Your Personal Statement is your opportunity to share your character, perspectives, abilities, and what has reinforced your commitment to studying medicine. Our best advice: keep it narrow. Your Work and Activities responses are your chance to show a broad overview of your experiences and the Personal Statement is a deep dive into one or two meaningful ones, grounded in a story. The most important question to answer in this essay is: Why are you capable of studying and practicing medicine?
Below is a writing process that we recommend. Give yourself enough time to work through this iterative process and create your most compelling work.
Begin with a brainstorm. Do not underestimate the importance of this step. If you have not yet created your your brainstorm document, it’s not too late. This document will be immensely useful for writing Secondaries (and later, for interview prep!).
Document your experiences, positive and negative, that prompted an evolution in your perspective—you know, those “ah-ha!” moments without which you would be a different student and/or person today. Then, record those experiences that will show the reader your abilities in critical thinking and problem solving, leadership, teamwork/collaboration, and empathy/connection, as well as those experiences that reinforced your interest in medical school. Capture as many details as possible, paying particular attention to what you thought, felt, said, and did in each situation. Your focus should be on adult experiences (from the start of college and later), though stories from your youth could comprise up to 20 percent of this brainstorm.
During your brainstorm, don’t limit yourself by worrying about a cohesive narrative, the quality of your writing, and/or the number/length of your stories. Simply focus on collecting those situations that helped to guide your path to this point and impacted your decision to apply to medical school.
Craft an outline. Select the key stories you will use to anchor your narratives. Remember that you’ll use your essays to go deep into experiences that demonstrate the traits you want to emphasize. An outline will make writing way easier, we promise, as the hardest part of writing a Personal Statement can be deciding on the essay’s structure. Consider how you can tell your stories in a way that will capture and hold the reader’s attention. A strong outline will save you time and stress.
Write. Keep in mind that you must be showing, not telling the reader who you are. In contrast to your Work and Activities section, which provides an overview of your experiences, your Secondary Essay responses should go deep into a story that allows the reader to come to their own conclusions about some of your character traits and abilities. Highlight how you’ve struggled, triumphed, learned, and how these experiences have developed you into the person you are now. Remember that what you’ve done and accomplished in the past is how you will prove to the admissions committee that you will be able to accomplish your future goals.
Review. Revise. Repeat. Confirm your word count and read your essay aloud noting where you stumble. Make revisions as necessary. Once it reads smoothly, set it down and walk away for at least 24 hours. Then re-read it. Is it you? Is it personal and authentic? You want the reader to see the real person behind the applicant number. While we caution against “oversharing,” being appropriately vulnerable will create connection.