How To Get Into Medical School

How to write your Medical School Personal Statement

This is another important aspect of your application. It is the part where you are able to tell medical schools what defines you. It is the one statement that you can make where medical school admissions are all ears.

This personal statement is ultimately you. They will judge the kind of person you are by your personal statement. Do you realize the magnitude of importance yet? We often devote countless hours to our transcript and MCAT and so little the personal statement. This is the part of your application that can significantly improve your chances if you put the time and effort into developing the perfect masterpiece that represents you. Remember that the personal statement is the only picture of yourself that the medical schools will be able to scrutinize, so why not put in the effort to make a great impression?

You would like to make clear a couple of themes. The critical themes are why do you want to be a doctor, the preparation you took, the type of person you are, and why are you an ideal candidate for medical school. These are all extremely tough questions to answer only within a page. There will be constant revisions in content, phrasing, organization and presentation. The only way to start your personal statement is to get in the habit of writing about yourself. Keep a journal and within this journal make daily reflections of who you are, what your goals are, and what you did today to help you achieve your goal. Think of reasons why you are continuing with what you are doing. What do you like, what do you not like. This will give you ideas for your personal statement and also get you in the habit of writing about yourself.

1. Take a history of your life. Write down significant events and how they affected you. Write down your journey through premedland. Write down what you want out of life. Besides being helpful with the personal statement, it is also beneficial to you in establishing how you want to live your life.

2. With all of these tasks accomplished it is time to write the first draft. The important thing with this first draft is not grammar, style, or length, but just to get your fingers going on the keyboard. You want to eliminate all roadblocks that will prevent your fingers from moving. Just type what you feel.

3. After this draft it is time to eliminate the extraneous content. Content that you believe that medical school admissions would not consider relevant. Then proceed to check grammar, spelling, and style. You now have a second draft.

4. The third part is to spice up the personal statement. Add an initial first sentence that will hook the reader. Try to stylistically place the personal statement in the context of a story. Most human beings love to be told a story. Stories are what make life exciting. You now have a third draft.

5. Take the third draft and distribute it amongst friends and teachers. Always bring it to people you consider expert writers. Make sure you understand their comments. Your friends and teachers will tell you if something is unclear. If you like their suggestions make the necessary corrections. If not, you don’t have to change it if you don’t like their stylistic suggestion. Combine all of these suggestions together and make the necessary corrections. You now have a fourth draft.

6. At a point, someone might say that you need to completely redo your essay. Be willing to hear them out. My personal statement had three different versions before I decided on which one to use. If you have enough time and are not scrambling to put in a personal statement, making multiple versions will allow you a point of comparison. It will allow you to look at multiple versions and figure out which one best describes you.

7. Repeat 1 through 6 as many times necessary. When you have done this reduce your characters to the amount allotted by AMCAS. This will involve decreasing the elaborate phrasing of your personal statement but will also make it more efficient in conveying who you are.