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STATEMENT: PERSONAL THE BASICS I. Disclaimer Personal Statement advice is a subjective business. Everyone has an opinion about what you should write about. That being said, included in this handout is a compilation of opinions about personal statements directly from people who sit on admissions committees. Additionally, the PreProfessional Advisement Center also has a handout with quotes directly from admissions deans. However, at the end of the day, regardless of what anyone else tells you, this is your personal statement. You are the one sharing your thoughts and perspectives for scrutinization. You are the one who will be living with the admissions committee s decision to accept or reject you. So whatever you end up writing, you are ultimately the one who needs to feel good about it. Keeping that in mind, here is what the BYU Preprofessional Advisement Center suggests . . . II. How to Think About the Personal Statement For starters, think about what makes you different from the 300 other applicants who, simply based on numbers, look exactly like you. What does the Admissions Committee need to know about you before making an informed decision? Secondly, think about what they will want to ask you during your interview does your personal statement give them interesting insights into your character, your beliefs, or your experiences that can be translated into interview topics? The truth of the matter is medical schools don t just care about your GPA and standardized test scores (such as MCAT, DAT, etc.), though those are important criteria. The people sitting on these committees will be with you for 4 years and so will your future classmates. The Admissions Committee also serves as gatekeepers, not only to the professional school but also to the profession this is a significant responsibility that they take seriously. Therefore, they want to know if you know what medical school entails, if you are going to stick with it, if you know exactly what you want, or if you ve experienced what it is going to be like when you are finally practicing medicine. All of this being said, you can write about anything. You can write about your motivation for medicine, interesting hobbies, unusual experiences whatever makes you the so much more interesting person than you look like on paper, whatever brings you to life and makes you the person your friends and family love. You do need to answer the question about what experiences in your life led you to consider being a doctor, a dentist, a podiatrist etc., but use interesting and creative narration to give your personal statements character as well as purpose. Some examples: *One student wrote about his interest in art and related it to his interest in dentistry. *One student wrote about her humanitarian service in Brazil and what that taught her about medicine. *One student wrote joining a Pre-health Club on campus so it would look good on his r sum and how he actually got interested in medicine! *One student wrote about playing pool and used it as an analogy for being a doctor. III. Format You need to check your specific application service (whether it is the AMCAS or ADSAS or any other service) for the length of your personal statement. Usually the length translates to 1 1 single spaced In pages. thinking about your unique experiences, try to narrow it down to 2 3 things you want to talk about. BE PRECISE. Once you have identified 2 3 things, then write specific, narrative, memorable stories about those 2 3 things, averaging page per story. For example, a student could write, My sister is handicapped. My playing music helped her. I want to be a psychologist. OR a student could write, I have always been interested in playing music but my journey from piano prodigy to psychological research assistant was mapped by the different experiences in my life. My sister, Lisa, suffers from acute psychological retardation and over course of time, I realized that my playing music soothed her. I came to understand then, the value of putting aside my own problems and learning the rewards of doing something for someone else. Now, because this is a writing sample limited by space and by time, remember that you do want to have your stories leading to a conclusion. So you write your stories and make sure you have transitions between them (though these can be something as brief as Five years later ) then, at the end, write a 3 5 sentence conclusion that does the following: First, pull your 2 3 stories together into some kind of a bigger theme so the reader can see how they all fit together. The theme can be something as general as overcoming challenges or facing new experiences. Second, apply this theme to medical school so that the reader can understand how these stories tie into medicine. Third, tell the reader why, in 1 3 sentences, you want to go to medical school so that the reader knows your motivation for going and so that you have clearly answered the question asked, and that provides insight into you as an individual. IV. Polish First, a personal statement needs to truly represent you as a person; therefore most students go through many drafts before getting to a final version. Do not get discouraged. This is a part of the process. Friends and family are great resources for reading. The Preprofessional editor will also read as many drafts as you write. Second, your personal statement needs to be perfectly polished no glaring typos or grammatical errors. Do the best you can, have some friends and family proofread it, then feel free to bring your final draft to the Preprofessional Center for technical editing. V. Personal Statement Don ts Do not regurgitate your application or summarize your life. Do not put an opening line eye-catcher just for the sake of catching the eye. Do not explain bad grades or bad MCAT or other application test scores in a personal statement, do this is the secondary application. If you are applying to the U of U, 60 70% of their applicant pool are returned missionaries, so if you do want to tell a mission story as one of your 2 3 stories, put it in middle or last and do NOT make the story a mission story that anyone who has served a mission could tell (e.g. overcoming language barrier, eating strange food, dealing with a difficult companion, etc.). Keep in mind that some schools require a second personal statement in the secondary application specific to the school, and in this instance you can write about specific questions that school asks for or any other experience.

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