Your Personal Statement

Your personal statement for your medical school application is very important. It’s usually the first thing I read when reviewing an application (even before looking at grades, MCAT scores, and letters of recommendation) because it gives me a really good sense of the applicant that I’m reviewing. You can have great scores, activities, and letters, but if your statement is awful, it could set you up for rejection. So, let’s avoid that, k?

You will have a very generic prompt for the personal statement. Something like: Use the space provided to explain why you want to go to medical school. That’s it. It won’t say, tell us about an experience that made you want to be a physician, or tell us why you think you’d be a good physician, nothing like that. It’s generic on purpose. And “the space” is 5300 characters (with spaces), which is about 1 ½ pages. So you’ve got 1 ½ pages to either make a good impression or to leave a sour taste in the mouth of the reviewer. 

Here are a few tips to make a good impression with your personal statement…

Engage the reader.

Please, whatever you do, don’t write a boring personal statement. Don’t do it. If someone would stop in the middle of reading your statement to do something else and then come back to it, it’s boring. And you’ve lost them. You should keep the reader engaged! By the time the reviewer is done reading it, they should feel like they know something about you! I have teared up reading personal statements, I’ve gone back and read some 2 or 3 times, and I almost always ask something from the personal statement in the interview…if it was interesting. Make your statement interesting enough that the reader wants to get through it and will feel that they have learned something about you from reading your statement.

Make it personal!

The best advice I can give when writing your personal statement is…Make it personal! Your statement should be unique; meaning, no one else should be able to submit the statement you write. It should not be generic, it should not fit anyone else. It needs to be personal and specific to you. Also, you should be the center of the story you’re telling. Even if it includes an experience with someone else, bring it back to you! You’re not trying to get that other person a white coat, you’re trying to get your own. So bring that story or experience full circle and include what you learned from it, how it made you feel, etc. 

Don’t make a list.

In your statement, don’t just give facts and don’t simply list things that are already listed in your application (though it is certainly fine to expand upon something you have listed elsewhere in your activities). And please, leave out the “I’m kind, compassionate, and hard-working” sentences. Don’t list your personal traits or characteristics, use those 5300 characters to show them who you are.

Bring it back to why you want a career in medicine

If you choose to tell a story in your statement, know that it doesn’t have to necessarily be about an experience you’ve had in medicine. Re-read that, it doesn’t have to have anything to do with a medical experience. So go to your shadowing experiences to shadow and figure out if you really want to be a doctor, not with the sole purpose of getting a good story for your personal statement. But, I will say that your personal statement absolutely does need to come back to why you want a career in medicine and/or a seat in their medical school class. That is what the prompt asked you, after all. And spoiler, “I want to be a doctor because I want to help people” is played out. It may be true (it’d better be true!), but it’s played out. Come up with something better than that!

FYI: In my personal statement, I told the story of contracting malaria in Ghana while studying abroad—how scared and sick I was, the physician who treated me there, what the clinic was like, a little girl who was in the clinic on the same day—and the health disparities in the country. Then I talked about the health disparities in my own region/state/the US and the role that physicians (especially ones like me, after they let me in!) have in reducing these disparities. I remember being careful to weave in racial health disparities and why I, as a Black female, thought I would be a perfect addition to their medical school and the profession of medicine. 

I did not have a single interview where I wasn’t asked about Ghana, malaria, and health disparities. People read these statements y’all! Don’t blow it off!

Don’t rush writing!

You don’t want to rush writing your personal statement. It’s not a surprise. I can assure you it will still be required whenever you apply. Most advisors will say that you should start writing your statement in the fall/winter before you plan to apply, which is reasonable to give you time to get it written and properly edited. But you should certainly start thinking about it before then. In an earlier post, I mentioned jotting down impactful experiences and stories throughout your pre-med journey so that you could remember to include them in your application, if appropriate. You don’t have to include all of them in your statement (actually, please don’t do that!) but if you have a running list of them, you may be able to weave 1 or 2 good ones into it and you won’t have to spend so much time trying to remember those experiences because you will have them written down.

Having your personal statement done in advance also allows you to be able to send it to the people you’re asking to write you a letter of recommendation. (I love getting personal statements with the CV from pre-med students who ask me for a letter and I read them and offer serious feedback).

It also sets you up to be ready to turn that AMCAS application in early because, remember, we are NOT waiting until the last minute to hit submit on that! We want your application reviewed when there are plenty of interview slots available!

Have someone proofread it

It’s hard to find mistakes in something you’ve written and read over and over again, right? Writing this blog has reinforced that truth for me. (How many errors do you find in these posts? Stop counting!!!)  Because it’s hard to find your own mistakes, you should have someone else proofread your personal statement. And not even just one person; have at least two people read over it. Preferably, one of those people needs to have read or evaluated medical school personal statements before. And at least one of them needs to have a good grasp on grammar, not someone who will just look over it and tell you that it’s good because they like, or love, you. The absolute worst thing you could do is turn in a statement full of grammar or spelling errors. Why people still do that is beyond me, but it definitely happens! In my opinion, if you don’t care enough to edit your personal statement, you don’t care enough for a seat in the class. You’re not writing a note to a friend, a Facebook post, or a blog. You’re literally writing for your white coat and your future- make sure it’s perfect!! I think 2 or 3 people looking over it is a good number, if they’re the right people. Be careful about letting too many people review your personal statement. Too many opinions can sometimes be overwhelming…you don’t want 6 different people telling you to make content changes and you lose the essence of what you’re trying to say! 

Use resources available to you.

I recently read the personal statement of one of my mentees who is applying this year and it was the best one I’ve ever read (and I told her that). She shared that the career/advising center on her campus was set up to help students with writing statements for graduate/professional schools. Jackpot! Does your college offer this? If you don’t know…find out, asap! If they do, take advantage of this! These certainly would be folks who, as mentioned above, will have read a medical school statement before and know what it should include and who are more than capable of proof-reading for errors. What these centers don’t do is write your statement for you; so don’t go in thinking that… But they do help you to start thinking about what could make a good personal statement and can help with editing. 

Write it yourself.

Whatever you do, don’t have anyone else write your statement for you. You’re better than that. No one else is going to take your MCAT or, later, your medical boards for you. And no one else is going to practice medicine for you. You’ve got this. Do it yourself.

Are you stuck with writing your statement? Have questions about the process and/or don’t have resources on your campus or available to you? Please feel free to reach out to me if you need help getting in the right direction!