The Personal Statement

I've always felt awkward talking about myself in hopes to convince someone to like me...so writing my personal statement for medical school was a bit of a struggle.

Here are a few steps that could help you write your personal statement for your application.

Step 1: Know your Audience

Understanding who you're talking to is an important step in writing this paper. Future colleges, professors, and doctors will be reading your statement , it's important to make sure your paper is concise and clear. They are not going to reread your paper to understand what you were trying to say.

Step 2: Choose your Theme

During your paper, there should be an overlying theme within your experiences you decided to share. There is no harm in researching what character traits medical schools are looking for, just to ensure that you're on the right track in impressing those interviewers.

Few themes to think about: Confidence Resilience Adaptability Altruism Responsibility Compassion Integrity Respect

Step 3: Read Examples Reading examples of personal statements gave me an understanding of what medical schools were looking for, so this step can be helpful if you don't really know where to start. I've copied a link to a resource that gave great examples of personal statements.

https://www.fredhutch.org/content/dam/public/education/surp/Writing-Workshop-booklet.pdf

Step 4: Start Writing

Everybody likes a beginning, middle and end, so defiantly have a flow to your story. If you're not given a prompt, I would keep it simple and write about what led you to apply to medical school. Also be mindful of what you're putting in your statement, if you're going to write about it, you're giving permission to the interviewer to talk about it. Not saying its not important to put in your failures, but talk about how you were able to overcome those failures and succeed in your other classes or etc.. Just be prepared to talk about your personal statement in your interview, if your interviewer brings it up.

Step 5: ASK FOR HELP!! This is when you need a village. Having your paper read by a large number of people will notably be helpful to you. Give your paper to english majors, professors, or friends from grad school to make sure your paper makes sense, and gives a clear narrative why you want to become a doctor. The goal for letting other people read your paper is for them to understand why you decided to become a doctor. If they can understand, so can the interviewer.

It's your story, share it.

We hope this was helpful, 2dopedocs