easily demonstrate compassion and knowledge-seeking through this experience. Notice how the qualities we select can choose the story for us?
Step 3: Describe your event as a story.
Here’s where the art of writing a great personal statement really comes in.
Admissions officers read thousands of essays, most of which are very clichéd or dry. Therefore, it’s critical that you stand out by engaging the reader from the very beginning. The best way by far to capture admissions officers early is by developing a story about the event or situation you chose in Step 2 at the start of your essay.
Keep in mind, however, that the same event can be written about in a boring or engaging way. Therefore, the story or topic you choose is less important than how you pull it off.
Let’s look at an actual example of how the same event can be described in a routine vs. compelling manner:
One of my most eye-opening experiences came when I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans during the summer months of 2014. Up to that point, I had only heard about the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina nine years earlier. Although pictures and stories of the aftermath compelled me to volunteer, it was not until I observed the emotional pounding the people of New Orleans had experienced that I developed a greater sense of compassion for their plight.
Compelling:
New Orleans was hot and humid during the summer months of 2014–no surprise there. However, for a native Oregonian like me, waking up to 90-degree and 85%-humidity days initially seemed like too much to bear. That was until I reflected on the fact that my temporary discomfort was minute in contrast to the destruction of communities and emotional pounding experienced by the people of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina nine years earlier. Although pictures and stories of the aftermath compelled me to understand its effects on the community and volunteer, actually building homes and interacting with the locals, like nine-year-old Jermaine, who cried as I held his hand while we unveiled his rebuilt home, taught me that caring for people was as much about lifting spirits as making physical improvements.
Many people may feel the routine example is pretty good. Upon closer look, however, it seems that:
The focus is as much on New Orleanians as the applicant
The story is not particularly relatable (unless the reader had also volunteered there)
There isn’t much support for the writer actually being touched by the people there
On the other hand, the compelling example:
Keeps the spotlight on the applicant throughout (e.g., references being from Oregon, discusses her reflections, interacting with Jermaine)
Has a relatable plot (e.g., temporary discomfort, changing perspectives)
Is authentic (e.g., provides an example of how she lifted spirits)
Does my essay need to have an “aha moment,” that is, the moment when I decided to become a doctor? I’ve noticed that so many medical school personal statement examples include one.
Your essay does not need to include an “aha moment.” In fact, many of the best med school personal statements we’ve read do not include such a moment. Students who believe they need to mention an “aha moment” in their personal statement are typically falling into the trap of writing what they believe the reader wants. But frankly, the reader simply wants to learn about your personal and professional path to medicine. We’ve polled many students over the years about whether they had an experience that immediately switched them on to medicine. Our findings indicate that only 10 percent of students have experienced a moment where they knew they wanted to become a doctor and never looked back. The other 90 percent either knew they wanted to become a physician since childhood, had a growing interest in medicine over years, or came to the realization during or after college.
Step 4: Demonstrate your qualities.
(Note: This section applies to all aspects of your essay.)
“Show, don’t tell” is one of the most common pieces of advice given for writing personal statements, but further guidance or examples are rarely provided to demonstrate what it looks like when done well.
This is unfortunate because the best way to understand how standout personal statements demonstrate qualities through an engaging story is by reading two examples of the same situation: one that “tells” about a quality, and another that “shows” a quality.
Let’s revisit the last sentence of each story example we provided in the previous section to better understand this distinction.
Telling (from the routine story):
…it was not until I observed the emotional pounding the people of New Orleans had experienced that I developed a greater sense of compassion for their plight.
Showing (from the compelling story):
…actually building homes and interacting with the locals, like 9 year-old Jermaine, who cried as I held his hand while we unveiled his rebuilt home, taught me that caring for people…
Notice how the second example demonstrates compassion without ever mentioning the word “compassion” (hence no bolded words)? Moreover, the same sentence demonstrates knowledge-seeking:
Although pictures and stories of the aftermath compelled me to understand its effects on the community and volunteer, actually building homes and interacting with the locals ...
That’s what you’re going for.
Think about it. Whom do you consider to be more kind:
A person who says, “I’m really nice!”; or
A person who you've observed doing nice things for others?
Clearly, the second person will be viewed as more kind, even if there's no real-world difference between their levels of kindness. Therefore, by demonstrating your qualities, you will come across as more impressive and authentic to admissions committees.
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How to write strong personal statement body paragraphs (Goal: Describe your path to medicine)
After writing your opening paragraph to engage the reader, it’s time to write the meat and potatoes of your personal statement. Specifically, it’s time to discuss experiences that helped you grow and led to you to pursue medicine.
What personal statement topics should I avoid?
Put differently, "What should I not write about in my personal statement?" There are no specific topics that you should definitely avoid in your essay. Unfortunately, you will hear many people tell you not to bring up certain things—a parent who is a physician, a physical health or mental health condition, sports participation, volunteering abroad, etc. However, all of these anecdotes or topics can be the foundation for strong personal statements, but also weak ones; what matters is your writing approach.
Step 5: Discuss your most formative experiences that led you to medicine.
Return to your list from Step 2 (When or where have you demonstrated these qualities?) and choose one to three more experiences/areas (e.g., research, clinical work) that led you to medicine.
Why choose no more than four experiences total?
Because you should be aiming for depth over breadth (remember, you’re working with a 5,300-character limit for both AMCAS (MD application) and AACOMAS (DO application). Rather than discuss everything you’ve done, apply the following five-step formula to expand on key experiences in the body paragraphs of your personal statement:
Discuss why you pursued the experience
Mention how you felt during the experience
Describe what you accomplished and learned
Discuss how your experience affected you and the world around you
Describe how the experience influenced your decision to pursue medicine
Does the guidance in this resource apply to DO personal statements as well?
Yes, for the most part. We cover similarities and differences between AMCAS and AACOMAS personal statements in detail in our MD vs. DO guide .
Below are two examples–one routine and one compelling–to demonstrate how to achieve this:
Shadowing the neurosurgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital and witnessing their unwavering dedication to their patients and patients’ families helped me realize that I wanted to make a similar impact on people's lives.
This sentence doesn't answer the “Why medicine?” question (for example, you could greatly impact people's lives through law or teaching), nor does it demonstrate your qualities (although it makes the neurosurgeons look really good).
I was initially frustrated while shadowing neurosurgeons and caring for patients (e.g., conversing with them during downtime and providing anything in my power to make them comfortable, such as extra pillows, water, or snacks) at Massachusetts General Hospital because many patients recovered very slowly–and sometimes not at all. I wondered whether these experiences would deter me from pursuing medicine. Therefore, I was surprised when the opposite occurred. The physicians’ unwavering dedication to their patients and families' expressed gratitude–even in their saddest days–provided more than enough confirmation that medicine was the path I should pursue to make a similar physical and emotional impact on people's lives.
By going deeper about an experience, this example allowed the student to convey:
How they felt (“I was initially frustrated while shadowing…”)
How they were affected (“…the opposite [of determent] occurred”)
How they were influenced to pursue medicine specifically
Collectively, the student demonstrated their compassion, personal growth, and desire to pursue medicine.
(Note: Discuss your formative experiences in the body paragraphs in chronological order, as long as it doesn’t disrupt your essay’s flow. For example, if you choose to write about one experience in 2014 and another in 2013, write about your 2013 experience first, even if you wrote about the 2014 experience in your introductory paragraph. Having a clear timeline makes it easier for the reader to follow along.)
How many experiences should I cover in my personal statement?
If you’re like most students, you should cover somewhere between three and four personal or professional experiences in your personal statement. Beyond four, and you risk covering too much and not achieving sufficient depth; your essay might read like a narrative. Fewer than three, and your experience descriptions might get too wordy. That said, every essay is different, so you might be able to write a fantastic personal statement with fewer than three experiences or more than four. In fact, one of the best personal statements we’ve ever helped a student produce focused on a single 24-hour time period that spanned two separate experiences.
How to write a memorable personal statement conclusion (Goal: Tie it all together)
It’s (almost) time to end your personal statement and move on!
The concluding paragraph should highlight three things:
Your positive qualities (you can mention them explicitly here rather than “show” them)
Perspectives gained from your formative experiences
Your passion for medicine
Additionally, the best essays somehow refer to their introductory paragraph’s story to “close the loop.”
Step 6: Reemphasize your qualities, perspectives, and passions.
Focusing on experiences in your introduction and body paragraphs that convey your greatest qualities helps you develop a consistent theme throughout your essay. It also makes closing your essay much easier.
To demonstrate this, we’ll show you how New Orleans volunteering and neurosurgery shadowing can be tied together to reemphasize compassion and knowledge-seeking, highlight perspectives gained, and communicate a strong desire to pursue medicine.
The consistent theme throughout my extracurricular work is that, whereas I initially pursue experiences–clinical, volunteer, or otherwise–to learn, what sticks with me even more than newfound knowledge is the compassion I develop for the people I serve. Furthermore, I have realized that there is a multitude of ways to serve, such as treating people’s physical ailments, offering empathy for anxious family members, or leaving my comfort zone to help a struggling community. These perspectives, coupled with my lifelong fascination with the human body’s complexities, leave no doubt that medicine is the path through which I want to use my abilities to make a positive holistic impact on people’s lives. I hope 9-year-old Jermaine knows that I was equally touched by his gratitude for a rebuilt home, and how his reaction was partly responsible for me devoting my career to help others feel the way he did on that hot and muggy summer day.
Let’s see whether this concluding paragraph checks all three boxes:
Positive qualities (“knowledge-seeking” and “compassion,”): check
Perspectives gained from formative experiences (“…realized that there is a multitude of ways to serve”): check
Passion for medicine (“medicine is the path through which I want to use my abilities to make a positive holistic impact on people’s lives”): check
This paragraph also gets bonus points for looping Jermaine in one final time.
Essay conquered.
Does the guidance in this resource apply to TMDSAS personal statements as well?
Yes, though the TMDSAS personal statement offers a 5000-character limit vs. 5300 characters for AMCAS and AACOMAS. You can learn more about the Texas medical school application by reading our TMDSAS guide , which includes examples of a successful personal statement, personal characteristics essay, and optional essay.
Final thoughts
Your medical school personal statement offers a unique opportunity to share your story and describe your path to medicine–however you want to.
Rather than dive right in and list the extracurricular experiences that you think will most impress admissions committees, consider what impression you want to leave them with. In other words, which of your qualities do you want to be remembered for?
Once you've identified your defining qualities, the task of communicating why you are specifically fit for medicine becomes much easier. Through engaging stories, you can leave no doubt in readers' minds that you're not only qualified for this field, but also the right person for the job.
If you've ever read an article or forum post offering “tips” on how to write a great medical school personal statement, you've probably been given clichéd advice with very little supporting information, like:
“Be yourself”
“Offer a unique angle”
“Show, don’t tell”
“Get personal”
“Don’t use clichés”
“Be interesting”
“Check for grammar and spelling errors”
And so on. Here’s what usually happens when you read tips like these: You understand the information, but you’re still stuck in the same place you were before reading the article. You continue to stare at the blank document on your computer, hoping you’ll have an “aha moment.”
Unfortunately, “aha moments” rarely, if ever, come. Much more typically, students procrastinate and/or end up writing about extracurricular and personal experiences that they think admissions committees (adcoms) will be impressed by.
The problem is that if you don’t get your personal statement right, you can compromise your entire application.
If you’re a high-achieving applicant with a strong GPA, MCAT score , and rich extracurricular activities , you may get into less desirable schools than you’d hoped. If you’re an applicant on the borderline, you may not get in at all.
On the other hand, writing a powerful medical school personal statement provides adcoms insights into who you are as a person and as a budding physician. More importantly, it helps maximize your odds of admission in an increasingly competitive process.
We want you to be part of this latter group so that you can get into the best schools possible. Therefore, we figured it would be valuable to share a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of a medical school personal statement that helped one of our students get into their dream school, which also happens to be ranked in the top 5 of the U.S. News & World Report Best Medical Schools rankings.
Throughout the analysis, we apply our internal essay evaluation framework, QPUD , which stands for the following:
You can apply the QPUD framework to analyze your own writing. You’ll soon learn that the best personal statements aren’t produced by accident, but rather through multiple thoughtful iterations.
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Full-length medical school personal statement with analysis
Before we get into the weeds with our analysis, we encourage you to read the personal statement example in its entirety. As you go through it, you should keep the following questions in mind:
Does the applicant demonstrate qualities that are desirable in a physician? If so, which ones?
Is the personal statement mostly about the applicant, or other people?
Could anyone else have written this personal statement, or is it unique to the applicant?
Does the personal statement cover too much, or is there real depth ?
Here’s the personal statement sample:
Sure, it was a little more crowded, cluttered, and low-tech, but Mr. Jackson’s biology classroom at David Starr Jordan High School in South Los Angeles seemed a lot like the one in which I first learned about intermolecular forces and equilibrium constants. Subconsciously, I just assumed teaching the 11th graders about the workings of the cardiovascular system would go smoothly. Therefore, I was shocked when in my four-student group, I could only get Nate’s attention; Cameron kept texting, Mercedes wouldn’t end her FaceTime call, and Juanita was repeatedly distracted by her friends. After unsuccessfully pleading for the group’s attention a few times, I realized the students weren’t wholly responsible for the disconnect. Perhaps the problem was one of engagement rather than a lack of interest since their focus waned when I started using terminology—like vena cava—that was probably gibberish to them. So, I drew a basic square diagram broken into quarters for the heart and a smiley face for the body’s cells that needed oxygen and nutrients. I left out structure names to focus on how four distinct chambers kept the oxygenated and deoxygenated blood separate, prompting my students with questions like, “What happens after the smiley face takes the oxygen?” This approach enabled my students to draw conclusions themselves. We spent much of class time going through the figure-8 loop, but their leaning over the table to see the diagram more clearly and blurting out answers demonstrated their engagement and fundamental understanding of the heart as a machine. My elation was obvious when they remembered it the following week.
Ever since my middle school robotics days when a surgeon invited us to LAC+USC Medical Center to unwrap Tootsie rolls with the da Vinci surgical system, I’ve felt that a physician’s role goes beyond serving patients and families. I feel an additional responsibility to serve as a role model to younger students—especially teenagers—who may be intrigued by STEM fields and medicine. Furthermore, my experience in Mr. Jackson’s classroom demonstrated the substantial benefits of assessing specific individuals’ needs even when it requires diverging slightly from the structured plan. Being flexible to discover how to best engage my students, in some ways, parallels the problem-solving aspect I love about medicine.
Clinical experiences go even further by beautifully merging this curiosity-satisfying side of medicine with what I feel is most fulfilling: the human side of care provision. My experience with a tiny three-year-old boy and his mother in genetics clinic confirmed the importance of the latter. Not only was I excited to meet him because he presented with a rare condition, but also because he and his chromosomal deletion had been the focus of my recent clinical case report, published in Genetics in Medicine. While researching his dysmorphic features and disabilities, other patients with similar deletions, and the possible genes contributing to his symptoms, I stayed up until 4 AM for several weeks, too engrossed to sleep. What was more exciting than learning about the underlying science, however, was learning about the opportunity to meet the boy and his mother in person and share my findings with them.
As soon as I walked into the examination room, I noticed the mother avoiding eye contact with the genetic counselor while clutching her son to her chest. I sensed her anxiety and disinterest in hearing about my research conclusions. The impact of her son’s condition on their daily lives probably transcended the scientific details in my report. So despite my desire to get into the science, I restrained myself from overwhelming her. Instead, I asked her to share details about the wonderful interventions she had procured for her son—speech and physical therapy, sign language lessons, special feeds, etc. Through our conversations, I realized that she was really looking for reassurance—for doing a great job caring for her son. I validated her efforts and offered relief that there were other families navigating similar difficulties. As the appointment progressed, I observed her gradually relaxing. Rather than feel weighed down by the research findings I was eager to get off my chest, I felt light as well.
At the end of the appointment, the mom offered to let me hold her son, who gazed back at me with his bright blue eyes. While cradling the little boy humanized the medical details, the mother’s gesture displayed profound trust. Above all, this experience allowed me to recognize that interactions between a patient plus family and their doctor are more than intermediary vehicles to treatment; they are critical and beneficial in their own right. Learning this affirmed my longstanding desire and eagerness to become a physician. While research is essential and will surely always trigger my curiosity, I want my work to transcend the lab bench. Specifically, I want to continue engaging with patients and helping them through life’s difficult moments—with physical treatment and genuine support. And since working with each patient constitutes an entirely different experience, I know my medical career will never cease to be fulfilling.
(Word count: 835; Character count: 5,223)
What if some of the experiences I choose to write about in my essay aren't directly related to medicine?
No worries. Medical school admissions committees look to admit individuals with qualities befitting good doctors. These qualities can be demonstrated through experiences directly related to medicine, as well as through experiences that seemingly have little to do with medicine but cast a very positive light on you. That said, your personal statement should include at least one experience directly related to medicine. In your essay, you'll want to briefly describe how your interest in medicine developed, followed by how you consistently pursued that interest.
Now, let’s analyze the entire personal statement paragraph by paragraph and answer the questions posed above.
Paragraph 1
The applicant does a great job of engaging the reader. While reading the paragraph, it’s easy to get transported to the classroom setting they describe due to the level of detail provided. (e.g., “crowded, cluttered, and low-tech,” “Cameron kept texting, Mercedes wouldn’t end her FaceTime call…,” “leaning over the table”) The applicant also highlights their service work in the community, and hints that the school may be in an underserved part of town.
The applicant contrasts the chaotic, distracted classroom with the attention and enthusiasm students exhibit after their educational intervention. This “transformation” reflects positively on the applicant because it demonstrates that they can get creative in addressing a difficult situation.
At this point, we don’t yet know about the applicant’s passion for medicine, but we learn about their interest in biology, teaching, serving, and working directly with people. All of these activities can be pursued through medicine, so the transition to medicine later in their personal statement can be seamless.
Q: Does the applicant demonstrate qualities that are desirable in a physician? If so, which ones?
Patient, assumes responsibility, flexible (e.g., “I realized the students weren’t wholly responsible for the disconnect. Perhaps the problem was one of engagement rather than a lack of interest since their focus waned when I started using terminology—like vena cava—that was probably gibberish to them. So, I drew a basic square diagram…”)
Commitment to helping students/people learn and understand (e.g., “prompting my students with questions…,” “My elation was obvious when they remembered it the following week.”)
P: Is the paragraph mostly about the applicant, or other people?
While the applicant discusses others in the introduction (e.g., the 11th graders, Nate, Juanita), there’s no question that they are the primary and most interesting character in the paragraph.
U: Could anyone else have written this paragraph, or is it unique to the applicant?
Although all competitive applicants participate in service work—many within schools—the writer makes this paragraph their own by doing the following:
Including highly specific details about the setting, environment, and students
Describing their thoughts, insights, and emotions whenever possible
D: Does the paragraph cover too much, or is there real depth?
This paragraph is a model of depth. The applicant describes how they taught a single biology lesson during a single class period at a single school. It doesn’t get much more focused than that.
Does my personal statement's introduction paragraph story have to be about an experience during college or beyond?
Not necessarily. That said, if you write your introduction about an earlier-than-college experience, you'll want to quickly transition to your college and post-college years. While medical schools want to learn about your most formative experiences, they really want to know about who you are today.
Paragraph 2
The applicant effectively uses the second paragraph to provide context, about their early interest in medicine and in mentoring youth. It becomes clear, therefore, why the applicant started off their essay writing about a teaching experience in an 11th-grade classroom.
In addition, the applicant quickly transitions from a non-medical service experience to introduce reasons behind their interest in medicine. For example, the applicant describes how they intend to serve patients and families through the field, as well as scratch their own problem-solving itch to help people.
Another important piece to highlight is how the applicant uses showing vs. telling differently across the first two paragraphs. Whereas the introductory paragraph primarily shows qualities (e.g., “So, I drew a basic square diagram…”), the second paragraph primarily tells (e.g., “Being flexible to discover how to best engage my students…”).
Because the applicant proved their flexibility in the introduction (i.e., by showing it), they can claim to be flexible here (i.e., by telling it). On the other hand, if the applicant called themselves flexible from the outset without providing evidence, they may have come across as arrogant or unobservant.
Beyond describing their early interest in medicine (i.e., “Ever since my middle school robotics days when a surgeon invited us to LAC+USC Medical Center…” there is little demonstration of qualities here. Nevertheless, the goals for this paragraph—transition to medicine, describe at a high level what draws them to medicine, set up later stories about problem solving—are clearly achieved.
The second paragraph highlights hypothetical individuals (e.g., patients and families, specific individuals) to describe the applicant’s medical interests.
Between the early experience observing the da Vinci surgical system and continuing the discussion of Mr. Jackson’s classroom, it would be very difficult for another applicant to convincingly replicate this paragraph.
The applicant certainly covers more experiences here than in the intro, but they do so to bridge the service discussion with the upcoming discussion of medical experiences. Notice also how this paragraph is intentionally kept short. The goal isn’t to get too deep into their middle school experiences, or to do more telling than necessary. Make the transition and move on so you can achieve more depth later.
Does my med school personal statement need to discuss a challenge I experienced?
It’s a common misconception to think that you have to highlight some major adversity to sound impressive. It’s true that some students have experienced greater challenges than others and their process of overcoming those challenges has led them to develop qualities befitting a great doctor. But what matters is your ability to discuss your commitment to becoming a physician and the insights you developed about your place in the medical field via personal and extracurricular experiences.
Paragraph 3
The third paragraph immediately builds off of the preceding one by letting the reader know that even more fulfilling than satisfying their own curiosity (and problem solving) is providing care to real people. This is a very important disclosure because the reader may be wondering what the applicant’s primary motivation is. As a medical school applicant, you must convey a “people first” attitude.
The applicant then dives right into what sounds like a fascinating research experience that not only results in a publication (to be discussed further in their AMCAS Work and Activities section ), but also leads to actually meeting the patient with the rare genetic condition. The applicant’s approach clearly integrates their passion for research and clinical work.
The paragraph also ends with a strong “hook.” The admissions reader is left wondering how the meeting with the boy and his mother went, so they will continue to read attentively.
Curious and hard-working (e.g., “While researching his dysmorphic features and disabilities, other patients with similar deletions, and the possible genes contributing to his symptoms, I stayed up until 4 AM for several weeks, too engrossed to sleep”)
Accomplished (e.g., “my recent clinical case report, published in Genetics in Medicine .”)
Once again, the applicant does a masterful job of incorporating storytelling and other characters (i.e., the boy and his mother) to convey the qualities that will make them a great doctor. In other words, this paragraph isn’t really about the boy and his mother, but rather how the applicant prepped for their meeting with them.
Between the upcoming meeting with the three-year-old boy and his mother, researching the boy’s genetic condition, and getting published in a specific journal, it’s basically impossible to replicate this paragraph.
The applicant maintains focus on how their interest in service and research can be applied to help real people. They take it one step further by highlighting a specific time when they did just that. There is no additional fluff, tangential information, or competing storylines.
Does my personal statement need to have a "hook"?
The short answer: Yes. But as with most things related to medical school admissions, the answer is more complicated. A "hook" is a sentence or story, typically presented in the opening paragraph, intended to grab the reader's attention. Because adcoms read tons of applications each year, it's important that they're engaged from the start. Otherwise, it's very likely that they will discount the remainder of your personal statement and your odds of getting into their school will drop precipitously. Unfortunately, many medical school applicants go overboard and force a dramatic story in hopes of presenting a hook—a trauma they observed in the ER, an emotional moment with a patient, and so on. The story might be marginally associated with the rest of their essay but will largely be viewed as a cheap way to capture attention. To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with discussing a difficult medical counter, personal difficulty, or any other particular type of story. However, your selection must be associated with the qualities you want to demonstrate across your entire essay and serve as its foundation. In addition, your hook need not be your opening sentence. It could be the entire first paragraph, a cliffhanger at the end of your opening paragraph, or even a second paragraph that was set up by the first. The goal is simply to ensure that you're engaging your reader early and setting the tone for the remainder of your essay.
Paragraph 4
As soon as I walked into the examination room, I noticed the mother avoiding eye contact with the genetic counselor while clutching her son to her chest. I sensed her anxiety and disinterest in hearing about my research conclusions. The impact of her son’s condition on their daily lives probably transcended the scientific details in my report. So, despite my desire to get into the science, I restrained myself from overwhelming her. Instead, I asked her to share details about the wonderful interventions she had procured for her son—speech and physical therapy, sign language lessons, special feeds, etc. Through our conversations, I realized that she was really looking for reassurance—for doing a great job caring for her son. I validated her efforts and offered relief that there were other families navigating similar difficulties. As the appointment progressed, I observed her gradually relaxing. Rather than feel weighed down by the research findings I was eager to get off my chest, I felt light as well.
The applicant right away begins to describe their meeting with the boy and his mother. We understand that while the applicant was ready to share their research with the family, the mother appears anxious and is more interested in understanding how she can help her son.
It should also be noted that the applicant does not judge the mother in any way and offers supporting evidence for their conclusions about what the mother must’ve been thinking and feeling. For example, rather than just call the mother “anxious,” the applicant first describes how she avoided eye contact and clutched her son tightly.
The applicant once again demonstrates their flexibility by showing how they modified their talking points to fit the family’s needs rather than satisfy their own curiosity and self-interest. Moreover, they highlight not only the approach they took with this family, but also the impact on their care. For example, after discussing how they validated the mother’s care efforts, the applicant mentions how the mother relaxed.
Socially aware (e.g., “I noticed the mother avoiding eye contact with the genetic counselor while clutching her son to her chest. I sensed her anxiety and disinterest in hearing about my research conclusions. The impact of her son’s condition on their daily lives probably transcended the scientific details in my report.”)
Flexible (e.g., “So despite my desire to get into the science, I restrained myself from overwhelming her. Instead, I asked her to share details about the wonderful interventions she had procured for her son—speech and physical therapy, sign language lessons, special feeds, etc.”)
Socially skilled and validating (e.g., “Through our conversations, I realized that she was really looking for reassurance—for doing a great job caring for her son. I validated her efforts and offered relief that there were other families navigating similar difficulties.”)
At first glance, it may appear that this paragraph is as much about the mother as it is about the applicant. After all, the mother procured various services for her son and has done a marvelous job of caring for him.
Nevertheless, the applicant is not competing in any way with the mother. By demonstrating their flexibility and social skills, the applicant reinforces great qualities they’ve demonstrated elsewhere and remains at the top of our minds.
In isolation, perhaps. However, at this point in the personal statement, along with the loads of insights, thoughts, and feelings, there’s no question that this story is unique to the applicant.
This paragraph is another model of depth. The applicant goes into highly specific details about a memorable experience with a specific family. There’s significant showing vs. telling, which continues to maintain the reader’s engagement.
Paragraph 5
How many people should i ask to review my personal statement.
Typically, we recommend that no matter than two people—people who have experience evaluating med school personal statements—review your essay. Everyone you show your essay to will have an opinion and suggest changes, but trying to appease everyone usually leads to diluting your own voice. And even if your personal statement is great, someone will eventually identify something they perceive to be an issue, which will only exacerbate your anxiety. Two people is a good number because you can receive more than one opinion but avoid the problem of having too many cooks in the kitchen.
The final paragraph accomplishes three key goals:
Concluding the story about meeting the boy and his mother;
Bringing the applicant’s insights full circle; and
Restating their interest in medicine while offering a preview of what type of physician they intend to be.
By describing how they built a trusting relationship with the patient and his mother, the applicant deliberately continues the theme of patient-centered care ultimately being more important to them—and to medicine—than underlying pathologies and interestingness of various medical scenarios.
Although the applicant does not circle back to the classroom story in the introduction, they close the loop with the personal statement’s central and most important story. In addition, they end on a high note by mentioning how enthusiastic they are about their medical career.
Trustworthy (e.g., “At the end of the appointment, the mom offered to let me hold her son, who gazed back at me with his bright blue eyes.”)
Insightful (e.g., “Above all, this experience allowed me to recognize that interactions between a patient plus family and their doctor are more than intermediary vehicles to treatment; they are critical and beneficial in their own right.”)
Patient-centered and caring (e.g., “While research is essential and will surely always trigger my curiosity, I want my work to transcend the lab bench. Specifically, I want to continue engaging with patients and helping them through life’s difficult moments—with physical treatment and genuine support.”)
This paragraph is all about the applicant. Even the detail about cradling the boy highlights their earlier efforts in building trust with the family. After this brief conclusion to the story, the applicant explores their own developing insights about the field and how they intend to practice medicine in the future.
In combination with the insights shared in this paragraph, the story and details up to this point round out the personal statement uniquely.
Conclusion paragraphs should summarize insights and information presented earlier in the personal statement. The applicant does a fine job of solidifying their longstanding interest in medicine without adding significant new details, knowing they can cover additional stories throughout their secondary applications and during interviews .
Can you say a little more about how I can write my essay so that it's clear I want to go into medicine and not another health care field?
- A long-term commitment to medically-relevant experiences
- A clear understanding of what medicine entails that other fields don't
At various points while writing your personal statement, you may wonder whether your essay is “good enough.”
The goal of this guide isn’t to allow you to compare your personal statement to the sample we’ve provided. Rather, we want you to have a framework for evaluating your work to ensure that it conveys your outstanding qualities, engages the reader, and describes your authentic journey to medicine.
If you’re like most applicants, you’re worried about choosing a clichéd medical school personal statement topic . You fear that your application may be thrown into the rejection pile if you fail to present yourself in a unique way.
To help you avoid common pitfalls and write a memorable personal statement, we’ve highlighted eight different ways that unique personal statements differ from clichéd ones.
We’ll first describe the clichéd approach and describe why it’s problematic. Then we’ll provide specific writing techniques you can use to make your essay truly stand out.
Clichéd Approach 1: Only discussing experiences that you think make you seem the most impressive.
Most applicants begin writing their essays by choosing the experience(s) that they think will help them stand out to admissions committees. By focusing on specific experiences that applicants think will impress the admissions committee (e.g. clinical shadowing, research, and volunteering), students often forget to demonstrate their unique qualities.
Let’s see how this becomes a problem.
In your AMCAS Work and Activities section, you may have included your experience conducting chemistry research for three years, shadowing in a clinic for two years, volunteering as an English tutor for underserved youth in Chicago for six years, volunteering with a medical mission trip to Haiti for two summers, and serving as president of a premed organization for one year.
Given these choices, most students would choose to write about clinical volunteering in Chicago or their medical mission trip to Haiti because they think these experiences were most impressive. If you take one of these two approaches, you would probably start the essay by describing an interaction with a very ill patient or one with whom you experienced a language barrier.
An essay about clinical shadowing could start something like this:
Clichéd introduction
I used to eat lunch with Felipa on Wednesdays. She was always very nervous when she came in to get her blood drawn, and she liked to speak with me beforehand. Although she was suffering from breast cancer, she had a positive attitude that made the doctors and the nurses feel like one big family. Her positive attitude helped lift the spirits of other patients in the room. Throughout my lunches with Felipa, she would tell me how she still cooked dinner every day for her husband and two young kids. She brought that same compassion to the hospital, always with a contagious smile. I endeavored to give her the best care by offering her water and chatting with her on her chemo days. However, I was always bothered that I could not treat Felipa’s cancer myself. This powerlessness I felt inspired me to pursue medicine to help future patients battle this horrible illness by discovering new treatments.
While we gain some information about the applicant’s motivations to study medicine (e.g., to help future patients…by discovering new treatments ), it explores a common topic (i.e., a realization that came during clinical shadowing) with a typical delivery (i.e., written broadly about interactions with a specific patient).
The paragraph does not do a good job of painting a picture of the applicant, as we don’t learn about her standout qualities or other aspects of her identity.
Moreover, if we replace “Felipa” with another name, it becomes clear that any applicant who engaged in a similar shadowing experience could have written this paragraph. This is not to say that an essay that includes shadowing will always be clichéd. After all, the topic is only one aspect of your personal statement.
Remember, there are no good or bad topics. Rather, there are strong ways—and poor ways—to write about these topics.
Instead of asking if your topic is “good” or “bad,” you should be asking yourself whether your essay has a “typical” or “standout” delivery.
You want your personal statement to be written so engagingly that it serves as a pleasant interruption to the admissions committee member’s routine. Surprise them when they rarely expect to be surprised.
Unique Alternative 1: Demonstrating the qualities that make you distinct by choosing experiences that highlight your best characteristics.
The best personal statement writers decide which qualities they want to emphasize to admissions committees before choosing a certain experience. Then, they focus on a specific event or situation that captures the admissions committees’ attention by telling a detailed story—oftentimes a story that does not overtly involve medicine.
By deciding on your qualities beforehand, you will choose a story that authentically delivers your intended message.
Don’t be afraid to select an experience or story that strays from the typical, “impressive” premed extracurricular activity. After all, med schools want to accept applicants because of their wonderful qualities and unique attributes, not because of a specific experience or extracurricular activity.
Let’s imagine that the same applicant from the previous example chose to write about her community involvement outside of medicine.
From her list of extracurricular activities, she could choose to write about volunteering as an English tutor or being the lead saxophone player in a campus jazz ensemble. By picking one of these options, this student could write an entirely unique personal statement introduction.
Let’s see how an effective essay might begin with her volunteer work as an English tutor:
Unique introduction
I could feel the sweat rolling down my back as twenty first graders stared at me. It was July in Chicago, and the building where I volunteered as an English teacher twice a week did not have air conditioning. I had volunteered as a one-on-one tutor for the past six years, but this was my first time teaching a large group. The students, largely from working-class, Spanish-speaking households, reminded me of myself, as I grew up as the daughter of two Mexican emigrants. I personally understood the challenges the students faced, and I wanted to use my own experience and knowledge to help set them on the path to academic success.
This introduction would likely stand out to an admissions committee member not only because it discusses something other than clinical shadowing but also because it demonstrates the writer’s commitment to her community, and it reveals something about the applicant’s personal background.
Should I mention bad grades in my personal statement?
In most cases, no. With limited characters, your primary goal for your personal statement should be to tell medical school admissions committees why you will be an excellent doctor. Admissions committees will already see your grades. If you use too much space discussing your poor grades during freshman year or some other time, you'll draw even more attention to the red flags on your application and lose a golden opportunity to demonstrate your impressive qualities. One exception is if you received poor grades due to some extraordinary circumstance, such as recovering from a significant accident or illness. Even then, you might want to discuss your poor grades in another section of your application, such as a secondary essay.
Clichéd Approach 2: Listing your qualities and accomplishments like you are explaining your resume.
When many students begin writing their personal statements, they “tell” and don’t “show”.
Even though the advice to “show, don’t tell” is commonly given, students rarely know what it actually means to demonstrate or “show” their qualities rather than simply listing them.
We’ll provide an overly simple example to highlight why “telling” your qualities is such a problem:
Ever since I was a kid, I have received excellent grades and have excelled at all things related to science. My success in conducting chemistry research and my numerous presentations at biochemistry conferences is testament to my ability to succeed as a doctor. In fact, my family and friends have encouraged me to pursue this route because of my academic success.
While we learn that the applicant thinks that he is a great student who is excellent at science, and we learn that his family believes that he should pursue medicine because of his academic success, we do not actually see any evidence of these qualities. Sure, he tells us that his family thinks that he is brilliant, but we do not know why they think he is brilliant.
Unique Alternative 2: Showing, and not telling, the applicant’s qualities.
When you demonstrate your best qualities through examples, you provide a more authentic glimpse about the type of person you really are.
For instance, if you read the following sentences from two different applicants, who would you think was more caring?
Applicant 1: I am very empathic.
Applicant 2: Volunteering with elderly Japanese women has taught me how aging immigrants face cultural barriers while also navigating health problems, from diabetes to cancer.
Even though Applicant 1 says that they are empathic, you probably picked Applicant 2, even though she never uses the word “empathic” (or a synonym) in her sentence. As the reader, you were able to extrapolate how empathic that applicant is by seeing what they do.
Returning to the introductory paragraph with Felipa from example 1, we can see that the typical introduction “tells” about the applicant’s qualities, whereas the standout paragraph “shows” the applicant’s qualities. Let’s look at some examples to clarify:
I endeavored to give her the best care… (giving)
This powerlessness I felt inspired me to pursue medicine to help future patients… (inspired)
I had volunteered as one-on-one tutor for the past six years, but this was my first time teaching a large group. (dedicated, risk-taking)
I personally understood the challenges the students faced, and I wanted to use my own experience and knowledge to help set them on the path to academic success (giving, empowering, empathetic)
Is it OK to discuss a mental health condition in my med school personal statement?
You might have heard that, given the stigma surrounding many mental health conditions, that you should avoid discussing them in your personal statement, no matter what. However, as with many things related to med school essays, the answer depends on the specific condition, severity, and reason behind sharing it. Certain conditions have more stigma associated with them than others and are therefore more difficult to sensitively incorporate in your personal statement. But regardless of your specific mental health condition or its severity, it’s important to ask yourself why you would share it. For instance, if the primary reason for sharing your mental health condition is to show adcoms how much adversity you have overcome, then you should probably leave out your condition or reconsider why you would share it. However, if your reason is to describe the insights you developed about people and about medicine, or how your condition served as a springboard for you to pursue certain activities, then it might be worthwhile to share. Writing about mental health conditions in your personal statement should be approached delicately, so make sure to work with someone who has experience doing so.
Clichéd Approach 3: Stating that you want to be a physician to help people or talking about how being a doctor is such an honor.
When you ask medical school applicants why they want to be a doctor, they usually say that they want to help people. While you should include this fact in your personal statement, it can be difficult to articulate why you want to help people or how you will help them in a way that is not clichéd.
Most applicants will probably write some version of the following in their personal statement:
I want to be a physician because I want to help people who are sick. It would be an honor to serve people in need.
The problem with these statements is that any applicant could have written them. Every doctor wants to help patients who are sick or in need.
Failing to offer a specific reason for your motivation to become a doctor or a specific way in which you plan to help your patients will make it hard for the admissions committee to see what unique approaches and insights you will bring to medicine.
Unique Alternative 3: Explaining specific ways that you intend to help patients or specific reasons why you want to help patients.
To make your statement more convincing, you could add a specific method that you will use to help patients. Consider the following example:
I want to become a physician to provide reassurance to a patient awaiting their lab results, and laughter to a patient who needs an uplift after a week of chemotherapy.
Whereas any medical school applicant could have written the statement in the clichéd example, the statement in the unique example demonstrates specific qualities about the applicant. By explaining that certain patients might need reassurance while others might want laughter, the applicant shows us that they are empathic and sensitive to the needs of individual patients.
To make your statement more authentic, you can also explain why you are drawn to a specific aspect of medicine or a certain demographic of patients. Let’s look at another example:
As a woman with PCOS, I want to improve the field of women’s health so that I can provide other young women comfort and reassurance as they come to terms with their bodies.
This applicant shows that she is passionate about women’s health by connecting her desire to enter medicine to her own health condition. This statement suggests that she will use her own experience to empathize with patients when she becomes a physician.
Should I mention my desired specialty in my med school personal statement?
Probably not. Admissions committees want to recruit students who are incredibly curious and open to different training opportunities. Highlighting a desire to enter a specific specialty might make you seem closed off. That said, it's perfectly fine to express a commitment to serving certain communities or a desire to address specific issues so long as you don't inadvertently box yourself in.
Clichéd Approach 4: Focusing too much on characters who are not you.
The previous two approaches focus on how your personal statement introduction should tell a story. And what do we need for a great story? A character!
Applicants often make another character (e.g. a family member, patient, a physician they shadowed or worked under) the most compelling and interesting character. But when you give or share the limelight with another character, you make it easy for the admissions committee to forget the most important person in the story: YOU. You should be the star of your own personal statement.
We are not saying that you should avoid including another character in your personal statement. In fact, including other characters in your statement reminds the admission committee that you have had a positive impact on other people.
However, these other characters must be used to demonstrate your qualities. These qualities can come from an insight you had while interacting or observing them.
We see how this becomes a problem in the clichéd paragraph from example 1. Felipa and the applicant are both main characters. Indeed, we don’t even read about the applicant or their insights until the seventh sentence. Who knows? Admissions committees might even offer Felipa an interview instead of you.
Unique Alternative 4: Maintaining the focus on the main character—you!
In contrast, the unique paragraph from example 1 about the English tutor in Chicago tells us about the applicant’s passions, commitments, and initiative. Let’s revisit the example:
I personally understood the challenges the students faced, and I wanted to use my own experience and knowledge to help set them on the path to academic success.
Even though she writes about tutoring first-grade students in Chicago, their role in the story is to highlight how she is dedicated to helping her community and empowering students from backgrounds like hers. The students never get in the way of us learning about the applicant.
Now, you may be worried that focusing on you and your qualities will make you come off as arrogant or cocky to the admissions committee. By letting the stories do the talking for you, your personal statement will avoid making you appear egoistical. On the other hand, saying that you are a “good person” or “brilliant” without telling a story can make you seem arrogant.
With only 5,300 characters, you should aim to keep the emphasis almost entirely on you.
Clichéd Approach 5: Focusing too much on describing the activity itself.
Many applicants will write about clinical shadowing, volunteering, or research at some point in their personal statements. Sometimes, however, applicants are so excited by the activity that they forget to include themselves in the experience.
For instance, an applicant looking to highlight their work in a prestigious lab might write:
Working in Dr. Carpenter’s lab, an endowed professor at Harvard Medical School, was exhilarating. The main research project was an experiment that explored how rats responded to various stimulant medications. Our results demonstrated that one of the drugs we tested on the rats may have significant promise for treating Alzheimer’s disease.
While this paragraph demonstrates the student’s familiarity with and excitement about original research, it does not tell us much about the applicant’s specific characteristics or contributions. We learn about the research project in Dr. Carpenter’s lab, but we don’t know what qualities or insights the applicant has gained from conducting the research.
Unique Alternative 5: Unique statements explain how you made an impact through an activity and how the activity impacted you.
While you may think that highlighting a research experience with a famous doctor or in a prestigious lab will bolster your application, writing about it in your personal statement may actually harm you if you do not highlight your own accomplishments and traits.
Focus on activities where you had an impact, even if the activity itself does not seem impressive. Consider the following examples:
Applicant 1: While working in Dr. Smith’s lab, I managed five interns. To make the lab a more congenial environment, I started a weekly lunch hour where we could all discuss our different research projects. This opportunity gave the interns more confidence to talk about their individual lab work, which made it easier for the entire research staff to collaborate on different experiments.
Applicant 2: Working in Dr. Martin’s lab with five other interns taught me the importance of serving on a team. When one of our experiments failed, I made sure that the group met to discuss the results. I offered advice to my lab mates on how they could obtain better results on the next trial. This experience taught me the importance of learning new research methods from my peers to achieve the best results possible.
We do not know whether Applicant 1 or Applicant 2 are working in prestigious labs or with prestigious PIs. However, we do learn that Applicant 1 has shown leadership skills and initiative by working to make the lab a more collaborative space.
Similarly, even though Applicant 2 highlights her lab’s failures, we nevertheless discover that she is a team player, eager to learn from her fellow researchers, and does not let failure stop her. She sounds like someone you might want to have in your medical school study group.
I feel like I don’t have enough space to write everything I want. What should I do?
You shouldn't try to fit everything into your personal statement. In fact, if you try to cover everything within the 5,300-character limit, you'll end up covering nothing well. Remember that your complete application includes multiple written sections: your personal statement, Work and Activities section, and secondary application essays. You should aim to provide admissions committees with a holistic view of who you are across your entire application, not solely through your personal statement. Your personal statement should be used to offer a bird's eye view of who you are and your path to medicine, whereas your AMCAS Work and Activities section and secondary essays should cover the finer details.
Clichéd Approach 6: Articulating an idea without explaining how it relates to your qualities or insights.
Even when some applicants pick unusual topics, they forget to relate those experiences to why they want to be a doctor. Consider the following applicant who has a passion for running.
Applicant 1: I am passionate about running and encouraging others to run because it is good for everyone’s health. That is why I have spent years running marathons and coaching cross country in my free time.
While the applicant says that he is excited about running because it is “good for everyone’s health,” we do not exactly see what the applicant means. Most people believe that exercise is good for your health already, so this applicant would need to explain why he believes running is important, and how his passion for running relates to medicine.
Unique Alternative 6: Explaining your thought process, critical thinking, and decision-making abilities.
When you make an obvious claim (e.g., exercise is good for your health), you should explain why you personally believe this. By drawing on specific evidence and observations, you can show the admissions committee what unique and specific insights you have about a so-called obvious idea.
Applicant 2: After my sister started to run, she began to lose weight. I also noticed that her depression waned and that she regained energy, which manifested in her eagerness to socialize with family and friends. While I always knew that exercise was important, I never believed that it could entirely change a person. This experience led me to believe that exercising can serve as a form of medicine.
Whereas Applicant 1 makes a general claim about running, Applicant 2 draws on a specific, personal example by connecting his sister’s running habit to her holistic health. He mentions her weight loss, improvements in mental health, and increase in energy. In other words, we see why the applicant believes that running provides a health benefit.
Clichéd Approach 7: Writing an overly dramatic first sentence.
Recalling writing courses from high school and college, applicants often try to “hook” the reader’s attention by beginning with a dramatic first sentence. Because of this, applicants sometimes begin their essays with a dramatic moment that fails to offer insight into the applicant’s motivations for studying medicine.
Let’s look at the following first sentence by an applicant who worked in the ER.
It felt as if the world was going to end on that faithful day in the ER when I first witnessed someone die.
This introduction is typical of students writing about clinical shadowing. Rather than showing how he is unique, this statement simply demonstrates that the applicant has had a challenging experience during clinical shadowing.
Unique Alternative 7: Introducing your personal statement with a unique observation or idea that you will further develop in subsequent paragraphs.
Instead of dramatizing or hyperbolizing an experience, you can make your introduction truly unique by making a claim about an idea, insight, or observation that tells the admissions committee why you are excited by medicine. Let’s see how the applicant who wrote about running in example 6 might begin their statement in this way:
For my sister and me, running is a form of medicine.
Even though this example is not as dramatic as the previous one, it catches the reader’s attention by making a unique claim that the reader will want to know more about. The reader will see that the applicant is thinking critically and creatively about what medicine means to him.
Clichéd Approach 8: Writing about various experiences without showing how they are connected.
Even when applicants have thoughtfully selected a few experiences that demonstrate their personal qualities, they sometimes fail to create a “bigger picture” in their personal statement and, consequently, in their entire medical school application. In other words, the experiences described in their essay do not connect or cohere around a central theme.
A personal statement without a theme will come across as unfocused and, most likely, unmemorable. Even if each section of your essay is well-written, if they don’t together add up to highlight something larger, admissions officers will be left without a clear takeaway of who you are and what your goals and motivations are for entering medicine.
Unique Alternative 8: Connecting the experiences in your essay through a common theme.
A theme will serve as the connective tissue that holds everything in your personal statement together. What’s more, it provides a lens through which adcoms will remember you.
For example, if your personal statement discusses playing jazz saxophone, volunteering with children at a community garden, and scribing in an emergency room, you might begin by writing about how studying jazz taught you the value of improvisation, a quality you then brought to the fore while volunteering with children and working as an ER scribe. With a central theme of improvisation, your essay will provide a clear takeaway of you as flexible, adaptable, and creative (i.e., the qualities you decided to highlight).
Alternatively, some applicants choose more concrete themes that focus their essays around a central interest. For instance, perhaps your personal statement describes growing up in a rural community without access to adequate primary care, which led you to eventually volunteer with a mobile clinic for agricultural workers and intern in the public health department of your state. You’ll likely be remembered as “the applicant who’s passionate about improving rural health.”
Just as your personal statement is the foundation of your medical school application, your theme is the foundation of your personal statement. Therefore, it’s important that your personal statement’s theme is reflected throughout your medical school application, including in your Work and Activities section and secondary essays.
Clichéd Approach 9: Moving abruptly from one section of your personal statement to the next.
A theme isn’t the only tool that’s important for connecting the different components of your personal statement; you also want to ensure that you’re using effective transition sentences when moving from one idea to the next.
You can think of theme as the macro glue and transitions as the micro glue that make your personal statement cohere. Without smooth transitions, your personal statement will come across as choppy and your ideas may appear unlinked, making your theme seem illogical or unclear.
Unique Alternative 9: Using effective transitions to smoothly link different experiences and ideas.
There are a number of ways to transition from one experience or idea to the next. Here are a few, along with examples of transitional phrases that can help you build bridges between different parts of your personal statement:
You can show logical consequence or how one event led to another (e.g., “As a result,” “For this reason,” “Therefore”)
You can describe experiences in chronological order (e.g., “Next,” “Since then,” “After”)
You can point out the similarity between two things (e.g., “Similarly,” “Additionally,” “Furthermore”)
You can highlight the contrast between two things (e.g., “Even though,” “Despite,” “However”)
You can give an example (“For instance,” “By doing X,” “When I embarked on Y”)
However (no pun intended!), it isn’t strictly necessary to use transitional phrases or sentences between every section of your personal statement. Sometimes, the logic between ideas will be obvious through simple description, and excessive transitions may get in the way of smoothness and flow.
To learn more, we recommend this resource on transitions from the University of Wisconsin.
When should I aim to have my personal statement finalized by?
We recommend having a final version of your personal statement completed by May 15 of your application year so you can take full advantage of the rolling admissions process. To learn more about writing and submission deadlines, you’re encouraged you to review the ideal medical school application timeline .
Clichéd Approach 10: Writing in a way that can be replicated by other applicants.
Admissions committees are eager to learn about what makes you distinct from your peers, why you want to pursue a career as a physician, and what you will contribute to their school and the larger medical community.
If your personal statement reads like a completely different applicant could have written it, admissions committees will struggle to differentiate you from your competition.
Our earlier example of the applicant who describes her shadowing experience with Felipa does not offer any information specific to her. We do not learn about her physical appearance, town of origin, culture, country of origin, hometown, etc. There simply are not enough details or unique insights that paint a portrait of the applicant.
Unique Alternative 10: Writing a personal statement that could have only been written by you.
At any point while writing the draft of your personal statement, asks yourself whether another applicant could have written it. If the answer is “yes,” you have two options:
You can return to the first few paragraphs of your essay and add distinct details about yourself, such as your town of origin, physical appearance, etc., to help the reader visualize who you are better.
Start over. If you find that it is too difficult to add details about your life story and standout qualities in your original essay, then you may need to start over by including different stories and experiences that show how you are unique.
Let’s look at how you might revise a clichéd sentence to come across as more unique:
Applicant 1: I developed a passion for helping people by volunteering at the local soup kitchen.
Applicant 2: Growing up in rural Idaho, I had no idea how many people in my community lived in poverty until I started to volunteer at the local soup kitchen.
Whereas any applicant who has volunteered at a soup kitchen could have written the first sentence, only someone who grew up in rural Idaho could have written the second sentence.
As a bonus, the second statement also shows us a realization that the applicant has about her hometown, which suggests that she is thinking critically about her environment.
In your essay, you can include several unique details, including state of origin, country of origin, religion, hobbies, studies and research outside of medicine, creative pursuits, family’s culture, physical appearance, health history, special talents, language abilities, etc. Admissions committees look for candidates that can bring unique insights and different perspectives to their programs.
While certain details can help paint a meaningful portrait of you, it is important to remember that the personal statement is not a work of creative writing.
For example, including details about the color of your shirt and the type of shoe you were wearing may help make the story in your personal statement more vivid, but these details fail to offer insights about your unique qualities or your life experiences. Admissions committees will be interested by your unique traits, not the look of your clothes.
How can I know when my personal statement is ready to submit?
- It highlights your great qualities;
- It clearly describes your path to medicine—or discusses experiences that led you to develop key insights about the field;
- It tells the actually story of your desire to become a physician and not what you believe someone wants to hear;
- It is highly personal and could have only been written by you; and
- It is devoid of spelling or grammatical errors.
By following these instructions on how to avoid clichés, you can write a memorable personal statement that stands out to admissions committees.
Whereas writing a clichéd personal statement will likely cause your application to end up in the rejection pile, crafting an authentic, unique personal statement will help lead you to your white coat ceremony.
About the Author
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on medical school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into medical school using his exclusive approach.
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I partly grew up in Bangkok, a city in which there are more shopping malls than there are psychiatrists. I did this math as soon as I found out that my older sister had attempted suicide outside of a shopping mall. The stigmatization of mental illness is still widespread in Thailand and as a result, the hospital and my family treated her case as anything but an attempt on her own life. At the time, I was reading “The Yellow Wall Paper” in school, a story about inadequately treated postpartum depression in the 1890s. I saw parallels, as my sister had begun to look gray after the birth of her daughter. I repeatedly voiced my concerns, but no one listened to me. No one was addressing her health from a broader perspective, and as a result, she was left to fend for her own mental health. She was powerless, and I felt powerless too.
This blindness for mental wellbeing in my society confounded me, so I chose to study it further at UT Austin. When I began working at the Dell Seton Medical Center, however, my idealism about patient-centered care was quickly put to the test when I was regarded with cynicism due to my own identity. One afternoon, a diabetic patient approached me for assistance in applying for food stamps. Although he was visibly in discomfort, he refused the chair I pulled out for him. While we gathered information, he gruffly asked me where I was from. “America,” I answered. Unsatisfied with my answer, he repeated his question eight more times until I caved and answered with my ethnicity. Following this, he grew impatient and kept insisting he could complete the process with another shift. But I knew arranging transport would be difficult and costly. Determined to turn the interaction around, I soldiered on with the application process. I discovered that he had a daughter, and I asked about her interests. He grew animated as he talked lovingly about her, and I completed my work. Commuting home in the dark, I beamed; I was able to build rapport and assist someone who did not initially believe in me.
I strove to supplement my education with parallel experiences in research and volunteer work. In a course about stigma and prejudice, I discovered that minority status was a marker for increased IL-6 inflammation, and that individuals primed with stereotypes about race, sex, or disease suffer greatly, but often invisibly. Walking out of lecture, I planned out how I could implement these findings in my own work. During data collection for a community sleep study, I applied my renewed perspective on the phone with a participant. I sensed exasperation in her voice, so I sincerely thanked her for her time. Suddenly, she began to wail into the phone. As her personal story unraveled, I found out that experiences of racial discrimination had breached every area of her life, including her healthcare—as a result, she felt alienated and left with inadequate treatment. When she expressed thoughts of suicide, I began to panic. But I kept my voice composed, reinforced her resilience, and gained a verbal confirmation that we would speak the next day. The disempowering marginalization she felt mirrored my sister’s situation years ago. But this time, I was equipped with my education.
The more I learned about the social determinants of health, the clearer it became that healthcare was inherently social. This solidified my interest in medicine and motivated me to pursue research in social psychology. As I trained on how to code facial expressions for my honors thesis, I shadowed Dr. Sekhon, a geriatric psychiatrist, at an assisted living facility. One of his patients was an injured former athlete who was having trouble standing. His wife held back tears as he grimaced and repeatedly referred to “passing on.” Dr. Sekhon studied his patients’ face intently, and then, instead of altering medications or suggesting tests, he encouraged his patient to stand for 10 seconds longer each day. There was a shift in the room, and I could measure it by the expressions on their faces. The man’s eyes wrinkled in a genuine smile and his wife’s enthusiastic agreement reflected Dr. Sekhon’s success. The way a physician could read facial expressions to address what the patient did not verbalize was incredibly powerful—I was awestruck.
Inspired by this observation, I wrote my honors thesis on the relationship between power and health outcomes. Experiences of disempowerment and of illness magnify one another, but a doctor can empower someone in their most vulnerable moments by connecting with them. Much like my sister, many patients need clinicians that address both physical and invisible hardships. I am eager to be part of a new generation of healthcare providers with sensitivity to the diverse ways that people communicate distress and wellbeing. One patient at a time, we can shift archaic mindsets deeply rooted in our communities, and ensure that every life we touch receives socially and culturally competent care. For me, studying medicine means being part of something bigger by empowering others—and myself—along the way.
Paragraph 1 Analysis
The applicant begins their essay by immediately (and effectively) putting their unique upbringing in conversation with their family-inspired interest in medicine. Even though they do not say anything directly about an interest in medicine in this paragraph, we can see that the applicant is clearly passionate about doing the right thing, and about helping people in general. We can also see that they are aware of a gap that needs filling and a stigma that needs addressing.
Thoughtful/empathetic/high moral principles - Despite cultural resistance to mental healthcare, the applicant understands the value of protecting one’s mental wellbeing, and that it is an essential aspect of a healthy life. They take the initiative to listen to their sister, to carefully watch for signs of illness, and to advocate for her even in the face of a society pushing against them.
The paragraph is about how much the applicant cares for their sister, and that makes it personal. Even though the sister is a huge part of this paragraph, and even though Bangkok itself almost reads like a character on its own, the applicant’s careful reflections connect all of these outside sources to who they are and what they value.
The geographical, cultural, and familial details make this paragraph unique. Also notice how the applicant is able to discuss their sister’s suicide attempt without it feeling appropriative or self-serving, since they connect the trauma to a larger cultural issue that the applicant wants to address.
Even in the first paragraph, there is depth that will be fleshed out in the rest of the essay: The applicant sees something wrong in their culture, and is determined to fix it. The applicant is also showing an awareness of just how complicated and imperfect the healthcare system can be, demonstrating a perspective that is nuanced, mature, and compelling.
Paragraph 2 Analysis
Notice how the applicant takes the essay in a different direction than we expected after reading the first paragraph. We move from an anecdote about their sister nearly committing suicide to a seemingly unrelated anecdote about a prejudiced patient. The connecting thread between these two stories, of course, is the applicant. Their reflections on and reactions to both situations highlight their character, which is what the personal statement is all about. We also see another take on how it feels to encounter someone’s resistance to your own voice and perspective, just as the applicant encountered resistance in the face of their efforts to advocate for their sister.
Gumptious/perseverant - Most people would have a hard time helping the patient described in the above paragraph. Prejudiced, unkind, and ungrateful, he seems like a nightmare to work with. And yet the applicant shows us that, despite his rude, racist behavior, they remained strong, patient, and helpful, turning the situation into something more positive for both of them. This ability to face adversity and overcome it is a very desirable quality for any physician to possess. It also shows that the applicant knows how to adapt and problem solve in a high stress situation, putting the needs of the patient before their own, albeit justified, frustration.
As always, although the paragraph tells us the story of a particular patient, it is truly about the applicant’s interaction with that patient.
The specificity of this story makes it utterly unique to the applicant. Also, the applicant is demonstrating a nuanced and unique ability to transition between seemingly disparate experiences in paragraph one versus two.
The depth of this paragraph is rooted in the qualities it highlights in the applicant, as outlined above. As such, the strategy here is doubly effective: Not only are we reading an engaging moment of narrative, we’re also gaining some insight into why this was particularly meaningful for the patient.
Paragraph 3 Analysis
The process of personal growth. This essay does a fantastic job of highlighting the applicant’s personal growth through potent anecdotes and life experiences. This allows the applicant to show how they've changed and brings the personal statement to life. Notice how they set this up in the first paragraph when writing about their sister’s mental health. “She was powerless, and I felt powerless, too.” Later, when the applicant speaks to a patient over the phone and realizes the “disempowering marginalization” she felt, they remark, “But this time, I was equipped with my education.” Adcoms realize that the path to an MD doesn’t start and end at clearly defined points. The process of “becoming” a doctor is a road you will travel even after you’ve earned your white coat. Learning will continue as you grow in your career. You may not have a story of discrimination to tell, but we’ve all experienced moments of personal growth. Positively highlighting your growth is a great way to show your resilience and determination to succeed in medicine.
After detouring from the first paragraph’s anecdote to share with us the prejudice they’ve experienced directly, the applicant returns to the story of their sister’s attempted suicide, but this time the story has a comparative function. By juxtaposing the helplessness they felt in regards to their sister with the empowering experience on the phone, we can see that the applicant has not only grown, they’ve also shown real initiative in taking on a societal problem head on.
Determined/collected/resilient - Despite the emotional impact of being reminded of their sister’s near-death, the applicant pushes forward, collecting themselves and utilizing their education to make a real impact.
Empathetic - The applicant is able to stay calm in a high stakes situation because they are unconditionally empathetic towards the caller.
The paragraph is about the applicant’s genuine desire to help other people. We see a real passion in their desire to make an impact in regards to high-stakes issues, which allows us to get to know who they are not only as a potential physician, but as an advocate as well.
The connection to the first paragraph makes this paragraph unique both narratively and structurally.
The depth of this paragraph can be seen in its comparison to the first paragraph. Where the applicant initially felt powerless in the face of suicide, now they have matured and become better equipped to tackle such a high-stakes situation.
Paragraph 4 Analysis
The applicant provides us with three important details in this paragraph: First, that they trained to code facial expressions, second, that they shadowed Dr. Sekhon, and third, that they were inspired by the shadowing experience. Notice how their education immediately comes into play in discussing the expressions on the patients, and how the interest in the depth of facial complexity speaks both to their interest in mental health and their empathy.
Observant - Although an important aspect of your pre-med career, shadowing is sometimes a difficult experience to write about, for obvious reasons. What about the experience is interesting, if you were merely a shadow? How do you personalize work that nearly every applicant is going to have done? This applicant makes themselves stand out by telling the story of Dr. Sekhon and the retired athlete in such detail that they are indirectly showing us how careful and observant they are.
Although the narrative in this paragraph is entirely focused on other people, the thematic core belongs to the applicant, because the paragraph is about their observation of and reaction to this incident, more so than the incident itself.
The details of this office visit, combined with the hard skills the applicant is displaying and the awareness of a physician whose values they will want to embrace in their own way, make this paragraph unique.
This paragraph has depth in an indirect sense—the way the applicant was inspired is the most important point that the writing gets across.
Paragraph 5 Analysis
To conclude their essay, the applicant employs a tried and true formula: connecting the introduction to the conclusion. By reintroducing their sister into the narrative, we as readers come full circle. We remember where the applicant began, what influenced them, and how they have evolved over the course of their life, an evolution mirrored in the way the essay itself has developed.
Ambitious - This applicant has big dreams. They want to make an authentic change in the healthcare system, and since we’ve seen them mature throughout the essay, we believe that they’re capable of enacting such changes. Since they outlined this desire to make change from the very beginning, we also get a sense of how enduring and consistent it truly is, furthering our respect for the applicant’s goals.
Humble/social - Despite their ambition, the applicant is clearly aware that in order to make a real change, they will have to team up with others.
This concluding paragraph is quite clearly all about the applicant—their goals, ambitions, and values.
Although some of the sentences are broad, the paragraph remains unique due to the references to the sister, as well as the details about the applicant’s honors thesis. Connecting broad goals with specific details helps this conclusion feel more concrete, and less generalized and abstract.
The depth here is in what the applicant tells us directly, speaking to their desire as reiterated throughout the essay: “We can shift archaic mindsets deeply rooted in our communities, and ensure that every life we touch receives socially and culturally competent care.”
- Medical School Application
Medical School Personal Statement Examples: 30 Best in
Including one that got six acceptances.
Article Contents 29 min read
These 30 exemplary medical school personal statement examples come from our students who enrolled in one of our application review programs. Most of these examples led to multiple acceptance for our students. For instance, the first example got our student accepted into SIX medical schools. Here's what you'll find in this article: We'll first go over 30 medical school personal statement samples, then we'll provide you a step-by-step guide for composing your own outstanding statement from scratch. If you follow the strategy, you're going to have a stellar statement whether you apply to the most competitive or the easiest medical schools to get into .
Note : If you want us to help you with your applications, interviews and/or standardized tests, book a free strategy call . If you are a university, business, or student organization representative and want to partner with us, visit our partnerships page .
Listen to the blog!
30 Stellar Medical School Personal Statement Examples
Example #1/30.
I made my way to Hillary’s house after hearing about her alcoholic father’s incarceration. Seeing her tearfulness and at a loss for words, I took her hand and held it, hoping to make things more bearable. She squeezed back gently in reply, “thank you.” My silent gesture seemed to confer a soundless message of comfort, encouragement and support.
Through mentoring, I have developed meaningful relationships with individuals of all ages, including seven-year-old Hillary. Many of my mentees come from disadvantaged backgrounds; working with them has challenged me to become more understanding and compassionate. Although Hillary was not able to control her father’s alcoholism and I had no immediate solution to her problems, I felt truly fortunate to be able to comfort her with my presence. Though not always tangible, my small victories, such as the support I offered Hillary, hold great personal meaning. Similarly, medicine encompasses more than an understanding of tangible entities such as the science of disease and treatment—to be an excellent physician requires empathy, dedication, curiosity and love of problem solving. These are skills I have developed through my experiences both teaching and shadowing inspiring physicians.
Medicine encompasses more than hard science. My experience as a teaching assistant nurtured my passion for medicine; I found that helping students required more than knowledge of organic chemistry. Rather, I was only able to address their difficulties when I sought out their underlying fears and feelings. One student, Azra, struggled despite regularly attending office hours. She approached me, asking for help. As we worked together, I noticed that her frustration stemmed from how intimidated she was by problems. I helped her by listening to her as a fellow student and normalizing her struggles. “I remember doing badly on my first organic chem test, despite studying really hard,” I said to Azra while working on a problem. “Really? You’re a TA, shouldn’t you be perfect?” I looked up and explained that I had improved my grades through hard work. I could tell she instantly felt more hopeful, she said, “If you could do it, then I can too!” When she passed, receiving a B+;I felt as if I had passed too. That B+ meant so much: it was a tangible result of Azra’s hard work, but it was also symbol of our dedication to one another and the bond we forged working together.
My passion for teaching others and sharing knowledge emanates from my curiosity and love for learning. My shadowing experiences in particular have stimulated my curiosity and desire to learn more about the world around me. How does platelet rich plasma stimulate tissue growth? How does diabetes affect the proximal convoluted tubule? My questions never stopped. I wanted to know everything and it felt very satisfying to apply my knowledge to clinical problems.
Shadowing physicians further taught me that medicine not only fuels my curiosity; it also challenges my problem solving skills. I enjoy the connections found in medicine, how things learned in one area can aid in coming up with a solution in another. For instance, while shadowing Dr. Steel I was asked, “What causes varicose veins and what are the complications?” I thought to myself, what could it be? I knew that veins have valves and thought back to my shadowing experience with Dr. Smith in the operating room. She had amputated a patient’s foot due to ulcers obstructing the venous circulation. I replied, “veins have valves and valve problems could lead to ulcers.” Dr. Steel smiled, “you’re right, but it doesn’t end there!” Medicine is not disconnected; it is not about interventional cardiology or orthopedic surgery. In fact, medicine is intertwined and collaborative. The ability to gather knowledge from many specialties and put seemingly distinct concepts together to form a coherent picture truly attracts me to medicine.
It is hard to separate science from medicine; in fact, medicine is science. However, medicine is also about people—their feelings, struggles and concerns. Humans are not pre-programmed robots that all face the same problems. Humans deserve sensitive and understanding physicians. Humans deserve doctors who are infinitely curious, constantly questioning new advents in medicine. They deserve someone who loves the challenge of problem solving and coming up with innovative individualized solutions. I want to be that physician. I want to be able to approach each case as a unique entity and incorporate my strengths into providing personalized care for my patients. Until that time, I may be found Friday mornings in the operating room, peering over shoulders, dreaming about the day I get to hold the drill.
Let's take a step back to consider what this medical school personal statement example does, not just what it says. It begins with an engaging hook in the first paragraph and ends with a compelling conclusion. The introduction draws you in, making the essay almost impossible to put down, while the conclusion paints a picture of someone who is both passionate and dedicated to the profession. In between the introduction and conclusion, this student makes excellent use of personal narrative. The anecdotes chosen demonstrate this individual's response to the common question, " Why do you want to be a doctor ?" while simultaneously making them come across as compassionate, curious, and reflective. The essay articulates a number of key qualities and competencies, which go far beyond the common trope, I want to be a doctor because I want to help people.
This person is clearly a talented writer, but this was the result of several rounds of edits with one of our medical school admissions consulting team members and a lot of hard work on the student's part. If your essay is not quite there yet, or if you're just getting started, don't sweat it. Do take note that writing a good personal essay takes advanced planning and significant effort.
We are here to help you articulate your own vision, passion, and skills in a way that is equally captivating and compelling!
Would you like to learn why "show, don’t tell" is the most important rule of any personal statement? Watch this:
Example #2/30
I was one of those kids who always wanted to be doctor. I didn’t understand the responsibilities and heartbreaks, the difficult decisions, and the years of study and training that go with the title, but I did understand that the person in the white coat stood for knowledge, professionalism, and compassion. As a child, visits to the pediatrician were important events. I’d attend to my hair and clothes, and travel to the appointment in anticipation. I loved the interaction with my doctor. I loved that whoever I was in the larger world, I could enter the safe space of the doctor’s office, and for a moment my concerns were heard and evaluated. I listened as my mother communicated with the doctor. I’d be asked questions, respectfully examined, treatments and options would be weighed, and we would be on our way. My mother had been supported in her efforts to raise a well child, and I’d had a meaningful interaction with an adult who cared for my body and development. I understood medicine as an act of service, which aligned with my values, and became a dream.
I was hospitalized for several months as a teenager and was inspired by the experience, despite the illness. In the time of diagnosis, treatment and recovery, I met truly sick children. Children who were much more ill than me. Children who wouldn’t recover. We shared a four-bed room, and we shared our medical stories. Because of the old hospital building, there was little privacy in our room, and we couldn’t help but listen-in during rounds, learning the medical details, becoming “experts” in our four distinct cases. I had more mobility than some of the patients, and when the medical team and family members were unavailable, I’d run simple errands for my roommates, liaise informally with staff, and attend to needs. To bring physical relief, a cold compress, a warmed blanket, a message to a nurse, filled me with such an intense joy and sense of purpose that I applied for a volunteer position at the hospital even before my release.
I have since been volunteering in emergency departments, out-patient clinics, and long term care facilities. While the depth of human suffering is at times shocking and the iterations of illness astounding, it is in the long-term care facility that I had the most meaningful experiences by virtue of my responsibilities and the nature of the patients’ illnesses. Charles was 55 when he died. He had early onset Parkinson’s Disease with dementia that revealed itself with a small tremor when he was in his late twenties. Charles had a wife and three daughters who visited regularly, but whom he didn’t often remember. Over four years as a volunteer, my role with the family was to fill in the spaces left by Charles’ periodic inability to project his voice as well as his growing cognitive lapses. I would tell the family of his activities between their visits, and I would remind him of their visits and their news. This was a hard experience for me. I watched as 3 daughters, around my own age, incrementally lost their father. I became angry, and then I grew even more determined.
In the summer of third year of my Health Sciences degree, I was chosen to participate in an undergraduate research fellowship in biomedical research at my university. As part of this experience, I worked alongside graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, medical students, physicians, and faculty in Alzheimer’s research into biomarkers that might predict future disease. We collaborated in teams, and by way of the principal investigator’s careful leadership, I learned wherever one falls in terms of rank, each contribution is vital to the outcome. None of the work is in isolation. For instance, I was closely mentored by Will, a graduate student who had been in my role the previous summer. He, in turn, collaborated with post docs and medical students, turning to faculty when roadblocks were met. While one person’s knowledge and skill may be deeper than another’s, individual efforts make up the whole. Working in this team, aside from developing research skills, I realized that practicing medicine is not an individual pursuit, but a collaborative commitment to excellence in scholarship and leadership, which all begins with mentorship.
Building on this experience with teamwork in the lab, I participated in a global health initiative in Nepal for four months, where I worked alongside nurses, doctors, and translators. I worked in mobile rural health camps that offered tuberculosis care, monitored the health and development of babies and children under 5, and tended to minor injuries. We worked 11-hour days helping hundreds of people in the 3 days we spent in each location. Patients would already be in line before we woke each morning. I spent each day recording basic demographic information, blood pressure, pulse, temperature, weight, height, as well as random blood sugar levels, for each patient, before they lined up to see a doctor. Each day was exhausting and satisfying. We helped so many people. But this satisfaction was quickly displaced by a developing understanding of issues in health equity.
My desire to be doctor as a young person was not misguided, but simply naïve. I’ve since learned the role of empathy and compassion through my experiences as a patient and volunteer. I’ve broadened my contextual understanding of medicine in the lab and in Nepal. My purpose hasn’t changed, but what has developed is my understanding that to be a physician is to help people live healthy, dignified lives by practicing both medicine and social justice.
28 More Medical School Personal Statement Examples
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As one of the most important medical school requirements , the personal statement tells your story of why you decided to pursue the medical profession. Keep in mind that personal statements are one of the key factors that affect medical school acceptance rates . This is why it's important to write a stellar essay!
So let's help you get started writing your own personal statement. Let's approach this step-by-step. Below you will see how we will outline the steps to creating your very best personal statement. Check out AMCAS personal statement examples, AACOMAS personal statement examples and TMDSAS personal statement examples for more excellent essays.
#1 Understanding the Qualities of a Strong Med School Personal Statement
Before discussing how to write a strong medical school personal statement, we first need to understand the qualities of a strong essay. Similar to crafting strong medical school secondary essays , writing a strong personal statement is a challenging, yet extremely important, part of your MD or MD-PhD programs applications. Your AMCAS Work and Activities section may show the reader what you have done, but the personal statement explains why. A personal statement should be deeply personal, giving the admissions committee insight into your passions and your ultimate decision to pursue a career in medicine. A compelling and introspective personal statement can make the difference between getting an interview and facing medical school rejection . Review our blogs to find out how to prepare for med school interviews and learn the most common medical school interview questions .
As you contemplate the task in front of you, you may be wondering what composing an essay has to do with entering the field of medicine. Many of our students were surprised to learn that medical school personal statements are so valued by med schools. The two things are more closely related than you think. A compelling personal statement demonstrates your written communication skills and highlights your accomplishments, passions, and aspirations. The ability to communicate a complex idea in a short space is an important skill as a physician. You should demonstrate your communication skills by writing a concise and meaningful statement that illustrates your best attributes. Leaving a lasting impression on your reader is what will lead to interview invitations.
A quick note: if you are applying to schools that do not require the formal medical school personal statement, such as medical schools in Canada , you should still learn how to write such essays. Many medical schools in Ontario , for example, ask for short essays for supplementary questionnaires. These are very similar to the personal statement. Knowing how to brainstorm, write, and format your answers is key to your success!!!
You want to give yourself as much time as possible to write your statement. Do not think you can do this in an evening or even in a week. Some statements take months. My best statement took almost a year to get right. Allow yourself time and start early to avoid added stress. Think of the ideas you want to include and brainstorm possible ways to highlight these ideas. Ask your friends for ideas or even brainstorm your ideas with people you trust. Get some feedback early to make sure you are headed in the right direction.
All personal statements for medical school, often start by explaining why medicine is awesome; the admission committee already knows that. You should explain why you want a career in medicine. What is it about the practice of medicine that resonates with who you are? Naturally, this takes a lot of reflection around who you are. Here are some additional questions you can consider as you go about brainstorming for your essay:
- What motivates you to learn more about medicine?
- What is something you want them to know about you that isn't in your application?
- Where were you born, how did you grow up, and what type of childhood did you have growing up (perhaps including interesting stories about your siblings, parents, grandparents)?
- What kinds of early exposure to the medical field left an impression on you as a child?
- Did you become familiar with and interested in the field of medicine at an early stage of your life? If so, why?
- What are your key strengths, and how have you developed these?
- What steps did you take to familiarize yourself with the medical profession?
- Did you shadow a physician? Did you volunteer or work in a clinical setting? Did you get involved in medical research?
- What challenges have you faced? Have these made an impact on what you chose to study?
- What are your favorite activities?
- What kinds of extracurriculars for medical school or volunteer work have you done, and how have these shaped who you are, your priorities, and or your perspectives on a career in medicine?
- What was your "Aha!" moment?
- When did your desire to become a doctor solidify?
- How did you make the decision to apply to medical school?
As you begin thinking about what to include in your personal essay, remember that you are writing for a specific audience with specific expectations. Your evaluator will be familiar with the key qualities desired by medical schools, as informed by the standards of the profession. They will be examining your essay through the lens of their particular school's mission, values, and priorities. You should think about your experiences with reference to the AAMC Core Competencies and to each school's mission statement so that you're working toward your narrative with the institution and broader discipline in mind.
Review AAMC Core Competencies : The AAMC Core Competencies are the key characteristics and skills sought by U.S. medical schools. These are separated into four general categories:
Science Competencies : living systems and human behavior. ","label":"Science","title":"Science"}]' code='tab1' template='BlogArticle'>
You are not expected to have mastered all of these competencies at this stage of your education. Display those that are relevant to your experiences will help demonstrate your commitment to the medical profession.
Review the school's mission statement: Educational institutions put a lot of time and care into drafting their school's vision. The mission statement will articulate the overall values and priorities of each university, giving you insight into what they might seek in candidates, and thus what you should try to display in your personal statement. Echoing the values of the university helps illustrate that you are a good fit for their intellectual culture. The mission statement may help you identify other priorities of the university, for example, whether they prioritize research-based or experiential-based education. All this research into your chosen medical schools will help you tremendously not only when you write you personal statement, but also the rest of your medical school application components, including your medical school letter of intent if you ever need to write one later.
Just like the personal statement is, in essence, a prompt without a prompt. They give you free rein to write your own prompt to tell your story. This is often difficult for students as they find it hard to get started without having a true direction. Below is a list of ideas to get your creative juices flowing. Use these prompts as a starting point for your essay. Also, they are a great way of addressing why you want to be a doctor without saying something generic.
- The moment your passion for medicine crystallized
- The events that led you toward this path
- Specific instances in which you experienced opportunities
- Challenges that helped shape your worldview
- Your compassion, resilience, or enthusiastic collaboration
- Demonstrate your commitment to others
- Your dependability
- Your leadership skills
- Your ability to problem-solve or to resolve a conflict
These are personal, impactful experiences that only you have had. Focus on the personal, and connect that to the values of your future profession. Do that and you will avoid writing the same essay as everyone else.
Admissions committees don't want your resumé in narrative form. The most boring essays are those of applicants listing their accomplishments. Remember, all that stuff is already in the activities section of the application. This is where you should discuss interesting or important life events that shaped you and your interest in medicine (a service trip to rural Guatemala, a death in the family, a personal experience as a patient). One suggestion is to have an overarching theme to your essay to tie everything together, starting with an anecdote. Alternatively, you can use one big metaphor or analogy through the essay.
Your personal statement must be well-organized, showing a clear, logical progression, as well as connections between ideas. It is generally best to use a chronological progression since this mirrors your progression into a mature adult and gives you the opportunity to illustrate how you learned from early mistakes later on. Carry the theme throughout the statement to achieve continuity and cohesion. Use the theme to links ideas from each paragraph to the next and to unite your piece.
Medical School Personal Statement Structure
When working toward the initial draft of your essay, it is important to keep the following in mind: The essay should read like a chronological narrative and have good structure and flow. Just like any academic essay, it will need an introduction, body content, and a conclusion. If you're wondering whether a medical school advisor can help you with your medical school application, check out our blog for the answer.
Check out our video to learn how to create a killer introduction to your medical school personal statement:
Introduction
The introductory paragraph and, even more importantly, the introductory sentence of your essay, will most certainly make or break your overall statement. Ensure that you have a creative and captivating opening sentence that draws the reader in. This is your first and only chance to make a first impression and really capture the attention of the committee. Starting with an event or an Aha! moment that inspired your decision to pursue a medical profession is one way to grab their attention. The kinds of things that inspire or motivate you can say a lot about who you are as a person.
The broader introductory paragraph itself should serve several functions. First, it must draw your reader in with an eye-catching first line and an engaging hook or anecdote. It should point toward the qualities that most effectively demonstrate your desire and suitability for becoming a physician (you will discuss these qualities further in the body paragraphs). The thesis of the introduction is that you have certain skills, experiences, and characteristics and that these skills, experiences, and characteristics will lead you to thrive in the field of medicine. Finally, it must also serve as a roadmap to the reader, allowing them to understand where the remainder of the story is headed.
That is a lot of work for a single paragraph to do. To better help you envision what this looks like in practice, here is a sample introduction that hits these main points.
I was convinced I was going to grow up to be a professional chef. This was not just another far-fetched idealistic childhood dream that many of us had growing up. There was a sense of certainty about this dream that motivated me to devote countless hours to its practice. It was mostly the wonder that it brought to others and the way they were left in awe after they tried a dish that I recall enjoying the most creating as a young chef. But, when I was 13, my grandfather was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, and I realized that sometimes cooking is not enough, as I quickly learned about the vital role physicians play in the life of everyday people like my family and myself. Although my grandfather ended up passing away from his illness, the impact that the healthcare team had on him, my family, and I will always serve as the initial starting point of my fascination with the medical profession. Since that time, I have spent years learning more about the human sciences through my undergraduate studies and research, have developed a deeper understanding of the demands and challenges of the medical profession through my various volunteer and extra-curricular experiences, and although it has been difficult along the way, I have continued to forge a more intimate fascination with the medical field that has motivated me to apply to medical school at this juncture of my life. ","label":"Sample Introduction","title":"Sample Introduction"}]' code='tab3' template='BlogArticle'>
In the body of your essay, you essentially want to elaborate on the ideas that you have introduced in your opening paragraph by drawing on your personal experiences to provide evidence. Major points from the above sample introduction could be: dedication and resilience (practicing cooking for hours, and devoting years to undergraduate studies in human sciences), passion and emotional connection (being able to create something that inspired awe in others, and personally connecting with the work of the grandfather's healthcare team), motivation and drive (being inspired by the role physicians play in their patients' lives, participating in volunteer work and extracurriculars, and an enduring fascination with the field of medicine). Depending on the details, a selection of volunteer and extra-curricular experiences might also be discussed in more detail, in order to emphasize other traits like collaboration, teamwork, perseverance, or a sense of social responsibility – all key characteristics sought by medical schools. Just like an academic essay, you will devote one paragraph to each major point, explaining this in detail, supporting your claims with experiences from your life, and reflecting on the meaning of each plot point in your personal narrative, with reference to why you want to pursue a medical career.
Your final statement should not be a simple summary of the things you have discussed. It should be insightful, captivating, and leave the reader with a lasting impression. Although you want to re-emphasize the major ideas of your essay, you should try to be creative and captivating, much like your opening paragraph. Sometimes if you can link your opening idea to your last paragraph it will really tie the whole essay together. The conclusion is just as important as the introduction. It is your last chance to express your medical aspirations. You want to impress the reader while also leaving them wanting more. In this case, more would mean getting an interview so they can learn more about who you are! Leave them thinking I have got to meet this person.
The narrative you construct should display some of your most tightly held values, principles, or ethical positions, along with key accomplishments and activities. If you see yourself as someone who is committed to community service, and you have a track record of such service, your story should feature this and provide insight into why you care about your community and what you learned from your experiences. Saying that you value community service when you've never volunteered a day in your life is pointless. Stating that your family is one where we support each other through challenge and loss (if this is indeed true), is excellent because it lays the groundwork for telling a story while showing that you are orientated towards close relationships. You would then go on to offer a brief anecdote that supports this. You are showing how you live such principles, rather than just telling your reader that you have such principles.
A lot of students make the mistake of verbalizing their personal attributes with a bunch of adjectives, such as, "This experience taught me to be a self-reliant leader, with excellent communication skills, and empathy for others..." In reality, this does nothing to convey these qualities. It's a mistake to simply list your skills or characteristics without showing the reader an example of a time you used them to solve a problem. If you simply list your skills or characteristics (telling), without demonstrating the ways you have applied them (showing), you risk coming across as arrogant. The person reading the essay may not believe you, as you've not really given them a way to see such values in your actions. It is better to construct a narrative to show the reader that you possess the traits that medical schools are looking for, rather than explicitly stating that you are an empathetic individual or capable of deep self-reflection. Instead of listing adjectives, tell your personal story and allow the admissions committee to paint the picture for themselves. This step is very challenging for many students, but it's one of the most important strategies used in successful essays. Writing this way will absolutely make your statement stand out from the rest.
While it may be tempting to write in a high academic tone, using terminology or jargon that is often complex or discipline-specific, requiring a specialized vocabulary for comprehension. You should actually aim to write for a non-specialist audience. Remember, in the world of medicine, describing a complex, clinical condition to a patient requires using specific but clear words. This is why your personal statement should show that you can do the same thing. Using large words in unwieldy ways makes you sound like you are compensating for poor communication skills. Use words that you believe most people understand. Read your personal statement back to a 14-year-old, and then again to someone for whom English is not their first language, to see if you're on the right path.
Ultimately, fancy words do not make you a good communicator; listening and ensuring reader comprehension makes you a good communicator. Instead of using complex terminology to tell the admissions committee that you have strong communication skills, show them your communication skills through clear, accessible prose, written with non-specialists in mind. A common refrain among writing instructors is, never use a $10 word where a $2 word will suffice. If you can say it in plain, accessible language, then this is what you should do.
Display Professionalism
Professionalism may seem like a difficult quality to display when only composing a personal statement. After all, the reader can't see your mannerisms, your personal style, or any of those little qualities that allow someone to appear professional. Professionalism is about respect for the experience of others on your team or in your workplace. It is displayed when you are able to step back from your own individual position and think about what is best for your colleagues and peers, considering their needs alongside your own. If a story is relevant to why you want to be a physician and demonstrates an example of how you were professional in a workplace setting, then it is appropriate to include in your essay.
One easy way to destroy a sense of professionalism is to act in a judgmental way towards others, particularly if you perceived and ultimately resolved an error on someone else's part. Sometimes students blame another medical professional for something that went wrong with a patient.
They might say something to the effect of, "The nurse kept brushing off the patient's concerns, refusing to ask the attending to increase her pain medications. Luckily, being the empathetic individual that I am, I took the time to listen to sit with the patient, eventually bringing her concerns to the attending physician, who thanked me for letting him know."
There are a couple of things wrong with this example. It seems like this person is putting down someone else in an attempt to make themselves look better. They come across as un-empathetic and judgmental of the nurse. Maybe she was having a busy day, or maybe the attending had just seen the patient for this issue and the patient didn't really need re-assessment. Reading this kind of account in a personal statement makes the reader question the maturity of the applicant and their ability to move past blaming others and resolve problems in a meaningful way. Instead of allocating blame, identify what the problem was for the patient and then focus on what you did to resolve it and reflect on what you learned from the whole experience.
One last note on professionalism: Being professional does not mean being overly stoic, hiding your emotions, or cultivating a bland personality. A lot of students are afraid to talk about how a situation made them feel in their personal statement. They worry that discussing feelings is inappropriate and will appear unprofessional. Unfortunately for these students, emotional intelligence is hugely important to the practice of medicine. In order to be a good doctor, one must be aware of their own emotions as well as those of their patients. Good doctors are able to quickly identify their own emotions and understand how their emotional reactions may inform their actions, and the ability to deliver appropriate care, in a given situation. Someone who is incapable of identifying their emotions is also incapable of managing them effectively and will likely struggle to identify the emotions of others. So, when writing your personal statement, think about how each experience made you feel, and what you learned from those feelings and that experience.
How to Write About Discrepancies and Common Mistakes to Avoid
Part of your essay's body can include a discussion of any discrepancies or gaps in your education, or disruptions in your academic performance. If you had to take time off, or if you had a term or course with low grades, or if you had any other extenuating circumstances that impacted your education, you can take time to address these here. It is very important to address these strategically. Do not approach this section as space to plead your case. Offer a brief summary of the situation, and then emphasize what you learned from such hardships. Always focus on the positive, illustrating how such difficulties made you stronger, more resilient, or more compassionate. Connect your experiences to the qualities desired by medical schools.
Emphasize your ability to persevere through it all but do so in a positive way. Most of all, if you feel like you have to explain yourself, take accountability for the situation. State that it is unfortunate and then redirect it to what you learned and how it will make you a better doctor. Always focus on being positive and do not lament on the negative situation too much.
Additional Mistakes to Avoid in Personal Statements:
Check out this video on the top 5 errors to avoid in your personal statement!
Step 3: Writing Your First Draft
As you can see, there is a LOT of planning and consideration to be done before actually starting your first draft. Properly brainstorming, outlining, and considering the content and style of your essay prior to beginning the essay will make the writing process much smoother than it would be you to try to jump right to the draft-writing stage. Now, you're not just staring at a blank page wondering what you could possibly write to impress the admissions committee. Instead, you've researched what the school desires from its students and what the medical profession prioritizes in terms of personal characteristics, you've sketched out some key moments from your life that exemplify those traits, and you have a detailed outline that just needs filling in.
As you're getting started, focus on getting content on the page, filling in your outline and getting your ideas arranged on the page. Your essay will go through multiple drafts and re-writes, so the first step is to free write and start articulating connections between your experiences and the characteristics you're highlighting. You can worry about flow, transitions, and perfect grammar in later drafts. The first draft is always a working draft, written with the understanding that its purpose is to act as a starting point, not an ending point. Once you've completed a draft, you can begin the revising process. The next section will break down what to do once you have your first draft completed.
You can also begin looking at things like style, voice, transitions, and overall theme. The best way to do this is to read your essay aloud. This may sound strange, but it is one of the single most impactful bits of writing advice a student can receive. When we're reading in our heads (and particularly when we're reading our own words), it is easy to skip over parts that may be awkwardly worded, or where the grammar is off. As our brains process information differently, depending on whether we're taking in visual or auditory information, this can also help you understand where the connections between ideas aren't as evident as you would like. Reading the essay aloud will help you begin internalizing the narrative you've crafted, so that you can come to more easily express this both formally in writing and informally in conversation (for example, in an interview).
#1 Did You Distinguish Yourself From Others?
Does your narrative sound unique? Is it different than your peers or did you write in a generic manner? Use your narrative to provide a compelling picture of who you are as a person, as a learner, as an advocate, and as a future medical professional. What can you offer? Remember, you will be getting a lot out of your med school experience, but the school will be getting a lot out of you, as well. You will be contributing your research efforts to your department, you will be participating in the academic community, and as you go on to become a successful medical professional you will impact the perception of your school's prestige. This is a mutually beneficial relationship, so use this opportunity to highlight what you bring to the table, and what you will contribute as a student at their institution. Let them know what it is about you that is an attribute to their program. Make them see you as a stand out from the crowd.
#2 Does My Essay Flow and is it Comprehensible?
Personal statements are a blessing and a curse for admission committees. They give them a better glimpse of who the applicant is than simple scores. Also, they are long and time-consuming to read. And often, they sound exactly alike. On occasion, a personal statement really makes an applicant shine. After reading page after page of redundant, cookie-cutter essays, an essay comes along with fluid prose and a compelling narrative, the reader snaps out of that feeling of monotony and gladly extends their enthusiastic attention.
Frankly, if the statement is pleasant to read, it will get read with more attention and appreciation. Flow is easier to craft through narrative, which is why you should root the statement in a story that demonstrates characteristics desirable to medical schools. Fluidity takes time to build, though, so your statement should be etched out through many drafts and should also be based on an outline. You need to brainstorm, then outline, then draft and re-draft, and then bring in editors and listeners for feedback (Note: You need someone to proofread your work. Bestselling authors have editors. Top scholars have editors. I need an editor. You need an editor. Everyone needs an editor). Then, check and double-check and fix anything that needs fixing. Then check again. Then submit. You want this to be a statement that captures the reader's interest by creating a fluid, comprehensible piece that leads the reader to not only read each paragraph but want to continue to the next sentence.
#3 Did You Check Your Grammar?
If you give yourself more than one night to write your statement, the chances of grammatical errors will decrease considerably. If you are pressed for time, upload your file into an online grammar website. Use the grammar checker on your word processor, but know that this, in itself, isn't enough. Use the eyes and ears of other people to check and double-check your grammar, punctuation, and syntax. Read your statement out loud to yourself and you will almost certainly find an error (and likely several errors). Use fresh eyes to review the statement several times before you actually submit it, by walking away from it for a day or so and then re-reading it. Start your essay early, so that you actually have time to do this. This step can make or break your essay. Do not waste all the effort you have put into writing, to only be discarded by the committee for using incorrect grammar and syntax.
#4 Did You Gather Feedback From Other People?
The most important tip in writing a strong application essay is this getting someone else to read your work. While the tips above are all very useful for writing a strong draft, nothing will benefit you more than getting an outside appraisal of your work. For example, it's very easy to overlook your own spelling or grammatical errors. You know your own story and you may think that your narrative and it's meaning make sense to your reader. You won't know that for sure without having someone else actually read it. This may sound obvious, but it's still an absolute necessity. Have someone you trust to read the essay and ask them what they thought of it. What was their impression of you after reading it? Did it make sense? Was it confusing? Do they have any questions? What was the tone of the essay? Do they see the connections you're trying to make? What were their takeaways from your essay, and do these align with your intended takeaways for your reader? Ideally, this person should have some knowledge of the application process or the medical profession, so that they can say whether you were successful in demonstrating that you are a suitable candidate for medical school. However, any external reader is better than no external reader at all.
Avoid having people too close to you read your work. They may refrain from being too critical in an effort to spare your feelings. This is the time to get brutal, honest feedback. If you know someone who is an editor but do not feel that they can be objective, try and find someone else.
Would you like 8 medical school personal statement tips? Check out our video below:
FAQs and Final Notes
Your personal statement should tell your story and highlight specific experiences or aspects of your journey that have led you to medicine. If your first exposure or interest in the medical field was sparked from your own medical struggles, then you can certainly include this in your statement. What is most important is that you write about what factors or experiences attributed to you deciding that medicine is the right career path for you.
Sometimes students shy away from including their own personal struggles and describing how they felt during difficult times but this is a great way for admissions committees to gain perspective into who you are as a person and where your motivations lie. Remember, this is your story, not someone else's, so your statement should revolve around you. If you choose to discuss a personal hardship, what's most important is that you don't cast yourself as the victim and that you discuss what the experience taught you. Also, medical schools are not allowed to discriminate against students for discussing medical issues, so it is not looked at as a red flag unless you are talking about an issue inappropriately. For example, making yourself appear as the victim or not taking responsibility.
All US medical schools require the completion of a personal statement with your AMCAS, TMDSAS or AACOMAS applications.
Medical schools in Canada on the other hand, do not require or accept personal statements. In lieu of the personal statement, a few of these schools may require you to address a prompt in the form of an essay, or allow you to submit an explanation essay to describe any extenuating circumstances, but this is not the same as the US personal statement. For example, when applying through OMSAS , the University of Toronto medical school requires applicants to complete four short, 250 words or less, personal essays.
Many students struggle with whether or not they should address an unfavorable grade in their personal statement. What one student does isn't necessarily the right decision for you.
To help you decide, think about whether or not that bad grade might reflect on your poorly. If you think it will, then it's best to address the academic misstep head-on instead of having admissions committees dwell on possible areas of concern. If you're addressing a poor evaluation, ensure that you take responsibility for your grade, discuss what you learned and how your performance will be improved in the future - then move on. It's important that you don't play the victim and you must always reflect on what lessons you've learned moving forward.
Of course not, just because you didn't wake up one morning and notice a lightbulb flashing the words medicine, doesn't mean that your experiences and journey to medicine are inferior to those who did. Students arrive to medicine in all sorts of ways, some change career paths later in life, some always knew they wanted to pursue medicine, and others slowly became interested in medicine through their life interactions and experiences. Your personal statement should address your own unique story to how you first became interested in medicine and when and how that interest turned to a concrete desire.
While your entire statement is important, the opening sentence can often make or break your statement. This is because admission committee members are reviewing hundreds, if not thousands of personal statements. If your opening sentence is not eye-catching, interesting, and memorable, you risk your statement blending in with the large pile of other statements. Have a look at our video above for tips and strategies for creating a fantastic opening sentence.
Having your statement reviewed by family and friends can be a good place to start, but unfortunately, it's near-impossible for them to provide you with unbiased feedback. Often, friends and family members are going to support us and rave about our achievements. Even if they may truly think your statement needs work, they may feel uncomfortable giving you their honest feedback at the risk of hurting your feelings.
In addition, family and friends don't know exactly what admission committee members are looking for in a personal statement, nor do they have years of experience reviewing personal statements and helping students put the best version of themselves forward. For these reasons, many students choose to seek the help of a professional medical school advisor to make sure they have the absolute best chances of acceptance to medical school the first time around.
If you have enough time set aside to write your statement without juggling multiple other commitments, it normally takes at least four weeks to write your statement. If you are working, in school, or volunteering and have other commitments, be prepared to spend 6-8 weeks.
Your conclusion should have a summary of the main points you have made in your essay, but it should not just be a summary. You should also end with something that makes the reader want to learn more about you (i.e. call you for an interview). A good way to do this is to include a call-back to your opening anecdote: how have you grown or matured since then? How are you more prepared now to begin medical school?
The goal is to show as many of them as you can in the WHOLE application: this includes your personal statement, sketch, reference letters, secondary essays, and even your GPA and MCAT (which show critical thinking and reasoning already). So, it’s not an issue to focus on only a few select experiences and competencies in the personal statement.
Yes, you can. However, if you used an experience as a most meaningful entry, pick something else to talk about in your essay. Remember, you want to highlight as many core competencies across your whole application). Or, if you do pick the same experience: pick a different specific encounter or project with a different lesson learned.
Once your essay is in good shape, it's best to submit to ensure your application is reviewed as soon as possible. Remember, with rolling admissions, as more time passes before you submit your application, your chances of acceptance decreases. Nerves are normal and wanting to tinker is also normal, but over-analyzing and constant adjustments can actually weaken your essay.
So, if you're thinking about making more changes, it's important to really reflect and think about WHY you want to change something and if it will actually make the essay stronger. If not your changes won't actually make the essay stronger or if it's a very minor change you're thinking of making, then you should likely leave it as is.
The reality is, medical school admission is an extremely competitive process. In order to have the best chance of success, every part of your application must be stellar. Also, every year some students get in whose GPAs or MCAT scores are below the median. How? Simply because they must have stood out in other parts of the application, such as the personal statement.
The ones that honestly made the most impact on you. You'll need to reflect on your whole life and think about which experiences helped you grow and pushed you to pursue medicine. Ideally, experiences that show commitment and progression are better than one-off or short-term activities, as they usually contribute more to growth.
Final Notes
This Ultimate Guide has demonstrated all the work that needs to be done to compose a successful, engaging personal statement for your medical school application. While it would be wonderful if there was an easy way to write your personal statement in a day, the reality is that this kind of composition takes a lot of work. As daunting as this may seem, this guide lays out a clear path. In summary, the following 5 steps are the basis of what you should take away from this guide. These 5 steps are your guide and sort of cheat sheet to writing your best personal statement.
5 Main Takeaways For Personal Statement Writing:
- Brainstorming
- Content and Theme
- Multiple Drafts
- Revision With Attention to Grammar
While a strong personal statement alone will not guarantee admission to medical school, it could absolutely squeeze you onto a medical school waitlist , off the waitlist, and onto the offer list, or give someone on the admissions committee a reason to go to battle for your candidacy. Use this as an opportunity to highlight the incredible skills you've worked and studied to refine, the remarkable life experiences you've had, and the key qualities you possess in your own unique way. Show the admissions committee that you are someone they want to meet. Remember, in this context, wanting to meet you means wanting to bring you in for an interview!
Dr. Lauren Prufer is an admissions expert at BeMo. Dr. Prufer is also a medical resident at McMaster University. Her medical degree is from the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry. During her time in medical school, she developed a passion for sharing her knowledge with others through medical writing, research, and peer mentoring.
To your success,
Your friends at BeMo
BeMo Academic Consulting
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Jack Weaver
I have been reading posts regarding this topic and this post is one of the most interesting and informative one I have read. Thank you for this!
Hello Jack! Thank you very much for your comment. We glad you find this helpful!
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After reading hundreds of personal statements and extracurriculars this application cycle, I’m seeing the same mistakes over and over again. Don’t do it too!
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And if you preorder it on Barnes and Noble, I’m giving away a bonus, a personal statement course which I did with 30 students, where we broke down personal statements. You get access to this for free.
[04:10] The Goal of Your Personal Statement
It’s important that you have someone look at your personal statement and ECs and give you feedback. This is crucial in the process. Your only goal when writing your personal statement is just to show who you are, in terms of why you want to be a physician. What has been your path to get to this point?
[Tweet “”Once you understand what the goal is, just knowing that will help you prevent the mistakes many students make.” https://medicalschoolhq.net/pmy-289-stop-wasting-space-in-your-personal-statement-and-ecs/”]
Listen to last week’s podcast, Session 288, where I interviewed Leila Amiri, the Director of Admissions at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. She talks about how their review personal statements. Your goal is to talk about why you want to be a physician. What has been your path to get to this point?
If your reason is a cliche reason like a family member getting sick, just because it’s common, you really need to talk about this because this is your story. In other words, talk about that seed and when was it first planted that made you want to become a physician.
[Tweet “”Don’t think that your story is cliche if it is your story. It may be common and that’s okay as long as you highlight why that experience affected you.” https://medicalschoolhq.net/pmy-289-stop-wasting-space-in-your-personal-statement-and-ecs/”]
While your story may be common, it’s not cliche. Talk about why that experience made you want to be a physician or exposed you to medicine for the first time. You have to be true to your story.
[08:05] The Goal of the Extracurriculars
The goal of the ECs is to show the impact that you’ve had on each of your experiences. Tell why this meant something to you. It could be that the experience impacted you in some way.
Please take note that extracurriculars are not job descriptions. The admissions committee knows what a scribe does so don’t write what a scribe does. If you really have to say what you do, explain it in just one sentence. And then go to impact.
Make sure you’re showing through that and what does that look like in your life. How does that experience affect you? And how did you impact that experience?
[10:00] Personal Statement Mistake #1: Selling Yourself
Stop trying to sell yourself. You don’t need to sell yourself in your personal statements or your extracurriculars or your interviews. The goal of this process is to show who you are, not why you think you’re amazing or what amazing skills you have.
Here are some examples of students I’ve worked with where I saw some mistakes. The first is a student who was working at a suicide hotline. But he was trying to sell to me that he really cares for people. You don’t need to write that. Tell the story that shows you connected with the person on the phone, and hopefully, prevented a suicide. Show how you actually cared by telling it through a story.
Another example would be trying to sell that you have to address the person’s social support system. This is not telling the admissions committee anything.
One student says, they had to prove to themselves that they could solve problems in a medical setting. Saying you’re a problem-solver is the same thing as selling yourself.
Remember, you’re wasting space in your personal statement if you’re talking about these things. I don’t care what you learned from the experience. What I care at this point, is you’re showing why that experience made you want to be a physician.
[Tweet “”The goal is to show why you want to be a physician, not that you have the skills necessary.” https://medicalschoolhq.net/pmy-289-stop-wasting-space-in-your-personal-statement-and-ecs/”]
[17:40] Personal Statement Mistake #2: Wasting Space
Don’t put double spaces in your personal statement after punctuation. Set it at single space after punctuation. So if you have 50 periods and you have double spaces after each of those, those are 50 extra characters you could get back that you need.
[Tweet “”Don’t waste space with the names you don’t need.” https://medicalschoolhq.net/pmy-289-stop-wasting-space-in-your-personal-statement-and-ecs/”]
Don’t waste space in your personal statement, talking about names of places where you’re volunteering. Just say you volunteered at an emergency department. The names are going to be in your ECs anyway.
You don’t have to name drop, either. This is also a wasted space. Personally, too, research is a waste of space to talk about in your personal statement.
Research is exciting. It helps you tie together science with the clinical side of things or patient care. It may help you understand things and see those connections. But it’s not driving you to be a physician. You may want to do research as a physician in the future, but it’s not driving you to be a physician. For the majority, if not all, the driving force of people wanting to become a physician is because they want to take care of people. Focus on the people, not the research.
[Tweet “”For 99.99% of people, the driving force behind wanting to be a physician is to take care of people.” https://medicalschoolhq.net/pmy-289-stop-wasting-space-in-your-personal-statement-and-ecs/”]
[21:37] EC Mistake #1: Don’t Sell
One student I worked with previously sold herself on her ECs. She wrote about her experience as a college athlete and its demands. Another example is working in a research lab. Again, don’t sell all the skills you’ve learned. Don’t sell the skills. Instead, focus on the impact you had. Focus on a story or interaction with a patient. Don’t try to sell to the reader what’s going to happen.
Another student talks about how this taught her to thrive under pressure. This is still selling. This just doesn’t work.
[Tweet “”Don’t sell your skills or traits in your extracurriculars… Focus on a story or interaction with a patient. Don’t try to sell to the reader what’s going to happen.” https://medicalschoolhq.net/pmy-289-stop-wasting-space-in-your-personal-statement-and-ecs/”]
[25:33] EC Mistake 2: Wasting Space
You are wasting space if you compared what you’re doing to what a physician is like. You can’t really say this until after medical school. You can say this all afterwards, but not before.
So don’t assume they’re looking for anything. Don’t sell yourself. Each EC is wasting space if you’re putting a takeaway at the end of each of your ECs. This shows the readers what you’ve taken away from that extracurricular.
[28:55] Other Common Mistakes
Try to switch things around and putting your focus on the future, of what you hope to do, with all the knowledge you gained from this experience.
Repeating details is another common mistake to avoid. Don’t repeat information in the descriptions that are already in detail section.
Instead of saying numbers, talk about the impact the physician had on you and vice versa. Don’t waste space by selling, repeating information, or the number of hours per week.
PMY 288: This is How UICOM Reviews Your Medical School Application
The Premed Playbook: Guide to the MCAT
The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Personal Statement
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Is It Okay to Use a Patient's Name in Your Medical School Admissions Essays?
By: Ryan Kelly
Like a good pre-med, you’ve racked your brain for all of your best stories - meaningful patient interactions, successful leadership roles, service activities, etc. - and now you’re ready to write.
You start your personal statement with a story about helping a homeless veteran patient find housing. It’s a great story that really shows your impact on others. As you write, you keep referring to him as “the homeless veteran,” and it’s getting a little repetitive. It also makes him sound like a writing device, rather than a real person.
You know his name was Karl, but you’re worried about using his name due to patient confidentiality. You also remember signing something at the VA clinic about upholding HIPAA.
What do you do? Do you use his real name? A fake name? Just play it safe and call him “the homeless veteran?”
Nearly every pre-med faces this question, and it’s a legit one. You don’t want to present yourself as unprofessional and risk your whole application as a result. But still, it’d be great if you could just call him Karl, right?
Maybe you should just play it safe. Is it really worth using a name?
It’s hard to say for sure. But every year, Passport Admissions helps countless students get into medical school, and the vast majority of them use character names in their essays. So we can say with near certainty that it won’t jeopardize your application.
THE DANGERS OF USING A PATIENT’S REAL NAME IN YOUR MEDICAL SCHOOL ESSAYS
Let’s start by examining the HIPAA rules, to put your mind at ease a bit. This excerpt is taken from https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa .
Protected Health Information. The Privacy Rule protects all "individually identifiable health information" held or transmitted by a covered entity or its business associate, in any form or media, whether electronic, paper, or oral.
“Individually identifiable health information” is information, including demographic data, that relates to:
- the individual’s past, present or future physical or mental health or condition,
- the provision of health care to the individual, or
- the past, present, or future payment for the provision of health care to the individual,
and that identifies the individual or for which there is a reasonable basis to believe it can be used to identify the individual. Individually identifiable health information includes many common identifiers (e.g., name, address, birth date, Social Security Number).
So, you’re not violating HIPAA if you use a phony name and avoid divulging any of these key identifiers. But wait - would you need to change your description of Karl’s health issues or treatment?
Nope - just change his name - he’s not the only homeless veteran in your city with PTSD, so you’re not running any risks of revealing his identity. Even in rare instances when there are unusual symptoms, conditions, circumstances, you’re still safe.
And yes, it’s okay to use a name that would be typical for the region or patient population; using “Miguel” in Tijuana might seem stereotypical, but it’s likely to make the story more believable.
THE TWO BEST WAYS TO HANDLE PATIENT NAMES IN YOUR MEDICAL SCHOOL ESSAYS
We know you like to be extra safe, so here are the two best ways of using character names:
1. Put the fake name in quotes the first time you use it, then drop the quotes afterwards. This will help the reader understand that it’s made-up.
“Margery” was the first patient I met in hospice, and she left a lasting impression...
2. Use the person’s title (Mr./Mrs./Ms., etc) and the capital letter of his or her last name. This might sound like a character in a Kafka novel, but it’ll be anonymous.
“Mr. R was a frequent patient at our free clinic, often complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath…”
Both of these are better than alternatives, like pausing the narrative completely to explain that it’s a false name or giving the person a generic identifier. Perhaps the worst offense we’ve seen is a student referring to a patient as “colon cancer man” (sounds like the most unfortunate superhero in history). “The homeless veteran” is better, certainly, but it still feels impersonal.
The truth is that people love characters, and they want to feel like they’re reading about real people in real situations. Think about how much harder it would be to connect to your favorite characters without their names.
Man, I sure love “wizard boy.” I can’t wait for his next book.
It was so cool when the “blonde-haired queen” rode her dragon to battle.
Just doesn’t feel the same as Harry and Daenerys, does it?
It’s also much more convenient for you as a writer to be able to callback to characters quickly in a way that readers will instantly recognize. You’re saving precious characters while also creating a more personal narrative.
So, if you can get past your initial fears surrounding confidentiality, the pros of using character names definitely outweigh the cons. Just be wise with your decisions and presentation, and you’ll be in the clear.
If your essays and stories are like your children, as some writers claim, then we invite you to have a blast when naming your characters.
Want some inspiration? https://www.name-generator.org.uk/character/
Best of luck with your amazing character-driven stories!
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According to the Oxford dictionary, name-dropping is “the act of mentioning the names of famous people you know or have met in order to impress other people.” It is usually considered a...
No Name Dropping in your Medical School Personal Statement! Name dropping is obnoxious in almost any situation. It’s braggadocious and brushed off at best. At worst, it could negatively impact your chances if the adcom reader thinks poorly of the person you’re talking about.
He directly suggested that I "name drop" in my personal statement. I feel an aversion to this, especially since I will already be listing my PIs in my work/activities section. I also feel that naming someone can either be good (if the reader recognizes the name), or it can waste space (if the reader doesn't recognize the name).
Jul 1, 2013 #1 Members don't see this ad. Last year I got criticized for name dropping my personal statement. For example, I included patient first names and I also included physician first and last names as well as which hospital they were affiliated with ( ex. Dr. John Doe from Murray Health Care)....
Failing to gain admittance to medical school after a grueling application cycle can be disappointing. After all of your hard work, the prospect of improving your application for a subsequent...
Part 2: A step-by-step approach to writing an amazing medical school personal statement Before writing, the typical applicant does two things: Pulls up their resume and attempts to identify the experience that is “most unique” or “most authentic” Searches for essay sample after essay sample, hoping to be inspired by someone else’s writing
30 Stellar Medical School Personal Statement Examples Example #1/30 I made my way to Hillary’s house after hearing about her alcoholic father’s incarceration. Seeing her tearfulness and at a loss for words, I took her hand and held it, hoping to make things more bearable. She squeezed back gently in reply, “thank you.”
Don’t waste space in your personal statement, talking about names of places where you’re volunteering. Just say you volunteered at an emergency department. The names are going to be in your ECs anyway. You don’t have to name drop, either. This is also a wasted space.
Put the fake name in quotes the first time you use it, then drop the quotes afterwards. This will help the reader understand that it’s made-up. “Margery” was the first patient I met in hospice, and she left a lasting impression... 2. Use the person’s title (Mr./Mrs./Ms., etc) and the capital letter of his or her last name.