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5300. How exactly do you tell a life story in 5300 characters? For many pre medical students, the PS (personal statement) is one of the hardest parts of applying to medical school. There is a small space to essentially lay out your life story, and make it sound interesting enough for people you have never met in places you have never been, so that they approve your application to move onto the next step. For many, it’s a pretty daunting task. In this article, I will try to explain the tips and tricks I used to write a PS. Some of it is general information that can be used for many PS type essays, while others are geared specifically for the medical school route. All this information is my personal opinion so feel free to use whichever ones best suit you.
1) Start Early
I know it's hard to tell a college student to start anything early is difficult because procrastination is the motto of college, but this is really important. This essay is one of the most important essays you will write in a long time, so you really make sure that you lay all your cards on the table. By starting at least a couple of months early, you can start getting thoughts on paper and allow your brain to start thinking about how to put it into a coherent story (more on this later).
2)Just Write
Do not confine yourself to 5300 characters from the start. Just write everything you want to write. That way, as it gets closer to submitting your essay you can just focus on cutting down. That is a lot easier than of starting at 5300 characters and have to worry about trying to fit in this whole new awesome paragraph you just thought off.
3) It’s a Story
An important part of cutting down you essay is knowing what is relevant and what is now. On the AMCAS application there is a section for individual activities, where you are allowed to write about different things you did, what you learned, and how it affected your path to medicine. As such, you do not have to focus on every single thing you did during the past few years. You should try to figure out the main points that you want to convey to admissions committee and then work around that. For example, are you going to medical school cause you like biomedical research? Do you like teaching patients and educating them? Did you grow up in a rural area and want to return to working in that environment? Maybe the answer is yes to one of these, or all of these. The important thing is not to ramble, and to give the people who read your essay a good sense of who you are, and more importantly, why medical school would help you achieve whatever you want to accomplish
4) Have as Many People as Possible Read It
And by that I do not mean just your premed friends, I mean anybody who is willing to read it. That can be your parents, your lab colleagues, your best friend who is applying to grad school, it does not matter. An important thing to realize is that not everybody on the admissions committee will be doctors; they will be people from all walks of life. Therefore, you should have a wide range of people critique your statement and give you feedback. You might worry that your friend who is studying theatre does not understand the importance of ___experience, or they might not understand the relevance of blah blah blah, but that does not matter. Everybody will be able to tell you if the story makes sense/ is coherent. Plus, people from different disciplines will approach with different points of view. Some could say fix this, others could say move something, the list goes on and on. You don’t have to take all the advice, but the more advice you have to pull from, the better you can fix your essay.
5) 5300 is the Limit, Not the Goal
I know it you will have a lot to write, but sometimes less is more. If multiple editors say something is not necessary, don’t automatically justify to yourself why it is important. Take a step back, read your PS without it, and see if it really made a difference. If you can get a better/ clearer result without it, then take it out. You can use those words to strengthen other areas of your PS, and if your PS ends up at 4500 characters then so be it.
6) Show, Don’t Tell
It is important to give actual examples of what you do. For example, if you go on a medical mission, don’t just say how it made if feel. Instead, talk about what you did, what you learned, and how you grew as a person. If you write correctly, the reader should know exactly how you feel, plus it is a much more powerful style of writing.
7) Don’t Try to Make Mountains Out of Molehills
It is important to make yourself sound as good as possible, but don’t overdo it. You do not have to make yourself the hero out of every experience. For example, if you go on a medical mission don’t say you were saving lives when you were just taking temperatures. And, if you volunteer at a hospital changing sheets and checking patients in, don’t say that this experience was instrumental in making you become a physician. Admissions committees have read a bunch of these essays, and they have a pretty good idea when you are over exaggerating. Now, I’m not saying you can’t use these experiences in your essay, by all means do, just be realistic about what you did and what you got out of it.
On that same train of thought, do not make you problems seem like they were the end of the world. If you had a legitimate problem and you learned from it and it made you better then that's good. But be careful about writing a “woe is me” style story that makes it seem as if you are searching for pity points. It doesn’t really put confidence in the admissions committee that you can handle the stress and rigor of medical school. Remember that the PS is your chance to put your best foot forward.
There are many ways to write a PS, but the most important things are being able to clearly convey who you are, why you want to be a doctor, and how medical school is a key step onto your future goals.