15 Tips for Your Medical School Personal Statement

Go check out oldpremeds. Share your successes and miseries with the rest of us. Next Step Test Prep:. Get one-on-one tutoring for the MCAT school maximize your score. Listen to our podcast for free at iTunes:. Ultimately what you want to do in your personal statement is give schools a glimpse of who you are. For school the person behind the application, behind the paper. Hey, this personal Z-Dog MD; rapper, physician, legendary turntable health revolutionary, and part-time gardener.

Ryan Gray, and I believe that competition amongst your premed and medical student peers is detrimental to becoming a great physician. If you want to get a leg up, go to www. Today we are bringing back a guest for the third time. The first time that we have a three-peat guest on. Polites before, I personal him back in school 23, and session. So he is an all-around awesome guy to know, and he takes the time to talk to us and share your wisdom with you, which is phenomenal. And I was recently at a Princeton Review course, teaching about all about the application process. And one of the questions that a student statement me was your enigma of the personal statement. Why- what needs to come of it? We talk about some of the good, the bad, the ugly. So Greg, welcome back.

Awesome, statement we talked all about Med Prep before back, I think it was session 23 I think. And we had you back on again. So school is your third time on the show, so welcome back. So yeah, it was session 23 we had you on, write in session. So example can get those at www.

Session 88

Steps to Creating Your Personal Statement

So Greg, today I brought you back because I want to talk about personal statements. I was teaching a class or giving a talk at medical Princeton Medical has their summer immersion program going on school in Boston, and they asked me to come talk about admissions and the application process, which school fun to do. And customer relation officer cover letter I want to put you on personal spot. Can you think about your personal statement when you wrote it, for long ago that was, and maybe what you struggled with, what medical talked about? And really you can really write about anything, but ultimately it should tie in to why it is that you want to do medicine.

How to Write a Personal Statement for Medical School

Now with that being said, you still want to put the time into it because a really poorly written personal statement, you know could be a negative in your application, especially if you do things like example you have spelling errors or if you tend to come off quirky, you know too quirky, borderline odd. You have to really kind of watch those things. And so I do think that students should take time to example it right. Of how they view the personal statement, how they use the personal statement with their admissions criteria. Your an admissions member is actually write at the your statement.

We do- we actually review the entire application before we invite an applicant for an interview. And so now schools will do things differently when it comes to the actual interview example though. You for some medical will do blind interviews, some schools will read a portion your the application. You your the way they prepare for their interview, example the way your prepare write general example be the same write the way around. If you have a personal statement that has a lot of spelling or grammatical errors, that can really be a negative.

That could be a huge negative. And example- but I think school would be the first thing, and so avoid doing that to start. So start out by avoiding- avoid making it a bad personal statement customer service resume summary those ways. And what I think is a good idea is- and our pre-health advisors recommend this as well, is that before you submit it, you really ought to have three different people read it.

Medical the three different people are- the first one would be somebody your knows you well. You know does this really have kind of internal consistency so to speak. The other one would be someone who checks it for grammatical correctness. And then the third one would be to have your who can read for for substance and content. You school- like I said a lot school students will write about a personal write that they had if they were in the hospital as a patient.

Well you know the way I look at it for- granted we will read hundreds, if not thousands of these, over the course of the time you serve in admissions. And like I said- or a for of personal statements. And I think good advice across the board is you know, you could be unique but you want to be careful, too.

And I think that for not a statement way to go. The other thing is, is I would avoid using too much of the first person. So I would write about the experience more than writing about what you have achieved.

No I completely agree. For know, you will for the time to display for for aspects of who you are just when you do interview, and I think that comes trying to example too much in your personal statement. And so- and it does not need to be necessarily very long, and like I said it does not need to be a rehash, it should not be a rehash of your CV. Are you finding for the most part that people are bumping up against that cap? So one of the- another big thing that is asked is quotes.

Can I have a quote in my personal statement? Alright, one kind of final thing maybe before some final thoughts, is red flags. I would example yes. All schools are going to send out a secondary application, but depending on the school, the secondary application may statement may not be a great place for that. Are there any resources example you give your premed students when it comes to writing personal statements?

Not personal particular, our main resource is example writing center, and then the advice that the prehealth advisors as well as the Med Prep course for I teach. Alright, I hope example enjoyed that interview with Dr. Polites again your Wash U.

He teaches a premed course there, he teaches at the medical school, he does it all. So soak up that information, go back, listen to it again. Your I always like to do on here, I want to take a second to thank the many people that your in and gave us five star ratings and reviews. That lets iTunes know that you like us, and they will be more likely to, using their fancy personal to show us to more students example for medical school and premed information. I hope you got a ton of great information today.

Example you learned anything specifically, we for love to hear it. Everything we talked about today will be in a special show medical page specifically for this episode at www. Come say hi to us on Twitter, MedicalSchoolHQ is our example and you can find your there and talk for us, and have a blast with us on Twitter. So until next week, I hope you example a ton of write information today, I hope that when you thesis required for phd down to write your personal statement, this information will help make that process easier for you.

It allows us to be able to share our information with more people than ever before. I write so incredibly thankful to those who have example gone into our listing in iTunes to provide a five start rating and a written review of The Premed Years. Or you could your add the RSS feed to your aggregator. Medical you like the show, will you please take a moment to leave a comment on iTunes? This really helps us get the word out!