A personal statement is one of the most essential aspects that you need to consider when applying for a medical school admission. If this piece of paper is able to make a strong impression to the admissions committee, you can bolster your chances of being admitted as your personal statement combined with your performance at the interview is equivalent to 60% of your total score.
And since medical schools prefer to enroll smart, communicative, and emphatic individuals, it’s all the more important to these qualities in your personal statement.
Learn more as we are going to discuss some tips on composing an impressive medical school personal statement in today’s blog post.
The Topics Must Be Clear And Concise
A medical school personal statement is a part of your application that is submitted TMDSAS or AACOMAS. And although various essay approaches are accepted, we recommend that your personal statement should contain these details:
- A personal experience that inspired you to change your view about medicine.
- Your relationship with an inspiring individual or mentor.
- Any challenging personal experience related to medicine.
- Any challenges and hardships that influenced you to take medicine.
- Your motivations in striving for a career in the medical industry.
And Here Are Some Tips To Consider So The Interviewer(s) Can Help Understand You Better As A Candidate:
Take Time With Your Composition
Ideally, a personal statement should be prepared 6 months prior to the submission of your application documents. This gives you enough time to compose the first draft, set it aside for evaluation (at least 24 hours before you review what you have written), do the review, and revision.
Stay Focused
Your personal statement must not necessarily narrate your entire life story for you just have to highlight some of the key elements in your life’s journey. So we suggest that you choose a theme to write about, stick to your choice, and provide some examples to support your chosen theme.
Likewise, make sure that these certain areas in your life that you are highlighting have something to do with medical-related situations or instances that lead you to pursue a career in the medical field. Don’t go out of topic as the panel might see it as something irrelevant and may hamper your chances of being admitted to their med school.
Follow The 5-Point Essay Format In Writing Your Personal Statement
Here’s a neat trick that you can use in writing your personal statement. Take note, most successful writers are doing this. So we recommend that you follow this format as well:
– The first 4 to 5 sentences in your first paragraph should be able to “catch” the attention of the reader to ensure they’ll be more interested all throughout.
– The next 3 to 4 paragraphs of your medical school personal statement should talk about who you are. In particular, one of the paragraphs will tell about your clinical understanding and another paragraph should reflect on service.
– The concluding paragraph should contain the strongest points as the beginning of your personal statement as well as a short summary of who you are and must end with a challenge that you are prepared to deal with in the future.
Avoid Clichés
Make it a point to be specific and personal when sharing your personal interests. Sure, you may love science or is dedicated to helping other people, but this information is something that some candidates are also writing about. And if the interviewer(s) will read about this, there’s a big possibility that they’ll be bored and will not pay attention to your application. So be sure to be particular with all the details you are going to write.
Approach From A Unique Angle
Concentrate more on the details that would highlight your skills and qualities in handling challenges that no other candidates possess. This is also crucial to show your unique personality in dealing with trials. Moreover, showing uniqueness will always give a memorable favor to you as based on most of the personal statements that have used this strategy.
Telling Is Not Enough, Show Them
Instead of enumerating the unique qualities that you have like being compassionate, organized, and show of empathy, we suggest that you exhibit these qualities by sharing a story. In that way, the panel would at least have an idea that you have demonstrated these qualities in the past and will more likely apply these qualities once you enter in their medical school (and when you become a doctor, eventually).
Be Interesting
Start with something catchy so that the interviewer(s) will be intrigued to know you more. This way, they’ll be more engaged in reading your statement from the first paragraph to the last paragraph. You can do this by including a quote from a famous individual (or any other saying in particular) and build a connection as to why or how significant this quote is to your life.
This is just one example of how you can make your medical school personal statement interesting from the get-go. And you can certainly find more techniques when you Google about this method after reading this article.
Be Mindful About Transitions
Don’t forget to be mindful of how the paragraphs connect to each other. To be specific, the way the paragraphs are “interlinked” should be natural to ensure the flow of the story will be consistent and to prevent the interviewer(s) from being bored.
Follow The Rules
And the last, and probably, the most important tip in writing an impressive medical school personal statement is to always stick to the rules. To be specific, the word should be well within 5,300 characters according to AMCAS standards, 5,000 characters under the TMDSAS specifications, and 4,500 characters according to AACOMAS standards.
Take note, the number of characters already includes spaces. Anywhere less than the required number (as long as it’s not significantly less) is still okay, but characters exceeding from the limited number of characters should be avoided to prevent your statement (and your application, in general) from being scrapped by the panel of interviewers.
If you’re in the need of the help of a medical school admission consultant, you can visit Acceptmed.com. They can help pre-medical students with their applications and help achieve their goals. Contact them today.