Admissions Committees have the job of reading your personal statement and going over the rest of the requirements for your medical school application. It would only make sense to take advices from your admissions committee members to be sure that you are on the right track in your medical school personal statement writing.
Earning the nods of meticulous readers
Especially when it comes to things that are really intended to be evaluated like your application for med school, people become more meticulous as readers. They would notice every weakness in your personal statement. Not only would technical flaws such as grammar, spelling, punctuation and construction errors be more noticeable, their expectations become higher than usual. In writing your personal statement, you should keep those things in mind and work within those standards. How? Here are some tips:
1. Do not brag or show off.
2. Write about you and not about the school, the course or the field you?re trying to enter.
3. Do not bore your reader with highfaluting words and dull clich?s.
4. Write with sense.
5. Make your essay short but filled with worthwhile information about you.
“We look for some originality because nine out of ten essays leave you with a big yawn.” – Dr. Daniel R. Alonso Associate Dean for Admissions (Cornell University Medical College)
There is no single pattern for application essays and even if there were, imagine how boring that would be for the admissions committee having to read several uniform essays. No. Spare them that trouble. Just as you are a unique individual, you should also *make your essay unique and interesting* (http://www.medicalschoolapplicationessays.com/how-to-write-an-excellent-medical-school-application-essay/). For you to get into the school you want, you have to make the admissions committee remember you. One way is to pick something interesting about you as a topic?something unique and really attention catching.
“Medical school admissions committees carefully examine the motivation of applicants toward medicine.” – Thomas L. Lentz Chairman of the Admissions Committee (Yale School of Medicine)
Keep in mind that you are applying for medical school and are trying to convince the admissions committee that you should be taken in. One of the best ways is by expressing your genuine interest in medicine. You can write about how you?ve dreamed to be a doctor as a child or how your father inspired you to be a surgeon like him. You can also share your career goals and say how medical school would help you achieve them.
Related links:
Medical school personal statement guide – Medical school personal statement tips
Anecdotes in personal statements – Medical school personal statement tips
Medical school personal statement topic: your volunteer experience – Medical school personal statement topic tips
Professional goals in medical school essays – Medical school personal statement tips
Medical school personal statement topic: your journalism experiences – More medical school personal statement topic tips
Application essay: your personality – Application essay tips
How to write your medical school application essay – Medical school essay tips
Personal statement tips – Tips on writing your personal statement
Admission essay for different programs – Tips on writing your MBA essay
Top tips in writing personal statements – Tips on writing your personal statement
How to Effectively Use Anecdotes in Your Personal Statement for Medical School
Learning how to effectively use anecdotes in your personal statement for medical school can help keep your personal statement personal. This is often the advice of admission
experts when asked what it takes to make an interesting personal statement for medical school. Aside from starting off your personal statement with a captivating one-liner, keeping the tone of your personal statement reader-friendly is another important way to get the attention of admission officers.
Personal anecdotes to spice up a personal statement for medical school
Using a personal and interesting anecdote is one effective way to personalize your
medical admission essay. A personal statement for medical school that revolves around personal details about the applicant will make the applicant sound more human, and his or her experiences more real. Stories that the officer can read will put him or her in the experience of the applicant and give him or her what he or she wants: an idea of who the applicant is. Of course, how the essay is written, how and what kinds of words are used, and how the ideas are brought together will also give one an idea of the applicant’s skills with grammar and written communication. Using personal anecdotes will give the reader a deeper sense of the personality of the applicant.
Using personal anecdotes also lowers the risk of making an essay that is too wordy. A personal statement for medical school may at times require a bit of technical know-how here and there, but in general, you use simple words to get the point across. If you keep it simple, you avoid using words that will require a reader to open a dictionary in order to understand your essay.
As much as possible, anecdotes should be about certain experiences that played a part on your decision to become a doctor. The worn out phrase ‘I want to help people’ is no longer what admission officers like to hear from applicants. They want your personal essay for medical school to show, rather than tell them, why you want to become a doctor. You can best do this using anecdotes as concrete examples.
Choosing what anecdote to tell
One dilemma that stumps most applicants is choosing what anecdote to tell. With all the experiences you’ve had in your lifetime, there are a lot of personal experiences that you can choose from. But how do you choose the right one?
The best course would be to know what characteristic that you are most proud of and choose an anecdote that shows how you exercised that characteristic in real life. For example, instead of saying that you are a person of compassion, tell of the time when you used your vacation to go on a mission to Africa to help feed hungry refugees. If you want to tell of your ability to stay calm under pressure, tell of the time when you and a bunch of people got stuck in the elevator and how you handled the situation so that no one would freak out. Choosing anecdotes carefully is very important, because even with the right anecdote you still run the risk of sounding too cocky, or worse, someone who likes to embellish. Keep your words simple and stick to the truth, because the personal statement is not really the place for your achievements, real or imagined.
In the end, you can choose to use different anecdotes for different parts of your essay. Or you can use one anecdote for the whole essay and use it to tie the whole thing together. Using personal anecdotes is a good way to keep the essay an interesting read. However, you have to make sure that the anecdote fits and that all of it is truthful.
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